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Did you see the A-League grand final the other day? Wasn’t a bad game was it?
The top two teams in the country going toe to toe, played in front of a roaring capacity crowd decked out in their team colours and the largest TV audience ever.
The inspirational Wanderers captain, Nikolai Topor-Stanley, injured, Shinji Ono taken off, the charismatic Besart Berisha scoring a game-saving goal in the dying moments and the diminutive Brazilian Henrique scoring an extra time winner.
What drama. What an advertisement for the game. But for some fans this game should not be played out at all. For them, having a league and a cup is all that is needed.
Let’s hypothesise. Assume the final series is scrapped and the FFA Cup final is played as the conclusion to the season. After 27 rounds of the A-League, with bigger crowds than ever before, more mainstream media coverage and in front of a potentially huge Australian and Asian TV audience, out trots… Wellington Phoenix and Marconi.
Great clubs no doubt, but hardly a mouth-watering fare. Or, given a few upsets, the climactic game could end up seeing Heidelberg United taking on South Hobart. Can’t wait for that one. The first fan march in history to include players to swell the numbers.
The FFA Cup will be contested for the first time in 2014. It will be a great competition involving teams from all over Australia and all 10 A-League clubs. This will provide an opportunity to link the various tiers of the game together in an exciting knockout format. It gives football fans some much welcomed mid-week football, with the future potential of almost year-round televised competitive football in Australia.
But should the FFA Cup final be the grand finale to the season? I say no.
The one-off nature of cup football always throws up upsets, so invariably the top two sides in the country will not meet in the final. The FFA has intimated that in future years the cup final will be held on Australia Day. I think this timing is perfect.
Playing the final with a few more months of the regular season to play gives enough time for clubs and fans to refocus on the A-League and build up that end of season excitement. It has the added benefit of reducing the risk, not uncommon in Europe, whereby big clubs chasing a higher league position do not place as much emphasis on the cup, thus reducing it’s prestige.
If the season ending finale is not the FFA Cup then what? Do we just pack up our bags after round 27? No, it can’t be done. Sporting fans in Australia have spoken. This year more than any other has convinced me of the absolute necessity of having a grand final decider.
The amount of positive publicity generated for football among the wider sporting community in Australia by having the top two teams going at it hell for leather is immeasurable. For those traditionalists who don’t rate the finals series? Well just treat it is as an FFA cup on steroids.
The 2014 A-League grand final was beamed live into India. It must have gone down well, as an Indian sports network has paid to broadcast A-League and FFA Cup matches next season. I’m not sure if Indian sports fans will be ditching their Rajasthan Royals gear for Brisbane Roar jerseys just yet, but it is a foot in the door.
And there are other countries to our north with large populations as well. The concept of a football grand final is unique in a time zone friendly to Asian television. It is a point of difference for the A-League that just might get some of this potentially huge market watching.
So who do the wider Australian public and unknown millions of TV viewers want to see in the final match of the season? They want to see big city clubs. They want to see Western Sydney, Brisbane Roar, Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC and the like. Only by showcasing the very best of the A-League will the Australian game be able to expand on the impressive base built up over the past nine years.
I say we can have our cake and eat it too.
A nationwide knockout competition for all the football community with its annual Australia Day finale and then the A-League premiership, which is recognised by football supporters with its double reward of a trophy and a guaranteed Asian Champions League place.
And finally the showpiece, call it the crowd pleaser, the game which more than any other gets people talking football – the A-League grand final.
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