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Until this A-League season’s plateau, there had been a healthy rise in memberships, crowd figures and newspaper headlines on the back of bumper marquee signings and a rejuvenated national side. Yet here we are again, four weeks into a campaign, and another franchise faces expulsion.
At Whitlam Square, words are speaking louder than actions.
League chief Damien de Bohun was preaching to anyone who was willing to listen that the game was in rude health on the eve of 2015-16.
“We’ve got a really clear ambition on football to be Australia’s largest and most popular sport and the role of the A-League in that context is to become the biggest competition in this country,” he said.
“A lot of people probably thought five or six years ago that was laughable but all of a sudden it’s no so laughable [sic].”
Since his appointment to the CEO hot seat in 2012, David Gallop’s rhetoric has been equally bullish.
“By the year 2020,” he explained to 3AW, “there will be 400,000,000 people playing football in Asia and we’re going to be part of it. It is a fact as the world gets smaller, football gets bigger.”
Much of this commentary irks followers and broadcasters within AFL and NRL circles, but won’t apply the same principle of modesty to their own backyard. There is nothing wrong with overselling the game, if anything football in Australia has lacked the conviction to believe in itself. What frustrates the life out of A-League supporters is the administration’s canny ability to score PR own goals at the most opportune moments.
Before long nobody will buy what the FFA is selling.
Putting the final death nail in the Nix’s coffin is a fresh black eye to the face of a competition beginning to heal from decades of blows. As it currently stands, the Wellington Phoenix are in stable financial hands and boast the best crowds on a per capita basis.
These might seem small crumbs of comfort when the numbers are being crunched, but forming a closed shop to euthanise the Phoenix one generalised media statement at a time is death by a thousand cuts. It beggars belief how the $4.9 billion Frank Lowy oligarchy can callously kill off the only professional football outfit in a market of four million people without offering pathways to success first.
If given the opportunity, the Wellington franchise could thrive under the right conditions. The vacuous bays of empty yellow seats at Westpac could be swapped for the wonderfully Kiwi-named Hutt Rec Stadium, a ground that places the crowd on top of the action and offers an intimate local setting akin to many smaller boutique stadiums in Britain.
Thinking longer term, the possibility of introducing a Christchurch franchise would invigorate the region and inject a whole different dimension to the A-League. We already have two quality case studies in Sydney and Melbourne in respect to derbies and the benefits they provide. When the city had a taste of the sport, they came in droves.
No wonder football fans remain pessimistic. Someone has to carry the can for the bad ratings and it seems the FFA have been waiting for an excuse to bump the New Zealanders out of the picture. Just another part of the world chewed up and spat out, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth and a legacy in tatters.
Hopefully for their sake the Phoenix will live up to their name and survive the axe, however the chances of this happening look next to non-existent. A lot of people probably thought five or six years ago the sport would be wise enough to avoid another club falling by the wayside. But all of a sudden it’s not so laughable.
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