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The tenth season of the A-League has closed the chapter on the resurrected national league’s first decade.
Record crowds, TV ratings and quality of football show that the reincarnation of Australia’s top flight competition has been an overwhelming success, but it is now time to look to the future.
There are several things the league and its clubs must do to move forwards.
With the success of expansion franchises such as Melbourne City and to a greater extent the Western Sydney Wanderers, there is talk of further expansion teams.
Second of third teams in the larger markets and new teams in regional areas such as Wollongong and Newcastle have been touted, but the FFA must be cautious with its approach to this issue.
After all in the A-League’s short existence three clubs have already folded, the New Zealand Knights, North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast United. Of the country’s state capitals, only Sydney and Melbourne have the populations and football interest to accommodate more than one team and even adding a third team in one of those cities would be detrimental.
For example Melbourne Victory has the league’s highest average attendance at 27,260 with crosstown rivals City averaging a respectable 10,374. However if you were to add a third team one of both of these clubs would experience diminishing attendances and memberships or even worse the third team would have an alarming lack of support.
The same scenario would also be likely in Sydney. Ideally any expansion teams would come from areas that currently don’t have a team but have a rich history of football such as Wollongong, but focus would be better place on growing and sustaining current clubs such as Perth, Central Coast and Newcastle.
Talk of expansion also leads into the idea of promotion and relegation. In a football lovers’ perfect, world Australia would have a second division and the excitement of who is going up and who is going down would provide added intrigue.
However, the fact is Australia cannot sustain a second professional football league. Four of the league’s ten clubs averaged less than 10,000 in attendances playing in the country’s premier football league and it is hard to imagine attendances would be close to even half of that if sides were to be relegated.
Take the recent FFA Cup game between South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights as an example. Two storied clubs from the same city with a history longer than any top flight club and could only manage around 2,000 people through the gates.
Relegation for clubs in dire straits like Newcastle Jets would surely signal the end for such clubs.
Of utmost importance to future development of the league and of the Australian national side is making sure that star local players remain in the A-League or play in Europe.
Venturing off to Europe is a logical step that many players in Australia dream of to improve their skills and standing in the world game, but many players are leaving our shores for the perceived riches of Asia.
Players such as Josh Kennedy, Sasho Ognenovsi and Danny Vukovic among many others have all spent time in Asia or are currently plying their trade in Asian leagues but we must ask ourselves why? Strong showings by A-League clubs in the Asian Champions League have shown that the gap in quality is not substantial and the language barrier would only serve as a deterrent so it has to be down to money.
The answer to stopping our best and brightest moving to the leagues of Korea, Japan and China is to increase the salary cap and provide especially our rising stars a reason to continue to hone their craft in Australia, while also keeping familiar faces at clubs for the fans.
A key step that the FFA and A-League must continue with is increased exposure of the league to people who may not be regular viewers. More games to be shown on free-to-air television and friendlies against European competition provide clubs with an audience who otherwise may never bother to watch especially if they don’t have access to pay TV.
There are plenty of football fans in the country who don’t support the A-League regularly when they can watch more prominent leagues on the internet or Pay TV, but when teams like Sydney and Melbourne and their fans put in solid performances against the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool, viewers can be enticed by the wondrous atmosphere that only football can produce and may result in them following the local product.
The A-League has been a tremendous success over its first ten editions. Now more so than ever it must be treated carefully to ensure it and its teams remain sustainable and grow long into the future.
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