You can't sell the A-League without active fans

Eh? Coventry City went back home a year ago, now near the top of their league. For all the talk of the vitality of German fan culture, the league is horribly lop-sided. While even four or five years ago, other teams had a chance of winning, Bayern are utterly dominant. Look at how they took apart Borussia Dortmund's team of three years ago. Last season the Bundesliga was settled even earlier than Scotland's, which only has half of the old firm in it.

I actually really like the active fans, believe it or not. They add a colour and noise to A-League games you don't get in any other sport in Australia. I used to always stand/sit in, or adjacent to, the NT, now stand in the ST. I just don't like some of the bulls... that comes with the NT and the chip on the shoulder they generally carry themselves with. Looking forward to WSW this Saturday (yes, Hulk, I will be there).

#marron Cheersquads in their glory days existed in an environment of 15-25k capacity suburban grounds where visiting fans often feared to tread. Where beer was sold in steel cans that allowed the kids to comfortably stand on a stacked base of them. Where the terraces were pretty well devoid of seating - etc etc. Then came the mid/late 80s and the old grounds got rationalised and TV started broadcasting more as games were played in more timeslots. Terraces replaced with seating. And cheersquads over this time have very much changed. The scrutiny of today has been evolved towards - and, is not so much sport specific as it is venue specific and sports related. Venue management dictate but things like flares tend to be sport specific. It's a little sad that it's progressed that way - perhaps gone too far - but - a lot of the bad old aspects are gone and that's good. Just need to swing the balance back a fraction. AFL 'active supporter' groups (cheersquads) have been a tad sanitised but even the comments on the banner are brand related and need to be approved (although the odd typo still gets through). The main thing is that a good game develops an atmosphere of its own and in AFL that is such that no chanting would be continued (in the soccer manner) because there's too much happening - a little like but more intense than when at the cricket the 'action' manages to dowse a Mexican Wave).

While I live in England I wouldn't claim to have a full understanding of the situation but here goes. While I doubt there is a looming crisis in attendance it is a fact that the traditional "active" support can no longer afford to attend the successful clubs. OK, there is still an atmosphere (or at least an ambience because posh boys in expensive slacks can still clap too), but the unequal division of riches is eroding the established fan bases. This is felt even amongst established powers. My local team, Hinckley, is gone. While not an established power, it was the only team covering the twin towns where I live. What killed it of course is the pull, TV & aspirational, of the bigger teams. What it lost of course, was active support. A few miles south a legitimate established power, Coventry, now play 45 minutes away in Northampton to a mix of active support who can (now) afford it & curious locals. Mainly the remnants of the original support. Northwards Leicester are killing it! I went quite a few times when they were shit and loved the mocking despondency of the diehards with chips on each shoulder. They're loving it now but transience is a bitch. Germany is different. The attendances, I think, are actually higher than the premiership, there is an aversion to outside ownership and the sponsorship is often tied to the area; Bayer Leverkusen, VW for Wolfsburg, Schalke, 1860 etc. Curiously lower ticket prices ,and a relatively damp TV deal, has not hindered the Bundesliga or prevented Bayern Munich from being a dominant force. This reflects the power of "active" support. So I've merged active & attending fans & I know that wasn't the original discussion but the person that buys the ticket, sings the song (whether it's from Dubrovnik or Donnybrook) & puts the atmosphere of the venue above the live feed, who ultimately reflects the health of the sport.

The big European league with the biggest attendance problem is Italy, despite or because of "active support". With the exception of Juventus home games and the Rome and Milan derbies, you can get a ticket anywhere. From my experience there, active support varies from a nuisance (repetitive chants on loudhailers ignored by 80% of fans), to a powerful deterrent to attendance, with banners to racist thugs, dead and alive, fighting and invasions of the pitch led by small-time gangsters. Meanwhile, the people who are supposed to be most passionate about football in the world increasingly stay away, players leave and the infrastructure of the game crumbles around them. Active support is clearly not a negative everywhere - it's great fun to witness in Japan, though it baffles me why people make as much noise during an injury break as they do when their team are attacking three-on-one - but to suggest that a thriving league can't exist without it, or that its presence is a guarantee of success, are equally invalid.

How many times do you need to be told that it is packed with families? There's families in the RBB for crying out loud. You mention perception and that's it. It's a perception, often held and perpetuated by people who don't go near the aleague let alone a home end. So we just call it off because some people perceive it's rowdy? And how many times - who is saying it's nothing without it? Again, perpetuating a myth, based in nothing.

Just employ Europeans who really LOVE + UNDERSTAND Football to run Football Australia. Just go and ask Beckenbauer or Ferguson for example. I'm sure they have some contacts to people who can do a FAR BETTER JOB than the cross coders we have here.

Can I throw this into the mix. I went to the Sydney FC v Jets game, sat where I usually do in Bay 17 and enjoyed the relative silence. I also get along to every W-League home game. When members of the Cove turn up to chant, (which is very rare), my first thought is 'Good on them for supporting the other half of their club", but that's followed by disappointment that I have to hear the chants all day. My personal preference is to just watch the game (as difficult as that is at the appalling Lambert Park). Which is not to say that the Cove and other active fan groups don't have every right to enjoy the game the way they prefer. It's a huge part of football world-wide. The only point I seek to make is that active fans are not the only fans. I think active fans groups would better win the important PR battle they are engaged in by greater recognition that they are just one part of the larger football puzzle.

