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The Roar

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Split-round doldrums show A-League's susceptibility to shifting momentum

The Wanderers played in front of plenty of empty seats at ANZ Stadium. (AAP Image/Brendan Esposito)
Expert
12th March, 2018
22

So, from a pulsating Melbourne Derby ten days ago, to the hollow emptiness of the split round.

The energy and oomph from the Derby – generated in tandem, of course, with that extraordinary first versus second brush between Sydney and Newcastle – billowed into the league, and it felt like a breath of life. The barren half-round that followed has left the competition waning and gasping again.

In a season most of which has felt only half-inflated, the stark difference between these two weeks has really driven home how fragile the A-League is, and how easily a wave of momentum can be halted.

Having skewered Sydney FC with one of the goals of the season, and in doing so capping off one of the more remarkable ten-man performances in league history, Andrew Nabbout described his subsequent departure to Urawa Red Diamonds as “bittersweet”.

Considering how that win – handing Sydney only their second defeat of the season – whetted the appetite for a potential finals rematch, bittersweet seems a little too euphemistic a term. Bitterly disappointing might be more accurate, especially for those who hold this season and the competitiveness of its participants ahead of any sentimentality they might have invested in Nabbout’s personal career trajectory.

Without Nabbout, Newcastle’s chances of beating Sydney in post-season go down considerably.

Dimi Petratos, another key figure in that wonderful win, has also since been linked to a mid-season move away; Lawrie McKinna has poured cold water over the rumour, calling it “rubbish”, although McKinna also intimated during the build-up to the Sydney match that Nabbout’s seemingly impending departure was nothing more than a rumour started by Graham Arnold.

If Petratos were to be plucked away from the Jets, well, it would drive another spike into the momentum Newcastle have gathered this season.

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Inserted into this ten-day atrophic trudge was the FFA’s decision to announce Graham Arnold as the next-next Socceroos coach.

The timing of this was puzzling for a number of reasons: David Gallop said it was necessary to quash the uncertainty surrounding the post-Russia landscape, as well as to address the rumours involving Arnold that have been whirling around for some weeks.

At this point, though, no one’s really thinking about what will happen after the World Cup, are they? Russia is the towering, all-concealing topic of present speculation, casting a huge shadow of hope and fear, the final destination of a journey the trauma and trials of which we’ve barely recovered from.

The Ange Postecoglou years have only just finished; why would anyone want to think about the era-after-next, when the current era hasn’t even begun? It only preemptively truncates Bert van Marwijk’s reign, freeing it, to some degree, of a sense of responsibility.

I’m sure Bert is keen to do well at the World Cup, but if his employers are already waxing lyrical about how Arnie might utilise “that guy in Millwall who knows what to do in front of goal” – yes, Gallop really did prattle on about Tim Cahill’s relevance under Arnold in the presser – what sort of message does that send about how invested they are in him and his immediate mandate?

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If this was the FFA’s attempt to jazz up the gaping silence of the split round, it didn’t work. In fact, as much as Arnold tried to convince the gallery of his unwavering commitment to his present employers, the announcement also blew in a chilling fog over the remainder of Sydney’s season; with the Premier’s Plate all but wrapped up, the dangers of complacency are a very real issue for Sydney.

Graham Arnold

(AAP Image/David Moir)

Now that the country is fully aware their manager – the architect-in-chief of the most dominant period in club history – has secured a bigger, better gig, will the team be motivated to give Arnold a fanfare farewell, or will it be more of a disinterested, distracted dawdle to the finish?

Their disappointing showing in Asia has meant this season – while domestically supreme – has a been tinged, undeservedly perhaps, with a sour undertone. We’ve gone from uncertainty over the future of the national team, to uncertainty over the future of the country’s best club, not exactly an ideal trade.

A touch over 7000 people went out to see the Wanderers beat Wellington, and few hundred more than that went along to Perth’s win over Central Coast, both totals well below the average home attendance for those teams. These fixtures, involving the two bottom teams, were always going to be fairly low-key; the A-League social media team even managed to mess up one of the full-time Facebook posts so badly it was almost impressive.

The split-round was necessary to accommodate the teams in Asia; no one should argue for a return to the situation where A-League sides are forced to run a gruelling gauntlet of congested domestic and continental fixtures at this time of year. But the fact that it sends the competition into a soporific malaise is still a problem, especially for a league as susceptible to downswings as the A-League.

The ongoing FFA congress drama, the VAR tribulations, the stale dominance of Sydney, the lower crowd numbers, all of it has contributed to a sense of despondency around the league, which means it’s even more important to capitalise when the momentum is high, and avoid it dropping too low.

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If the league season ends with a sigh in May, and the Roos are bounced out of Russia in June, it will be a winter of discontent that follows, with Australian football shivering all the way through it.

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