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As a long suffering true believer and student of football, I have to pinch myself sometimes to see if what I’m watching is actually really happening.
Football is going through a great period in its very short history, and it’s definitely the A-league’s time to shine.
I’ve been to almost every Melbourne Victory game in Melbourne for nine years, have followed the game religiously at home and abroad for over 30.
If someone had told me 10 years ago where the game would be today, I would’ve laughed it off and told them they were completely nuts; that it’d never happen, and that we may not even have a national competition to follow in Australia after the NSL fell over.
But 10 years on, our code is growing rapidly. The game has already had a great journey so far, and won over many new fans in the process.
To qualify for three successive World Cup Finals and start up a new professional national competition from a concept on a piece of paper, all in a decade, is remarkable.
All these are no mean feats, but the biggest challenge is changing people’s perceptions of the game, teaching the uneducated and breaking down old barriers and stereotypes. This battle is not yet won, nor will that happen in the short term, but we are seeing progress day by day.
The battle I speak of is not to see which code is No.1, as some code war or appendage measuring contest. All the codes offer something different, and are all great sports.
But the battle is for our sport to gain the respect and recognition it deserves, on all platforms – from news bulletins to radio stations to the common man on the street. We are still an afterthought to many media outlets, whether in print, radio or TV.
A new $160m, four-year deal with Fox Sports, plus a free-to-air Friday night game on SBS every week speaks volumes as to how far we’ve come, but also shows that football in Australia has merely just scratched the surface in terms of fulfilling it’s potential.
Crowds this season will go close to being the best ever in terms of average per game, and will definitely break the total aggregate attendance for the whole season. TV ratings on Fox are up about 10,000 per game on last season at the moment, and Friday night games are averaging about 180,000 on SBS.
That’s plenty of extra eyeballs on the game that it’s never had before. This increased exposure will in turn help clubs to get more sponsorship dollars.
I think in future we’ll see 12-14 teams in the A-League. We need teams in Wollongong, Canberra, North Queensland and a third in Victoria, whether that be from Melbourne or Geelong.
And depending on what happens to Phoenix long term, I can see another side from New Zealand coming in, maybe from Auckland. But not for at least another 10 years.
The FFA Cup, rumoured to be starting next year, will be fantastic for the state league clubs and fans, many of whom still haven’t given the A-league a chance out of spite for the administration.
I think if every club can play 35-40 games a season in all competitions, we’ll be in good shape. This will mean we’ll need an eight or nine month season, which is ideal.
I know many will complain about decreased media attention while overlapping with other codes, but our biggest issue is actually stadia availability. And that’s the next frontier in our game, club owned facilities and stadiums.
This is probably a long way off, but it is something for the clubs to strive for.
But we need to walk before we can crawl, and there will be further obstacles and major issues in future. If football can keep growing as it has in the last decade, we’ll be well on our way.
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