After David Gallop’s confirmation that a cup competition for Australian football is finally to begin from 2014 onwards, the focus of the football fraternity turns to questions such as the format it should take and the time frame in which it should be played.
Firstly, the narrative of what the FFA Cup is actually needs to be defined.
This is an important issue as it should detail just how David Gallop and co go about dotting the ‘I’s and crossing the ‘T’s in ironing out the corporate sponsorship and broadcasting agreements for the competition.
As part of defining this narrative, it is important to emphasise that the FFA Cup is a form of counter-balance to the A-League.
Where the A League has a franchise structure and the experience of the games come with a strong ‘event management’ emphasis and a quasi-appeal for mainstream sporting fans, the FFA Cup needs to be rather more organic and the aimed quite specifically at the dedicated football fraternity.
So, no giant sauce bottles or annoyingly loud theme songs drowning out the masses whenever Melbourne win a home game please.
Firstly we need to address the name. Like the English FA Cup, the name shouldn’t be subject to the latest sponsor, unlike the A-League for example.
Some have suggested the ‘Australia Cup’ as a name but personally I like FFA Cup as to adopt the name of the governing body serves to emphasise the fact this is a competition for the entire football fraternity.
The FFA Cup needs to be about ending the tension within the so-called ‘new football’ and ‘old soccer’ paradigm which, while serving a purpose, has run its course and needs to be brought full circle.
Additionally, the second ‘F’ which stands for ‘Federation’ leads nicely into my second point, which concerns the format structure.
This is a tricky question, as Australia is a large country and it isn’t as easy as several European countries where all possible opponents are within practical bus and train distance.
Thankfully the ‘Federation’ theme gives the football fraternity a way around this and allows a federal structure to be adopted, so the earlier rounds can be state-based.
As for when the A-League teams come in and finding the ‘romantic’ mix of A league teams playing lower-tier clubs, my idea has always been that a solution can perhaps be found in adopting the structure of the old UEFA Cup.
In short this would be along the lines of where there are preliminary state-based knockout stages, followed by a main group stage which is where the main coverage would begin and then the national-based final knockout stages.
To expand further, after a series of knockout-stages, the higher-seeded teams are introduced.
In this context we could for example have about four five-team groups which are broadly state-based with two A-League teams each.
Each group can guarantee that three out of five teams progress.
Rather than home and away legs like the current AFC and UEFA Champions League, for example, it would be interesting to to have each teams play each other merely once.
This way there are enough games for the main part of the competition to feel substantive, while at the same time there isn’t too many games to clog up the calendar.
Each game would also have an edge to it, as an upset result can mean a lot more with there being less chance for the bigger team to make up for the result over the course of a full home and away group as is the case in the AFC and UEFA Champions League.
The reason these games should be state based is to allow for the practicality of sizeable away contingents from the relevant A-League teams to flood into reasonably nearby grassroots venues, thus making for a vibrant spectacle but also bringing their cash with them.
This way the top end of the football pyramid can economically benefit the lower tiers instead of the other way round.
Not to mention the fact that the type of revenue that a single A-League sized crowd can bring to even an elite NPL level club can go a long way to facilities upgrades etc.
It needs to be mentioned that in order to allow these benefits, the FFA need to be a bit more relaxed in their ‘ground standards’ criteria along with pourage rights issues amongst other things.
That is to say the romantic appeal of the FFA Cup to many fans is to be able to go to some obscure and uncomfortable ground to watch my A-League team play with something meaningful on the line, and to sample the food I’ve never even heard of while I’m there in contrast to the A-League experience.
The format should be engineered as to allow more teams to progress than there are A-League teams in a group – for example, have three out of five teams progressing where there are two A-League teams or alternatively have the third-placed teams playoff against each other.
There will be a guarantee of non A-League teams progressing to the point where they can travel to play interstate teams.
This will serve give a romantic flavour to the competition during the latter stages, the novelty of a VPL team playing a NSW-based A-League team for example.
On the other side of the coin the numbers of non A-League teams who couldn’t otherwise afford the trip are sufficiently small enough to ensure that travel expenses can be subsidised to the point where the overall costs to the FFA aren’t too troublesome.
Thirdly, there is the matter of broadcasting. My personal preference is that it is highly important that the competition gains traction.
This is difficult on pay-TV unless the competition in question is the elite level of the sport in this country.
In this case the FFA Cup is not, therefore it is better to use the competition to supplement the token FTA coverage given on SBS and give the rights to the FFA Cup in its entirety to an FTA broadcaster such as SBS to broadcast.
Perhaps these can take place on FIFA International dates so as to allow the football to continue while minimising the impact of absentees on a club’s league fortunes due to national team commitments?
Given the competition is only set to concurrently run for part of the A-League season, this would do nothing to undermine the value of Fox Sports coverage of the A-League season.
Plus, such an outcome would serve to further magnify the positive impact of the FTA exposure that A-League clubs are finally garnering.
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