Has the A-League overtaken the Socceroos?

So, the Socceroos have followed up their encouraging performance in Japan with an emphatic 4-0 win over Jordan.

The first half of the job is done and the Socceroos have managed to win the first of the their two ‘must-win’ home games to automatically qualify for the World Cup.

The vibe in the Socceroos camp is the best it’s been for years, and the relationship with the Australian public has been re-invigorated in such a way it hasn’t been for many years.

One aspect that was notable in its deafening silence however was the lack of active support and hence eerie atmosphere present at Docklands Stadium last night.

This is following on from a similarly dire atmosphere at the home game versus Oman earlier this year.

The lack of atmosphere in the Oman game could perhaps be explained by being played in the cavernous ANZ Stadium and the scoreline, but playing in front of a mostly full Docklands stadium with a winning scoreline was another matter altogether.

One of the interesting facets about the atmosphere – or lack thereof – was the fact that in the football and Melbournian media the ‘feel-good’ vibe and the publicity surrounding the emergence of the new so-called ‘Terrace Australis’ initiative had been ramped up into overdrive and rammed down the proverbial throats of anyone bothering to read the articles.

Another good example of the power shift of good example was a piece by Michael Lynch in The Age where he discussed this very issue.

Needless to say that my personal perspective and experience is in complete contrast to Michael Lynch’s assertion that previous groups did not act as unifying agents and that they seemed to separate support because of A-League allegiances.

The new ‘Terrace Australis’ initiative is apparently supposed to be some kind of all-encompassing remedy.

Indeed I would personally go as far as to actually say the complete opposite is true.

If one thing is to be learned, it takes more than just holding a fan forum in Sydney with local Sydney personalities such as administrator David Gallop, Sydney based player Lucas Neill and Sydney based commentator Mark Bosnich and a re-branding of the national team home end to actually make it all work.

The circumstances that have led to the collapse of the national team support have been several years and even close to a decade in the making.

If there is one thing this author hopes the powers that be at the FFA have learned it is that active fans are not some kind of chanting machine that can be turned on and off like a tap when it just so happens that the remaining home games end up being ‘must-win’ games for the latest World Cup qualifying campaign.

Putting aside the fact that the national team support is never going to be on a par with A-League support due to the frequency of games, just as the decline has taken years to unfold it should be recognised the Australian home end will consequently take several years to re-build to a relatively respectable level.

It is worth exploring some of the causes of the current malaise in order to appreciate where some of the solutions may lie.

Firstly, there is the fact that the halls of the game’s administration have been filled with people from outside sports.

This is somewhat necessary and understandable given the sport had to learn how to make inroads and earn respectability in the local Australian sporting landscape.

The problem though is that these people never had any proper appreciation or respect for the culture of the sport.

An example can be seen where for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups, the FFA engaged the generic sports fan group the ‘Fanatics’ as their preferred partner and the channel through which their official tickets for the World Cup were channelled.

In doing this, the FFA actively undermined the football dedicated national fan institution that was the Green and Gold Army established in 2001 pre A-League.

The Green and Gold Army is the institution that embodied the dedicated fan community at national level.

Subsequently this means that the national team support at World Cups in particular is diluted with non-football fans, which in turn means the football cultural expression of the Australian fan sections were undermined and hence the quality of support was undermined.

Most importantly the social fabric of the national fan community is undermined as the fans can’t travel and get tickets together.

At least with the 2010 World Cup the Green and Gold Army were able to work in conjunction with FIFA.

That said, the Green and Gold Army have not helped their cause by becoming a little too commercialised and crossing a line with their partnership with a sports betting agency.

One thing the FFA do not seem to understand to this day is that active fan areas and groups are not a collection of consumers consuming their ‘entertainment product’ or mere spectators.

It is a social space where a fan community congregates and socialise just like the pre and post-game pubs.

Then there is the treatment within the stands on match day, one problem with ticketing is that the FFA never made enough effort to ensure that people buying in the home end areas would properly appreciate what it was they were buying into.

The other possibility is that the ‘older heads’ have simply moved into the active scene with their A-League clubs much more fully, and the scarcity of home Socceroos games bears fruit in the form of a loosening attachment to the national team fan scene as the A-League has risen in stature.

In the beginning, many people began following their local A-League team out of a sense of national pride and wanting the new national league to do well.

Similar to how the paradigm has shifted from the Socceroos being the ‘Rainmaker’ with the A-League being the spare baggage.

Attitudes to the A-League team have become much more parochial as a real bond has been forged with not only the clubs.

But perhaps more specifically the fan community that surrounds those clubs to a point where the A-League is now the main point of focus for football fans and the Socceroos are peripheral.

It was fascinating to me that the biggest cheer of the night and the only period of time in the match where there was some cheer to the crowd was when Archie Thompson – fan favourite of local A-League team Melbourne Victory – came onto the pitch.

This illuminates the transformation better than anything else, as it showed instant recognition among the majority of the crowd and showed just how the local A-League stars are now held in similar if not stronger esteem then the European based stars of the team.

This is an amazing contrast to 2006 for example where the power lied undeniably with the European-based stars.

And of course we now go full circle to the issues Michael Lynch raised, far from being a remedy and a unifier of the national active fan scene that transcends A-League boundaries, the Terrace Australis initiative may even exacerbate them.

To be successful, fan communities have to develop organically, that is, from among the fans, and in a national team context this means a fairly wide national spread which the Green and Gold Army at least used to have.

In the case of Terrace Australis however, we have the initiative which has spawned out of a fan forum in Sydney and advocated by Sydney-based, non-fan personalities.

It’s little surprise then that is perceived as a reactive Sydney-centric initiative and viewed with suspicion and even as a running joke.

Indeed the atmosphere at the Australia versus Jordan game and the fact it was arguably even worse than the Melbourne versus Newcastle game with a silent protest speaks volumes about a near wholesale rejection of Terrace Australis from the Melbournian active fan scene.

This isn’t a good sign for the future regardless of what happens for the game next Tuesday.

If there is one positive to come of it, it is the hope that the FFA realise not to take active fans for granted and start revising their fan policies at A-League levels lest the domestic league suffers the same fate as the national team.