It has been an issue for years: Australia’s best and brightest young talents head overseas at the first sound of “contract”.
The reasons for this are obvious; better wages, better coaching, better competition, and more chance of being seen by better clubs.
Of course, the best young talent leaving Oz means that the quality of the A-League struggles to improve.
A low quality comp means less chance of being seen by big club scouts. Coaches develop less themselves, and a lower standard means less spectators and sponsors and therefore less money to keep the better players.
It’s all a self perpetuating “Catch 22” situation.
It has lead to around 200 Australians playing for foreign teams. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I would suspect that is more than the number of Australian professionals currently in the A-League.
It is no secret that most, if not all, A-League clubs are losing money. Most fans seem to have accepted this, and expect rich benefactors to continually shovel in cash to keep clubs afloat.
My experience though is that rich people didn’t get rich by being involved in loss making enterprises.
While many of them might help out for one off expenses like transfer fees for new players, or assisting with infrastructure improvements, the clubs generally need to at least be self sustaining on a day to day basis, or those rich benefactors will eventually pull the plug.
For a club like the Mariners, with well documented financial issues, they must find other ways to help balance the books. Poor financial security means they won’t sign players on longer term contracts, so they acquire high potential young players as cheaply as possible, and look to on-sell them quickly for any sort of profit.
It is a valid, short-term strategy to help keep the club going, but personally I have doubts on its long term viability.
The A-League though is changing. There has been a significant rise in standard in the past couple of seasons. This improvement has resulted in better crowds, and now a better TV deal, both of which mean more money in the game.
More money makes the clubs more viable long term, so they can afford to offer longer contracts, more in wages, or attract better marquees. This helps to increase potential transfer fees, once again makes more money potentially available to clubs.
The rise in standard has also meant that coaches have had to improve, or lose their jobs.
A recognisably stronger comp gives our better young players less reason to look overseas at contracts with dubious value to their long term playing development.
A better competition also attracts more interest internationally. More interest means more scouts, more chance of being spotted without the need to leave home, and again, bigger transfer fees.
With the new TV deal coming into effect soon, I can see a time in the not too distant future where this summers threatened exodus of young players becomes a thing of the past. Quality players like Rogic will of course continue to leave, as they should, but only to truly better clubs in genuinely stronger competitions, and not teams of dubious long term benefit.
Instead of being locked in a spiral of no improvement, we are now entering a cycle where an improving competition will lead to better player retention, which will lead to better a better competition and so on.
The days of having more professionals outside the country than in it are coming to an end.
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