Banging on the other day about principles of football governance, I observed that the A-League is doomed under FFA’s present constitution and doubly doomed because the football community seems incapable of the discussion it has to have.

This discussion must be about the governance required to protect the A-League. In my article, I said “ultimately, Lowy and Buckley and the A-League are just the latest in the long line of victims of a deeply divided, impossibly confused and extremely dysfunctional football culture.”

Luckily some humorists weighed in to illustrate the point with some tongue-in-cheek accusations about that representing an attack on HAL’s playing standards.

I was predicting football in Australia would die and no one would ever kick a round ball again, that I was from “old soccer” and I was trying to hurt “new football” – either that or I was a Johnny-come-lately – and beneath it all, I was batting for the AFL and obviously hadn’t seen the Roar do over the Mariners.

All the shibboleths, stereotypes and ad hominem red-herrings were there, rising up to make sure that whatever happens, the football community is not going to have that discussion it needs to have

Not in this lifetime anyway – not with rules of engagement that include misrepresenting a position to make it easier to tackle, of searching high and low for a “they would say that” grounds for dismissal, and the kind of defensiveness that’s verging on embarrassing.

It’s as if the football can get out of this one alive by pampering its victim complex and blaming every rubbish thing that’s ever happened to it on the anti-football brigade.

For all that feigned mis-comprehension, some football supporters – not enough unfortunately – can appreciate the issues at stake and the ramifications for the game and particularly the A-League down the track, which suggests the concepts aren’t that hard to grasp if one is willing to apply themselves for a full 90 minutes.

Some critics said those principles of governance needed to be explained in plain English and fewer words.

It’s a fair point. Then again, this is also the game that says “a player is in an offside position if he is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent” and follow ups with seven A4 pages of text and diagrams to get the rest of the offside message across.

As informative and myth-destroying as sitcoms and tele-movies on the principles of football governance would be, don’t hold your breath for any sugar-coated explanations. Sometimes you just have to read the book

Indeed, someone has already gone to the trouble of distilling the principles of football governance into as few a words as humanly possible.

The products of their hard work are the reports of the various independent and internal inquiries into football in Australia, as are the constitutions and by-laws and rule books and riot acts and policy documents and all the other arcane dust-gathering publications that have been produced for the football community that by the football community’s own admissions have gone largely unread.

Online duelling and blowing smoke everywhere is a bit of fun but it’s taking place in a vacuum, with punters trying to influence other punters’ opinions as if that’s going to impact on the game’s governors, like they’d even know the internet has been invented.

The football community’s future won’t be determined by arguments among rank-and-file football punters, but by the decisions of the members of the state federations whose job it is to channel the views of their football community up the line to FFA.

Those conduits’ names and contact details are on the state federation websites. They’ve never heard of you either.

There’s nothing like speaking to a powerbroker to find out whether one’s views are being represented on the big issues like the A-League’s future and their vision for football.

I called some of my so-called elected representatives.

On paper, I have at least nine mouthpieces working for me on the state federation on account of associations with clubs in three geographic regions, a refereeing connection, and also the men’s and junior’s standing committees representatives.

There’s a strong case for the futsal standing committee to represent my views too, and maybe even the women’s standing committee since all our clubs run girls’ and women’s teams. Pretty influential, eh?

I settled on contacting three, which is about the normal quota of representation for someone with a normal football involvement.

One rep said the main issue facing the game was the referees. Oh, and the fines and suspensions – his club was being crucified. He was dead against the A-League, it had hurt his club badly. What constitution, and who was Crawford? Nor did he know there’d just been a board election.

Another said it was a rats’ nest and he’d given up. He wasn’t against the A-League personally but it had hurt his club badly so, you know …

He hadn’t read Crawford or the constitution but he knew what was in them, he’d read all about them in the papers. He went to the AGM and voted in the board election.

The third was a bit different – someone’s in for it, big time.

That’s the bridge between the grassroots and FFA, and it doesn’t cross the divide, or bridge the gulf, or act as a line communication or anything of the sort.

Were it a car the engine wouldn’t be connected to the drive-shaft, it’d just sit there revving its guts out and making the driver look like an idiot.

Think of it as a constitutional cab ride; you and some mates are about to hop in when a stranger asks where you’re going. “Murrumbeena.”

“That’s good,” he says, “Me too.” He hops in the front seat and you and your mates get in the back behind the soundproof glass.

Frank, the driver, he thinks you’re all together.

His front seat passenger doesn’t deny it and off to Maroubra you go, the driver oblivious to what’s going on, and the state rep in the front fixated on just getting to Sydney.

