Northern Spirit's story of failure in the ashes of the NSL

I was one of the people who jumped on the Northern Spirit bandwagon during their first season – my first interest in an Australian soccer club. In those days, Friday nights at North Sydney Oval were a huge event, the Bob Stand a cauldron of noise.

The team made the finals in their first season, playing a 2-legged series in front of sold out stadiums at North Sydney Oval and Marconi Stadium, going down 2-1 on aggregate.

To think we thought Northern Spirit was going to be the revolution the game so desperately needed.

But beneath the surface, cracks were already appearing.

The Malaysian consortium who originally founded the club had already sold it to Mark Goldberg, who could no longer afford to keep it; and by the second season coach Graham Arnold, assistant Ian Crook and captain Robbie Slater had become majority owners.

The club had an unfavourable stadium contract at North Sydney Oval where they were required to pay for the drop-in of cricket pitches after their games; and some poor recruiting cost them a lot of money – particularly the decision to sign Italian Nicola Berti, who was happy to sign autographs and revel in celebrity status but wasn’t so happy to turn up to training or apply himself during games.

As the on-field success dried up, the turnstyles clicked over a lot slower and the financial bleeding was worsening, so the player-owners began looking for new investors, and found a willing buyer in Glasgow Rangers.

Rangers were looking for a way to build a support base in Australia, the warm inner glow of claiming to do something to develop the game, and maybe a tax dodge. But it didn’t take them long to realise they’d bought a lemon.

Rangers talked to some high-profile Australian companies, and brought them along to see Spirit hosting Sydney United, a match in which Spirit’s 2-0 loss was frequently interrupted by flares being thrown on the pitch and brawls continuously broke out in the crowd.

Needless to say, not only did none of the new companies want to have anything to do with soccer in Australia, but even existing sponsors were walking away.

The on-field success dried up even further, tensions between supporters escalated and Rangers found themselves needing to put more and more money in to keep the club afloat.

Coach Graham Arnold was under pressure, and under normal circumstances would probably not have started season 3, and certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did. But Rangers, by now majority owners, felt that as Arnold had been paid in worthless shares in the previous season, they were morally obliged to keep him on.

But eventually Frank Farina was leaned on to take Arnold on as a Socceroos assistant and Mick Hickman was appointed as coach – but nothing changed on the field.
By season 4, Rangers were 100% owners and were looking to cut costs.

Early in the season crowds went up, but after the Socceroos lost to Uruguay and failed to qualify for the World Cup the crowds dried up. And in a further blow, the TV coverage ceased.

Channel 7 had bought the rights to soccer to provide content for C7, it’s pay-TV network, and plenty of Spirit games were shown on C7. But when Channel 7 lost the AFL rights, C7 folded mid-season and the publicity dried up further.

Both Spirit and Soccer Australia were imploding – insolvent, racked by infighting and board instability. The club again went close to going under during the off-season, but was saved by the investment of Antonio Gelonesi, who bought a stake in the club.

Any player with any value at all was sold off, and Mick Hickman was also shown the door; with Laurie McKinna installed as coach and a team composed mainly of under-20s. The contract with North Sydney Oval was also untenable, with the club playing half their games at Brookvale Oval in season five.

The question was whether Spirit or Soccer Australia would go into liquidation first. When four Spirit players were picked in an under-20s championship, the club invoked an obscure rule to postpone three matches and it was Soccer Australia who was sent to the liquidators.

Spirit later won all three postponed matches and made a late run which saw them qualify for the finals for the second time – the finals series being a drawn-out 10-game affair that dragged on for 2 months, the last game against Newcastle United being postponed due to a waterlogged pitch and was never played.

The club had fallen months behind with player payments, but took their place for the final season of the NSL. North Sydney Oval was gone, and even Brookvale Oval too expensive, the club playing at the no-frills Pittwater Rugby Park.

It was known the NSL would be no more after that season, clubs and players looking for opportunities in the new league. Rangers, unwilling to put any more money in, liquidated the company that controlled the club and Gelonesi transferred the license to become sole owner.

Spirit narrowly failed to make the finals in their last season, but finished positively by winning their last three games. Spirit disbanded after their last game, but coach Laurie McKinna was quickly signed up by one of the A-League bidding consortiums, and took several Spirit players with him to form the nucleus of the Central Coast Mariners.

A club that promised so much, starting with 15,000 fans at North Sydney Oval finished with a whimper, in front of a few hundred at Pittwater.

Crippled by financial instability, and harmed by occasional episodes of crowd violence. Although the initial concept was good, the foundations were quicksand. The structure of the game at the time was unsound, and it was a miracle the club managed to survive as long as it did.

Having been through the Spirit experience, to see the A-League over the last couple of seasons, with falling attendances and clubs bleeding so much financially, rings a few alarm bells. I’m certainly not anti-soccer – far from it – but I am concerned the game is living beyond its means.

And the FFA’s major concern should be to ensure that a viable week-to-week competition is maintained – but instead they made the mistake of going after a World Cup bid.

This post was in reply to It’sCalledFootball’s series on the NSL