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Let's get real about promotion-relegation and B-League

7th December, 2011
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Are Harry Kewell and Brett Emerton boosting A-League TV figures? (AAP Image/Joe Castro)
Expert
7th December, 2011
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One of the most common throwaway lines in Australian football is that Football Federation Australia needs to implement promotion-relegation between the A-League and a second tier competition (lumped with the name B-League, it seems). Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

The latest proponent for the A-League getting in line with the majority of the football world is Ned Zelic, in his column for the A-League website.

While he makes all the right points about promotion-relegation being part of the football’s DNA, how it’ll spice up the battle at the tail-end of the league, and how the Asian Football Confederation is putting pressure on FFA to follow the example of Asia (and the world), on how a second division can be managed, Zelic only says, “A lot will hinge on the volume of the new TV deal and how it will be distributed.”

Like so many others, he glosses over the financial (and other) realities that should preclude a second division.

This isn’t a dig at Zelic, as it’s endemic within Australian football – fans and media alike; simplifying things to the point where the harsh realities faced by the code are ignored in favour of grand (deluded) visions of where we want to see the game in the short-term.

This sort of talk is more damaging than any perceived anti-A-League agenda of those who properly assess whether such talk is a reality or not, particularly when the realities facing the game were highlighted in the recent Smith Review, the government’s latest examination into the state of Australian football.

Any talk a two-tiered A-League-B-League must rationalise the current financial state of clubs, who, according to the Smith Review, are currently losing a combined $20 million to $25 million per season, with the FFA pumping $4.6 million into Adelaide United, Brisbane Roar, Newcastle Jets and the North Queensland Fury, sending the governing body into the red.

The Central Coast Mariners is the latest club with “short-term cash flow difficulties” and desperately seeking a saviour.

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If the Smith Review proposes no expansion of the A-League beyond the current 10 teams until “the competition is financially strong, or a tangible financial benefit can be achieved by expansion”, how can a B-League be implemented?

To put it in different terms, at a time when the governing body is insisting that A-League clubs need to stand on their own two-feet for the sake of their bottom-line, how are they going to concurrently introduce a system that could pull the rug from underneath them?

Think of what relegation to a second tier competition would do for the likes of Gold Coast United, who currently sit at the bottom of the table. Potentially robbed of fixtures against Harry Kewell’s Melbourne Victory, Brett Emerton’s Sydney FC and facing a season in a B-League with second-grade opposition, the already vulnerable club and its meagre supporter base would face oblivion given its already weakened state.

While the football romantics in us talk up promotion-relegation, fuelled by the political pressure coming from the AFC, there isn’t the reality backing it up, let alone a coherent answer to the question of how the B-League would work. This is what the FFA must accept when the AFC places its demands on them.

The FFA has two options when it comes to the B-League, and those two options are the same that they face with that other eternal question, expansion into western Sydney: either expand with another start-up franchise (Western Sydney Rovers, anyone?), or pick the best of the “old soccer” crew relegated from the deceased National Soccer League to the state leagues (NSW Premier League etc).

When it comes to the B-League, surely picking the strongest, most viably sound and financially well-off state league clubs is the only option available to the FFA. After all, the recent reviews into the game stressed the need for a “greater role” of second tier clubs in the growth of Australian football, and one assumes that means more than just their involvement in the FFA Cup.

But can “the volume of the new TV deal” alone (see here for more) really guarantee the financial viability of the A-League, protecting its clubs from the harsh realities of a second division (let alone the A-League itself), along with supporting another tier of the game on the national scene?

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Putting it like that, promotion-relegation is a lot more complicated and far-fetched than some would have you think.

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