Maybe an airplane analogy would be better? No one’s read the flight manual, the flight crew are swanning around in first-class thinking someone up the back is doing the flying, the stewards say everyone’s happy in cattle class, there’s no one in the cockpit, the fuel’s running low …

Frank Lowy and Ben Buckley probably don’t go down the local football pitch or hit the terraces to gather intelligence from the football proletariat – nor should they.

They’re entitled to believe the people they are talking to, the states, have a finger on the rank-and-file’s pulse. After all, that’s what the states are telling them.

Maybe those state federation members do have their fingers on the pulse? Mind you, I’ve yet to meet a football supporter – this should flush a few out though – whose Holy Grail is the destruction of the A-League and better referees, notwithstanding they’ll be officiating on cabbage patches next to railway reservations the rest of their days.

The “new football” constitution all but guarantees the governors will take the game where their own narrower agendas want it to go, not where the football community wants their game to go.

Like the nuances of the passive offside rule, a constitutional glitch isn’t news, it’s not straightforward and it doesn’t lend itself to polemics or even opinion pieces.

That’s not to say there won’t be hell to pay later on though when it determines the match outcome.

It’s just sitting there ticking away until it blows up and maybe Four Corners or Dateline weigh in a year or so later explain how it all went wrong; “Own Goal: How Australian soccer blew both its feet off again.”

Is it sensible to be rely upon publicists, the press and governments, the ones that all say now they saw the GFC coming, to be gauging how well you’re going?

I don’t think this FFA regime particularly cares what happens down the track so long as it can walk away with some of its dignity still intact.

The A-League edifice collapsing after they leave won’t damage their reputations – it could even enhance them.

That half-baked approach to governance suits the state federations whose powerbrokers are rubbing their hands together in anticipation.

The broader football community is sitting back thinking the government or someone must be looking after it.

Which government? Governments don’t wander around Canberra soccer pitches seeking guidance, it consults the Australian Sports Commission or FFA.

Leaving it up to others to read the instruction manuals and the long texts has its perils alright.

Just two years ago, this federal Labor Government received from David Crawford another report, this one into taxpayer funding of Australian sport and Olympic sports in particular, of which football is one, and this report was over 350 pages.

In short, Crawford asked Australia to choose between whether it wanted to be a nation of sports participants or a nation that punched above its weight at the international sporting events.

Should governments be putting taxpayer funding into grassroots facilities or should they continue to put that money into elite sport through the likes of the AIS?

It’s an either/or question because a sport buying into the AIS’s notion of sports development – the taxpayer only foots some of the bill – means administrators need to fundraise elsewhere, which has historically involved money being drawn up from the grassroots.

That is, pursuing elite international sporting goals necessarily involves the erection of financial barriers at the entry level that will in turn erode participation levels in that sport.

A couple of hundred pages in, when most have packed it in and turned off the light, Crawford begins to pull it altogether; a less-diversified Australian sporting landscape, one that leaves Olympic sports inaccessible to most Australians – football among them – but still punching above its weight internationally in those sports that relatively few Australians play.

As Crawford explains, those elite international results will become increasingly harder to achieve in the future as more affordable sports like Australian rules football and rugby league take up the slack and get first dibs at the talent, and tighten their strangleholds on the available sporting dollar, and make it even harder in the future for those “exotic” international sports to maintain participation numbers.

Faced with that stark choice, after a discussion that lasted about two days in the national press – deep – the federal sports minister, always a devout friend of football, let it rest while Crawford’s advice was run past the blazer brigades at the Australian Olympic Committee and affiliated sports – including football.

A press conference was called announcing the good news, that the government had decided to marginally increase funding to its elite international sports teams and athletes and Australians could look forward to some more gold medals over the next couple of Olympics.

With friends like Mark Arbib, football probably doesn’t need enemies like me.

The football community didn’t get up on tables and applaud being sentenced to relative obscurity but it didn’t protest either. Its governors scooped up the miniscule amount of taxpayers’ money on offer and elected to take their chances with increasing participation costs when they are already a festering sore.

Maybe the decision-makers didn’t finish reading the report? It was over 350 pages. Maybe they didn’t start?

Asked recently for a constructive opinion, as if an AFL plant like me would even know, I said football could leap ahead if it could learn to manage its disagreements better, begin focusing on what it does agree on and start communicating that to those who desperately need to hear it.

Those are their state federations, FFA, members of parliament and a football media that’s asleep at the wheel and largely oblivious to what’s going on outside of the A-League, as if the only person out to get it is Mr Demetriou.

Finding consensus is obviously problematic though, let alone expressing it to the right people the right way with a credible, representative voice.