Arbib, Lowy know their mushrooms

A week into the post-Smith Review era and the immune system is struggling. First came the guffaws – I mean, I can build you a cathedral in seven months if you want – and now I’ve had to take sick leave because I can’t stop chanting ‘what a waste of money’, which is not on in a call centre flogging fitness equipment.

The bemused responses to Smith reminded me of the old one about the diarrheal circus elephant, the cork, the monkey, the champagne bottle and the banana. Yes, we’re up to our necks in it but we can still laugh; the look on Brendan Schwab’s face as he was trying to push the cork back in was priceless.

I say that with respect. We’re talking about your perception, not mine. If it looks like Schwab has banged one past his own keeper from deep inside his own half, that’s only because wizened observers have surmised that it was Schwab’s representations to Mark Arbib that prompted the inquiry.

Fortunately Schwab is a bit sharper than some of his, um, supporters in the social media who have argued that if players have to cop a pay cut then so must FFA, as if on that fine point the debate has been snookered and they walk off with the High Dudgeon trophy.

I like moral equivalences but, you know, FFA has been retrenching staff hard and fast for a year. I think moral ambivalence has its place too.

Warwick Smith’s theatre skills might be excellent, I don’t know, but methinks the football family’s last surgeon, Mr Crawford, had a better grasp of the patient’s situation, and I don’t think Crawford would have tried to get at the brain through the kneecap.

Frank, founder of the Lowy Institute, would, you’d think, be able to distinguish public and private from his elbow, be aware that taxpayers’ money cannot be disappearing into an outfit that’s disbursing money under who knows what criteria to private businesses who’ve been granted entry into a closed shop under who knows what criteria, and that an unbridled enthusiasm to keep A-League clubs alive any old which way won’t cut it with the auditors when they get back from Greece.

Smith’s 48-page message might have been better communicated with an irritated grunt, some finger waving and the chequebook disappearing into the sports minister’s pocket: “C’mon Frank, we’ll cop no more of this pretending that you don’t know the rules.”

Some spotted in the Smith report an anti-football bias, which is what they get for having it tattooed on their one good cornea.

Seriously, had the government really wanted to give the game grief, like Charlie Manson said, there’d be no one of us left. [Written and authorised by former Australian Soccer Federation officials; spoken by J. Assange, no fixed address.] The government isn’t trying to recover any money and there are no question marks over it continuing to fund football, which is more slack than they’ll cut you down at Centrelink if you misread the small print.

Lowy’s how-high-sir response tells us that Mr Smith has taught him something very valuable these past weeks; that he’s a more enlightened man now and that we can all relax again; what’s done is done, he stands corrected and all is forgiven.

It’s a new dawn and a whole new paradigm where paradoxically nothing has changed. Reset the clock, Mr Lowy’s time starts over.

I don’t know about Blatter having no obvious successors.

No, all is sweet between Arbib and Lowy because we can tell. Normally when you’ve stuffed up you don’t get a nod and a wink and a leg up from the authorities so you can unscrew the light bulb and plunge the joint into darkness and shut down debate.

How that transpired might have been a good dirty-pool football story had our venerable football media not overlooked it completely, which is understandable when it had in-depth stories to file about the micron-deep superficiality of the Beckham phenomena, although some did take time out to Twhine on Twitter that they didn’t even know Lowy was up for re-election.

For the record, the last time it was four years ago and the next time will be eight years after that, which if my calendar reads right is going to be four years from now. It beats me why they do it in four-year cycles, can’t fathom it, but you can set your iWatch to it, if not a football journalist’s diary.

Anyway, Lowy fronted FFA’s AGM last week seeking re-appointment and a la Carnac the Magnificent spoke eloquently about the challenges facing football which, looking back, almost sounded like a direct response to Smith’s concerns – which they couldn’t have been since those were still inside a sealed envelope inside a locked safe under an armed guard at the government printers.

Talk about Burke, Wills, Coopers Creek, College Street and tragic timing. On the Monday Lowy was re-appointed unopposed – and unchallenged – for another four years.

On the Thursday morning, not 72 hours after Lowy’s cakewalk, after seven months of finger-twiddling, Smith’s report was unloaded on the public and unleashed in turn a torrent of furious and ultimately futile discussion, as if mushrooms have any reason to be arguing about the best way forward.

Lowy, of course, is better known for running his own race than his acute hearing. The time to talk about agendas, by my reckoning anyway, was probably before he was re-appointed – not when he’s got another three years, 51 weeks and five days up his sleeve to chase his own instincts.

The day after his re-appointment Lowy was back to spruiking riddles about 2022.

The damage in that is in the questions it begs. Is that the best he’s got? Does Lowy see no hope for the A-League until Australia hosts a World Cup? But for waving his arms in the air and making noises about big bangs and giants awakening, has he any other ideas? And this is bloke is in the driver’s seat. Crikey.

It might not have been a pretty exercise, allowing a consequential argument about where football now stands, about who is best-equipped to lead it and what their priorities ought to be.

It might have – no, would have – turned into a bunfight and the winner might have been Lowy or it may not have been – it may have been one of the old-guard gorillas in his midst – but at least the eventual victor would have headed out with some riding instructions from, well, someone.

I could be wrong, of course; usually am. Maybe it’s everyone else who has lost the plot?

Maybe Frank Lowy is desperate to attend to the details of the A-League and get on with rebuilding the burnt bridges that are all over the local football landscape but FFA’s directors said no Frank, you’ve been re-appointed on the condition that you get up tomorrow and mumble about Australia still being a chance for 2022 and then break the grassroots’ hearts by hosing down anticipation of an FFA Cup cos there ain’t no money and probably won’t be until we host this aforesaid World Cup – and don’t forget to remind them that you are still unequivocally the best man for this job.

Some are saying – me to myself – that Lowy is a quick-fixer who ran out of ideas circa 2005 and still thinks that hosting a World Cup is the A-League’s get-out; either that or plunging what’s left of football’s dough on a long-odds yapper in the last at Wentworth Park. It might come off.

Myself, I’d have thought it was time for someone more consultative and with less historical baggage and more of a yearning for electoral legitimacy than Lowy to take the helm – someone who can permit themselves to recognise that the solutions to the A-League won’t be found among big bashers and WWE tragics but in addressing why so few of the 1.7 million football participants the Smith Review quotes have bought into the national league.

Frank’s probably right of course or he wouldn’t be loaded. This is about working smarter, not harder. You don’t get off the couch to fix the floorboards and the holes in the walls when you’ve got a ticket in the lottery and you’ll be moving into a penthouse. Bring on 2022.

Credit where it’s due though; Lowy taking Australia into Asia so we can compete with North Korea has been a winner.