I picked myself up off the floor and read it again: “If we get the A-League right I’d give us a nine out of 10 … The only thing not where I’d like it to be is the A-League, but the rest of the game is doing very well.” The rest of the game is doing very well? If you say it often enough.
That’s why Frank Lowy is Australia’s richest man, I suppose.
Where others see mountainous challenges and labyrinthine complexities and keep falling off their chairs, Lowy remains seated. He keeps it simple, lifts confidence and has a proven ability for building fabulously successful shopping malls on what where were once rubbish dumps.
No, so far as Frank’s concerned, it’s simpler than we mortals could ever have imagined.
Just as the World Cup was once the answer to the A-League and the A-League could afford to rot on the backburner while he engineered a big-bang solution to its woes – look, no hands! – these days he’s plunging all his eggs into the A-League basket and counting on it to provide a solution to the steaming pile of discontent at grassroots and without so much as having to look at let alone touch a grassroot!
It’s brilliant stuff. Or is if you believe it’s possible, which Frank obviously does.
Myself, I think he’s full if it. What it’s really about is substance and style and Lowy has proven to be all about style – he talks things up, keeps it simple, builds confidence…
Beyond that, I’m not sure what he’s on about. It’s a part of football alright, keeping it simple and building confidence – and the other 99 per cent is about engaging with its many and varied complexities and managing them but Lowy still hasn’t done that yet and he’s hardly likely to when he’s so confident of his work to date.
“I’d give us a nine out of 10.” Crikey!
Nope, Lowy isn’t learning.
Eight years on and he still hasn’t twigged that the football food-chain is not exactly like a shopping development or that more is required from him leadership-wise than just hyping up the tenants about all the fabulous customers and the customers about the fabulous shops until the car park is full up.
If only Lowy could begin to understand the actual problems beyond those at the big end of town and why it’s a version of madness advertising a dud product and talking up the dead dog kids run into these days at club level.
If they do swallow the drivel about it all going swimmingly out there but for the A-League, they soon learn the reality behind it anyway. Who is the winner there?
Realistically though, even if Lowy did a Rupert Murdoch and got into some late-onset parenthood and suddenly found himself on the sidelines watching his toddler at small-sided games, the $500 gouging his local club was giving him on top of the federation’s fee probably wouldn’t mean a thing to him anyway.
Feeding frenzy? What feeding frenzy? What’s a litre of milk anyway? To the nearest hundred will do.
Worse, Lowy is putting his hand up for another four years.
Why?
If Lowy didn’t have the bottle years ago to implement Crawford, why would there be any confidence in him now to implement the findings of the Smith review?
Oh, that’s right – he wants to get the A-League sorted.
All we need now is for Lowy to say he is open to Smith’s advice on the national league like he said he was open to Crawford’s and then we can be sure he’s playing Blatters with us and has no intention of following through.
Lowy mightn’t have learned much about how the football food-chain actually works and what difference the krill makes to whales but at least football has learned how Lowy works and that it’s probably better to explain football issues to him in shopping-mall terms.
It goes like this, Frank – it’s a huge mall but the A-League clubs aren’t the only ones there – you’ve got FFA, the state federations and their trainloads of staff, pay-television providers, avaricious academies, two-bit privateer coaches, equipment suppliers, thousands of club officials and tens of thousands of semi-professional adult players in state leagues and busloads of player agents who are all trying to live off largely the same people, which is a diminishing number of juniors and their families.
Worse Frank, yours is not the only game in town – at the Eggball Hypermart over the road the prices are about a tenth of yours and the joint’s packed.
Get it, Frank? Spending more on advertising or talking your joint up won’t fix it – either you work out a way to get your tenants to drop their prices or you call in the bulldozers.
“I’d give us a nine out of 10.”
I’d give you a six and out.
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