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The new CEO of the FFA, David Gallop, proudly announced earlier this year that FFA staff and officials were working out the details of an FFA Cup, scheduled to begin in just 12 months.
The lower-ranked state teams will be in action first, with the A-League teams joining the competition in the latter stages in September-October next year, when their regular season begins.
About 700 teams from Australia are expected to compete, ranging from the A-League to state league teams, and even amateur teams.
Great news you say, as the competition will be just like the FA Cup.
However, Gallop warned that there were logistical and financial challenges to be overcome before the competition could go ahead. “We need to make sure it works commercially,” he said.
It’s an undertaking of huge proportions, with nearly a thousand teams across Australia expected to enter. Australia is a massive island, with travel times and travel costs beyond the reach of most clubs.
How is the FFA going to structure such a national competition to minimise costs and maximise revenues?
Is it going to be a series of intra-city or intra-state rounds that will then merge with the A-League teams to help minimise that effort and cost? Details are scant at this stage, but a lot of thought needs to go into it. The FFA also needs a healthy level of sponsorship to meet the large costs of running such a competition.
Gallop expects the romance of a competition in which the lowly and the mighty each have an equal chance of taking the trophy to have great appeal for an Australian public culturally predisposed to supporting the underdog.
“We all grew up watching the FA Cup and we recognise the connection point it makes for every football club in England,” Gallop said. “There’s a fairytale element of the competition in terms of what’s possible and it will add another dimension to the Australian football calendar.”
One of the key strategic objectives of the FFA Cup is to help connect the massive base of two million participants to the professional level of the game, and maybe get them interested in the A-League.
“You only need to take one look at this idea to see what a boost it would be for that connection. There’s no doubt we are on a growth trajectory unrivalled in Australian sport. This kind of competition is not available to other sports.”
The FFA Cup is a great idea, and I basically support the concept.
The biggest risk though is not the financial or logistical challenge, which I’m sure Gallop and Lowy are well up to meeting in good time.
The biggest challenge for the FFA Cup, dare I say it, is the ethnic problem. There, I’ve said it.
More specifically, the damage that the wayward football fan and the Australian press can do to football and the good progress the A-League has made in the public’s eyes.
While the FFA has done a great job in cleaning up crowd behaviour at A-League games, it’s still a problem.
In two pre-season games with the West Sydney Wanderers at Campbelltown and at Sydney United, the fans and the press were more interested in the crowd disturbances.
Tom Smithies and the Daily Telegraph got some nice photos of several Sydney United fans being capsicum sprayed and headlocked while trying to work out who threw a firecracker on to the pitch.
A firecracker! Yes, it was completely over the top, but that’s how the public and the police perceive football and its fans. By the way, Smithies and his Daily Telegraph photographer were seen leaving well before half time. Once they had some good pictures and a story to print, they hurried back to the office, and obviously didn’t go there to report on the game or the result.
The front page story in the Melbourne Herald Sun after a huge crowd of nearly 42,000 witnessed a thrilling first Melbourne A-League derby reported on how “soccer fans were shaming the game” because a few chairs were broken.
The classic line in the second paragraph read “and it’s called soccer not football. Football is played with an oval ball on an oval field”, referring of course to that other Melbourne game with a huge superiority complex.
In fact, there have been several front and back page articles in Melbourne newspapers proclaiming how soccer is shaming Melbourne and maybe even the whole world, of course laced with choice snippets of wisdom about how that other Melbourne game is much better and the fans behave a lot better than soccer’s shamed hooligans.
Let’s face it, we do give them some ammunition to fire back at us.
From an FFA Cup perspective, let’s also note that Football Federation of Victoria’s 2012 showpiece, the Victorian Premier League grand final between the Dandenong Thunder (Albanian community) and Oakleigh Cannons (Greek community) was remembered by the Victorian press for two spectators being injured by flares and firecrackers, and not because Dandenong won their first ever VPL title 2-1.
Dandenong have had three points deducted this season and have to play the majority of their first round games in front of no spectators as punishment. The Dandenong club members are also required to undertake and complete an anger management course and an FFV Respect and Responsibility Course. They can’t get into any VPL games until they show proof of completion.
Also of note for future FFA Cup games was the report that the Oakleigh Cannons (Greek community) forfeited their FFV Victorian State Knockout Cup tie against arch-rivals South Melbourne (Greek community) on a Saturday night because it clashed with Greek orthodox Easter celebrations.
Both clubs have historically strong Greek ties, but the Cannons’ committee had requested the match be moved to another date as many of their volunteers and supporters had family and religious events to attend. But the two clubs weren’t able to find a new time, so the Cannons forfeited the match, handing South Melbourne a passage to the fifth round of the competition with a 3-0 imagined victory.
I respect the Oakleigh Cannons’ decision to forfeit, but how would the commercial press report on that if it was an FFA Cup match?
There will be enormous scrutiny of the behaviour of clubs in the FFA Cup, and if there is repeated bad behaviour and crowd trouble, the FFA says they will be expelled from the cup, or at worst it could mean the end of the FFA Cup.
There is a risk about the FFA Cup and what it will do to the image of the A-League and football in general. For sure and certain, if you get two rival or historically-opposed teams from ethnic communities playing each other, there will be trouble.
The reporters and camera men from the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and Courier Mail will be there in anticipation to film it, photograph it and write it up for the front and back pages.
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