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So the decision of FFA Chairman Frank Lowy to renew FFA CEO Ben Buckley’s contract has been made. Some commentators and many fans have been underwhelmed with Buckley’s performance over the past four years (which I’ll admit includes myself), and there are some calling for a replacement.
To be fair up to a point to Buckley, in focusing on the World Cup he as a CEO has been focusing on what the FFA board have been telling him to focus on, and the neglect of other elements of football administration is partly the FFA board’s responsibility.
It is worth the football fraternity remembering though that the “problem” at the time of the Crawford Report was that there were plenty of passionate “football people” at the old NSL clubs and institutions but not enough people with “sports business nous”. In the post-Crawford era the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, with too many sports business professionals and a dearth of passionate football people.
Many have recognised this and are calling for more football people, but the Australian football fraternity needs to be wary of “over-correcting”. It needs to be soberly stressed that was is needed is a better balance and resist the urge to go on a witch-hunt. In the event, Buckley is replaced then there should be a vision of what direction football wants to go in with a new CEO with the relevant skill set already lined up.
Lowy, in explaining his decision to keep on Buckley, maintained that Buckley worked ”hard”, but “working hard” is distinct from working proactively or with vision. The FFA has been distinctly reactive under Buckley’s tenure. This is evident in many initiatives such as losing the initiative in Australia’s World Cup bid to heads of other sporting codes and his inability to assert himself and by extension the interests of the football fraternity.
Instead we ended up having hysterical headlines with Ron Barrassi squeezing a football, which were as much to blame for Australia’s “single vote” as the intriguing backroom deals of FIFA executives. Instead we had a bid book which left a greater legacy for non-football codes – one of the ‘tragedies’ reported in the news of the failed World Cup bid was that the AFL administration weren’t going to be able to milk the event to upgrade Skilled Park similar to how the Commonwealth Games has been milked to upgrade Carrara.
Then there is the World Cup video, which to me seemed more of a reactive video directed at sending a message to Australians that the World Cup was “for all Australians”, to the point where the FFA seem to have forgotten they are in essence supposed to be pitching an argument to global football bosses on behalf of the local football fraternity.
Then there is expansion. There appeared to be nothing to put the Rovers consortium above other Western Sydney bids, and ironically despite Buckley criticising Canberra’s 5000 strong crowd for neutral teams, Canberra have had the best expansion bid of all, if not quite up to the financial requirements they nevertheless had 2000 startup members and local Government support. Eamonn Flannagan is right to be angry.
The FFA seem to have put a predominant focus on pure “marketing reasons” – the Sydney “market” needs two teams, the Queensland “market” needs three teams and the Melbourne “market” needs three teams. Forget the fact that what is most important in the highly important Western Sydney area a well-thought out bid on not just any bid with $5 million is needed.
Then there is the fact that there was no groundswell for a second Melbourne franchise outside of South Melbourne. The result being that the existing A League fan-base has been splintered. The derbies have been interesting as a spectacle, but more tellingly we are now at the point where the social fabric of A-League attendances in Melbourne are being undermined.
Southern Cross would have been a better bid to consider (if at all, there is a decent article that one team, one city model was perfect for Melbourne if not Sydney), firstly because it re-engages an element of the Victorian football fraternity that hadn’t embraced the A-League. There would have been a real point of difference in the derbies rather than just colour differentiation (Heart’s football is no different to other teams’) and the derbies would have been a lot more passionate.
Instead we have had a reactive FFA who are blindingly hysterical about anything “old soccer” to the point where it adversely affects their administrative decisions.
The decision to bring the Heart franchise into Melbourne has been bad for football in the Victoria and the A-League in Melbourne. With 25,000 strong crowds, Melbourne Victory were a cut above the other A-League teams – reason perhaps to introduce another franchise, but flip that around, in terms of the high attendance the Melbourne sporting fraternity, Victory were above the Storm and perhaps the Rebels, and were on the lower end of AFL membership bases and attendances. This equates to some respectability.
Now what? The A-League fraternity in Melbourne is facing is a Heart franchise with 5000 people a game, which is a laughing stock, and Melbourne Victory crowds of 12,000, which is the same and perhaps even lower than Storm and Rebel crowds. This equates to a loss of credibility for football in Victorian sporting circles. The FFA should not have been so quick to shoot down Geoff Lord’s idea of a Victory brand NBL team.
Football clubs are as much a matter of sound sociological concerns as it is a business proposition. The FFA have focused only on “business plans”, but what is equally important is “sociological plans”. Sociologically speaking, the imposing of the Heart and Gold Coast franchises have been a disastrous flop.
To fix the expansion mess he has presided over and mending the bridges he has burnt, Buckley certainly does have his work cut out.
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