My post is in the pipeline. If the decision is not to run it ; OK with me. Maybe a well earned cup of coffee for the moderator got in the way.

your ideas are worth discussing at length

That's a complete misunderstanding of the situation in England from somebody who's obviously never lived there How is there an attendance crisis simply because the clubs are able to charge so much (because demand is so high)? Sure it means most people watch it in the pub, but there's a reason Everton are/were sponsored by Chang, a beer that is barely sold in the UK and Air Asia sponsored QPR even though the closest their flights get to England is Saudi Arabia. Football, in the professional realm is a television product. Germany gets active supporters because they're not popular enough to have the demand so high that young fans have been priced out, like they have at a few Premier League clubs. Football is and should be about the product on the pitch. The atmosphere should never be a key selling point to bring people to the game or we're headed down the completely wrong path. What differentiates football from AFL and rugby is the sport itself, not what the people in the stands are doing. If you think differently, you obviously don't rate the sport as highly as most fans do. If Active support groups ended today, the sport would not be anywhere near terminal decline. If you think it is, you don't rate the sport, which is a sad indictment for a true fan.

How many times do people have to state things before you get over your myopia, we want more kids and families at games, seeing a few isn't enough, we want all games packed. Sure the biggest clubs have lots of people attending and have a big atmosphere, but a lot of you mistake the big atmosphere for creating the big crowd, when the causation is probably in the opposite direction. But none of you will see that because you all think you're the most important thing at the match and you're the ones who bring the families through the gate, not the actual football. I attend AFL and A-League just like 90% of Melbourne A-League fans and many AFL people say they don't take their families to A-League because they perceive it as rowdy, I tell them it's no more rowdy than when we were kids at the AFL, but they're still hesitant. I have no doubt that Gallup has market research that says exactly this. Or, you guys can just keep on down the path that active support is the most important thing about the A-League and we might as well call the football off and head over to the arts Centre to watch the North Terrace chant and sing on their own stage.

Another thing I wanted to add, is something I find really irritating. The idea that is portrayed in the media that 'active fan groups' are represented by spokespeople. I think we need to be be VERY careful with the wording here. These so called representatives do NOT represent their respective fan groups. What they represent is a proportion of their active and non-active support. Due to the way they have been formed, without any formal structure, their is no way of possibly knowing just how much their views represent the wider football community, or even the active support areas. We could say at best, they might represent 5-10K of fans most probably, but we don't know about the rest. For all we know, the vast majority may not agree with their boycotts at all. I suspect the vast majority of fans, being the average joe bloe/ family just want to go and watch a game of football and have no interest in the politicking. At spokesperson - in relation to active fans, represents just a proportion of fans views. Pete mc, that was a great post by the way.

Two articles above this one is "Arsenal to play in Sydney in 2017" with games scheduled against WSW and Sydney FC. It would be very interesting if the current "fan-ban' coincided with the visit. Now wouldn't that be a story. It wouldn't worry the FFA, because of the huge demand for tickets.

Mike - Glad to see you back in harness. As you may know I am a bit of a numbers buff and the rather surprising thing is that over the last 5 matches,those affected by boycotts, the average aggregate attendance for the season has only dropped from 13,028 to 12,471, a difference of 557 or 110 per match. Re the boycotts, the last 5 games have attracted average crowds of 8117 where as the previous 5 averaged 11,851 but it has to be said that figure was greatly influenced by a 23,415 home game crowd for Victory.and if we omit that figure from the calculation the remaining 4 games averaged 8,960 so perhaps the boycotts did not achieve such a great impact on general attendances, in fact a differential of only 843 less per game when compared with the averages. jb

Looks like the fans are back. Tickets to the Victory game are selling very well with only the odd ticket here and there left. Will be close to a "sellout" anyway, despite how many people boycott the game. Most of the people who boycotted have already paid for season tickets.

Football has never been so big in Australia, yet the FFA is attacked like it is running a dodgy chip shop into the ground. Overall the FFA has done a decent job in recent years. Not sure an appeals process is necessary. I suspect an appeals process would only end up with a bunch of muppets dragging put appeals and defending any behaviour on their "passion" and using mates as character witnesses. If football is to really grow in Australia, there needs to be a move away from the minority of idiots who seem to have a siege mentality The FFA is trying to grow the game. While they may not be perfect, the fan boycott is a poor response and does very little for the future of the game in this country. March to the game, chant, have fun, enjoy the game,... don't be a dickhead. It's not hard.

It's common sense. What's the value of a TV deal when no-one watches? What's a sponsorship worth to no-one that sees it? How much money do you generate from ticket sales when there is no-one there? The value of all these are determined by fans.

I kind of agree with some of your points Mark but I know I'm only going to be insulted.I find the active supporters a little boring personally.I think they do tend to try to hard and as others have stated and been abused and called not real football fans for,I think they think their cheering is better than the game and that young kids come to hear them cheer. I also find the fanatics at the tennis to be lame so maybe I'm just boring but self indulgence has never really appealed to me.

I think the FFA has screwed this up enormously, but otoh they have a bit of a dud hand to play here. Forgive me a moment for going off at a tangent but here goes. I understand that right now the Socceroos are regarded as Australia´s best known and best regarded national sporting team. But they also cant get a corporate sponsor. How can that be? The problem is that among the ´suits´´ in this country football has an image problem, and Active Supporters fuel that problem. Active Supporter groups are like State of Origin in League, they are simultaneously a unique selling point compared to other codes adding so much that some people value while at the same time alienating a sizeable segment of the market, limiting growth. The FFA is trying, badly, to walk a tightrope. How to keep the Active fans on side while also convincing risk averse corporate suits that they arent going to see their corporate logos on jerseys of supporters marching through the streets in balaclavas, waving flares, or fighting in massed groups. Yes AFL and NRL have their screw ups, losers and violent arseholes but they are individuals, easily isolated and simple to repudiate in the media. The active supporter groups arent that easy to ditch and spin (see the supporter group signs ín support of the 198` for example) .