Sport these days is as every bit a business as it is a passionate and emotional pass time for the fans and players. When Soccer Australia morphed into the FFA, the days of money mismanagement should’ve been finished.
However according to the Smith Report into football tabled yesterday, it continues to be rope that prevents the game from rapidly moving forwards
Beginning positively, the report lauded the strategic objectives of the A League which stress community engagement and grassroots development as imperative to achieving a sustained and successful national competition.
However it highlighted over ambitious economic expansion and foolhardy use of funds as needing to be overhauled.
In reference to expansion, the report finds that the touted FFA Cup, an English FA Cup style competition should be shelved until the appropriate level of commercial backing is received.
This suggests that the FFA who were going to roll out the FFA Cup next year were going to do so without the sufficient level of financial support. Either that or they would divert monies from the A-League or national teams to sustain the cup. Such a deflection of funds has already been crippling; as seen with the failed World Cup bid.
Further to this the report explains that the league should stay at 10 teams and avoid expansion until further money is generated to ensure these clubs survive successfully.
Smith also sheds light on the happenings at FFA HQ imploring the governing body to stop measures to increase staffing and salaries and conversely improve efficiency and productivity.
This recommendation paints an unflattering picture of those running FFA HQ.
Therefore, the report wisely finds that money that would otherwise go into the aforementioned avenues must be invested in grassroots, community engagement and the women’s game in order to create and maintain a vast base of absorb football constituents.
This, in my opinion and in Smith’s, will be a far more beneficial and appropriate climate for the League to expand because increased numbers of engagement, achieved through grassroots investment will ultimately be able to support a bigger and better league.
Moreover having a sustained base of engaged fans, like that suggested by Smith, will protect grassroots investment from potential monetary losses by the A-League.
Ultimately fans should never suffer due to corporate mismanagement.
The Smith Report will hopefully wake the FFA executive out of their slumber toward how they have so far managed this infant league. However, credit must be given for uptake of community engagement, an important move by the FFA.
Now it is time for those people to get serious about where the A-League is at and make sure they make intelligent and appropriate financial decisions.
jbinnie
Guest
Money management, that bane of contention in every business in the country.How to cut costs without raising the ire of unions,workers,et al. Simple really, get some common sense back into how things are run.Someone has pointed out the difference between employing a full time professional within the guidelines set down in the Australian workplace and employing a "young" player. .The differential is quite large so the FFA could move that a fixed number of "young" players have to be in every squad. Is this practical? Well it would certainly ensure we had a steady stream of young players coming through the ranks instead of that raft of "full time "professionals who seem to be making a career of moving from club to club. The FFA has also been advised they must cut costs.Where to begin?. They have been told this before and got rid of a few lower echelon office workers. That's not where the savings are to be made. For the last 2 years in the HAL we have had it shown that our coaches can hold their own with any of the second or third tier coaches being imported.Unfortunately,from results over the last few years this may also be the case with our under-age representative teams who are being coached by what one would have to assume are highly remunerated imports with CV's that place them not too high up the coaching strata. The Smith report indicates all is well in the grassroots area of the game when the opposite is true.A walk around games on any weekend at this level whether schools,or lower level clubs, and an informed chat with coaches there, will soon let the observer know how well everything is not. Yet, when we turn on our TV to watch the Socceroos, Olyroos,or Under age Australian teams playing in some far flung country who do we see sitting beside the team's coach but our Director of Coaching who we all understood was employed to upgrade the standard of coaching at the same grassroots level.One must assume that in their efforts to save money the FFA will ensure the D of C will fund these expensive jaunts out of his own not too meagre salary (And pigs might fly?) Finally the Cup, a potential year long competition linking the Metropolitan ,State,and National levels of the game. This too has been put on the back-burner and agreed to by the same chief executive who, only 6 months ago, made a country wide tour accompanied by his off-sider to tell the Australian football public this was to be the next great leap forward.The fact that Smith said it needed funding and sponsorship reeks of him being told the "cup" would be based on an FA style competition with an all in draw with the potential to have teams from Tasmania flying to Townsville to play a game that might attract 500 people. If this turns out to be true then someone should be sacked for feeding mis-information to an expensive inquiry. We will never know. So, all in all ,anyone, with a modicum of common sense could initiate savings at all levels of the sport, "there is none so blind as those who cannot see". jb
anthcol
Roar Pro
Also interesting to not that the FFA wants the Socceroos games to stay off the anti siphoning list to make sure fox can keep the rights. They are obviously pinning a huge amount of the games revenue on broadcast rights being big.
Johnno
Guest
One wonders what the FFA agenda is in australian football, do they want football played everywhere which the FFA cup would provide or do they want to centralise power to just a few teams even if that makes soccer in this country poorer, one wonders if they have Australian soccer's best interests at heart.
George
Guest
Interesting news. It seems like the FFA are going to use this to limit expansion and maybe even suspend the FFA cup, which will be an artificial saving of funds to help improve their books in the short term. I don't like where this is going one bit