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March 2005 was a time of change for football in Australia. Australia had been accepted into the AFC that month.
The NSL had collapsed a few months earlier and no national competition was in place as plans were made in earnest for the A-League.
It was also the last time the Socceroos played in Perth.
Since that friendly against Indonesia, the Socceroos have largely confined themselves to the big three cities in the Eastern states.
Brisbane has hosted the national team six times, Melbourne nine times and Sydney a staggering 15 times. Adelaide was lucky enough to see the Socceroos once in 2011 for a friendly against New Zealand, while Canberra hosted two games.
That’s 33 home games and 8.5 years that have passed by, and still there are no plans for the Socceroos to venture further West than the nation’s capital.
The FFA has a responsibility to protect the brand of the national team, and at the moment it is being neglected.
Large population centres such as Perth and Adelaide are routinely ignored, yet are expected to maintain their enthusiasm for the national team on a parochial basis alone. Given the importance of these areas to the game of football in Australia, this neglect constitutes a failure of duty of care on behalf of the FFA.
Cricket has shown how to ensure that your national team is viewed as such. I played tennis as a kid and only occasionally donned the whites, but I identified with the national cricket team simply because they turned up.
I could see them in the flesh, even if it was only once a year, and they conveyed the sense that they represented all of us.
It didn’t matter if you were living in Sydney, Adelaide or Hobart, you knew the team was making an effort to come to you and hence you felt an affinity. Even Cairns and Darwin hosted the side for games against Bangladesh.
Contrast this with the Wallabies. Despite the fact that a reasonable amount of rugby union was played where I was from, the Wallabies never showed up while I was living in Australia.
We would have all turned up in droves to watch them if they had bothered, yet they never did. As a result I have little affinity for the Wallabies for all the green and gold they wear.
The issue isn’t stadiums. Perth, Adelaide, Townsville, Launceston and Newcastle all have stadiums that can house more than the 20,000 Melbourne and Sydney residents that attend friendlies or games for points against less popular opposition.
The issue isn’t support – the A-League alone shows that Australians in these areas will turn up in decent numbers.
The issue is one of simple neglect.
The risk to the FFA is that general sporting fans in South Australia and Western Australia in particular will not embrace the Socceroos to the extent that they are able.
The Socceroos need to be bigger than just the niche market of football fans, they need to represent the country. The FFA needs to foster this and should not take it for granted.
To do this the FFA needs to understand that once you leave the cafes of Darlington and start to feel the red earth between your toes, you are not leaving Australia. You are embracing it.
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