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How good was it to see the Red and Black Bloc back in party mode on Saturday night? There is something so wonderful about seeing a packed A-League ground in Parramatta.
If we wanted a reminder of what a big-match atmosphere looks like in the A-League, we got it when the Western Sydney Wanderers put Melbourne Victory to the sword.
Romeo Castelen was in eye-catching form, but then so too were the red-and-black-clad faithful massed in all four corners of Pirtek Stadium.
“So much for being scared to go,” Fox Sports commentator Simon Hill so deftly put it, and the big crowd on hand helped propel their hometown heroes to an impressive 2-0 win.
That was the good news. Elsewhere it was business as usual, as smallish crowds and sterile atmospheres greeted the other four matches of the round.
Yes, the football on the pitch is vitally important – as the purists in these parts always contend. But we’re doing the A-League a disservice if we don’t admit that attendances could and should be a lot larger.
A few weeks ago I got into a Twitter tete-a-tete with some Wellington fans who either misunderstood or chose to ignore the fairly simple premise I proposed to them.
If the Phoenix wanted to guarantee their place in the A-League, I reasoned, why didn’t they set out to attract 30,000 fans to every home game?
Most of the fans blasted me for my supposed ignorance, pointing out that in terms of population, Wellington hold their own. That may be true, but in defending the Phoenix’s traditionally small crowds instead of focusing on trying to improve them, those same fans overlooked a couple of key points.
Firstly, Wellington’s highest ever home attendance saw some 32,000 fans pile into Westpac Stadium. Secondly, more than 30,000 fans once turned out to see a friendly against Los Angeles Galaxy.
In other words, the appetite for football in the city exists. So why isn’t Wellington locally and Football Federation Australia more broadly doing more to get those same fans back into A-League games?
The post script is that casual football fans in this part of the world tend to turn out for two things – finals football and superstars like David Beckham.
And while the finals will always pack them in, the lack of genuine marquees is hurting the bottom line at almost every club.
Meanwhile, FFA chief executive David Gallop is fond of claiming the A-League needs to fish where the fishes are, but perhaps it’s time he started mouthing another aphorism.
How about putting some sense back into the phrase ‘common sense’?
Not only is the plan to cannibalise the support of the two Sydney-based teams by introducing another Sydney club one of the dumbest ideas the FFA has recently come up with, they’ve already got two football-ready markets in Canberra and Wollongong raring to go.
But as we saw with the 4.15pm kick-off in Cairns on Saturday afternoon, common sense around head office appears to be in short supply.
I don’t for a second believe it’s Fox Sports setting the agenda – they’ve already proved they’re amenable to matches being rescheduled – and it’s the FFA who signs off on the fixture list in the first place.
Nevertheless we have round after round of ill-considered scheduling, leaving the same teams playing the same opponents at virtually the same times over and over, with nary a spot of promotional marketing in sight!
What’s an A-League fan to do in the face of such maladministration?
The short answer is, turn up. And bring your friends. Tell them to bring their friends too.
Because in a competition that runs out of sync with the local leagues that make football the most popular participatory sport in Australia, turning up en masse and waiting for administrators to play catch-up is the first means towards a necessary end – attracting bigger crowds to the A-League.