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Following official confirmation that the 2013/2014 A-League season is to be Melbourne Heart’s last in the competition, A-League fans can be forgiven for breathing something of a sigh of relief.
The last of the problematic expansion clubs have found new owners to take over the franchise license.
The first implication of the new incoming team is that as a “glocalised” form of EPL club Manchester City basing itself in Melbourne (to be called Melbourne City), it won’t suffer from the problems the outgoing Heart franchise suffered from in terms of defining what it stands for.
Additionally the impact of the new team is the impact it will have on redefining the Melbourne derbies from the 2014/2015 season onwards as a contest along the lines of “new football” versus “modern football”, or rather the national versus the international.
Melbourne derbies will now be the stage of the local Australian produced powerhouse versus the local Melbourne-based branch of a multi-national football conglomerate.
Despite the bizarre commentary from some quarters that contrary to every discernible KPI’s, the outgoing Heart franchise under the stewardship of Peter Sidwell and Scott Munn was “sound” it will be of some initial benefit to football in Melbourne that a team with a more discernible identity is already in place to rise out of the ashes of Melbourne Heart.
This may happen similarly to how football in New Zealand in A-League terms benefitted from the Wellington Phoenix rising quickly out of the ashes of the old New Zealand Knights.
Not least because on the pitch the Heart will go down in history as the worst performing club in history having recently equalled the old New Zealand Knights record of over 20 matches without a win, to go with their underwhelming attendances.
No empty vacuum allowing for negative discussion that surrounded to demise of the two North Queensland clubs then.
Also on the positive side the new team will have some benefits that the only successful team to have filled an A-League expansion slot did not have in its beginning– a ready-made team and coach in place from the outgoing Heart franchise which means they won’t have to be quite starting from scratch.
Additionally, the new team will also have the “anti-Victory” supporters of Heart to be able to build a fan-base upon to supplement fans of its own identity.
In this case the lack of strong identity of the Heart can act in the new teams favour, and they can expect to avoid a similar sort of communal backlash when the old Wimbledon football club was converted into a franchise format and moved to Milton Keynes to become MK Dons.
Despite the best efforts of some in the Sydney based football media to often sugarcoat the failings of the Heart franchise, it needs to be recognised that these very failings have their roots in the bidding process when the FFA opted to ignore the Southern Cross Consortium (with links to South Melbourne FC) in favour of the Sidwell-led Heart franchise.
This was despite the fact that at best it only offered vague points of difference to the pre-existing team (Melbourne Victory) and in effect it ended up being a “broad-based CBD based team” that offered nothing new.
There was the possibility of the second Melbourne based franchise to represent a distinct identity when South Melbourne made an offer for the Heart franchise within the past year.
This would have came with some risks attached given the image baggage of the old NSL, but it would nevertheless tapped into a new market of old NSL fans who were disengaged from the A-League, and articulated a narrative of healing the division between “old soccer and new football”.
Instead we have ended up with the complete opposite which is the uniting of “new football” in Australia with the “modern football” of the world.
Similar to how questions would have been raised as to whether it would be best to allow an “old soccer” club in, similar questions need to be asked as to whether allowing a “glocalised” form of an EPL brand similarly poses a risk to the image of local football.
The A-League has long suffered from the notion of inferiority projected onto it by the much maligned “Eurosnob” (an erstwhile football fan who has disdain for the A-League).
This has taken place in a context where the A-League in Australia has worked to develop a professional league as an expression of distinct national identity and distinct from overseas clubs.
There was a strong backlash to the concept of the English Premier Leagues “game 39” concept when it was mooted to play sell to the highest bidder a round of competitive EPL games on foreign soil.
This was controversial for a number of reasons, and can be seen as a greater reflection of how the nature of modern business conflicts with the traditional focus of national sovereignty.
What needs to be recognised however is that allowing local teams to become branches of larger global brands is an articulation of the same forces and prospectively undermines Australian football sovereignty?
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