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What is football? What does it mean to Australia and what does it mean to the world? The FFA seems to know. ‘We Are Football’ were the brave words chosen to lead the A-League into a new season and with some early success.
It’s been a tough run for football in Australia. From confirming fans to confirming the name, challenges from other codes in the over-crowded Australian sporting landscape has seen football fail to live up to its potential.
The ‘sleeping giant’ of Australian sport has remained so for a while, however recent moves from the sport’s governing body suggest the game is waking up to the challenges and expectations of sports fans in the modern world.
Looking past the recent few years of the A-League with low attendance and lower media coverage the league still manages to struggle against the major codes.
It is not vanishing like the AFL faithful suggest nor is it on the verge of dominating Australia’s sporting landscape despite suggestions by Craig Foster. The game for a while appeared to remain stagnant.
Hard work by the FFA has consistently been cancelled out by the fans’ poor reactions, the media, FIFA (by handing the World Cup to Qatar) and even by themselves, evident in the last year’s seemingly non-existent marketing campaign.
It had been argued that the FFA had its priorities wrong, focusing in the World Cup bid rather than the A-League and that simply they didn’t believe in their product.
However things are beginning to change. The signings of Harry Kewell and Brett Emerton have got people talking about the league at a time when AFL and NRL usually dominate our televisions and newspapers.
But more subtle progress has been made. Clubs like Gold Coast and Newcastle have started to interact with their communities, a valuable step towards bridging the gap between A-League and grassroots prior to the imminent FFA Cup.
Slow progress is uniting Australia’s football community.
‘We Are Football’ answers many questions, emphasising football’s ability to bring people together in a way no other sport can.
This is the ultimate goal of the FFA and the A-League, to grow the game and expose more people to its charm and character.
Football won’t become Australia’s number one sport overnight, but positive steps are being made to ensure its growth.
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