FFA can see clearly now, the reign has gone

And suddenly, the gloom lifted, the skies brightened, and the air was sweet.

In Tuesday’s extraordinary general meeting, the member federations voted eight to two in favour of adopting a new FFA constitution, thereby forcing an entire restructure within football’s governing body.

If this is the end of the civil war, of football’s deathly period of taught paralysis and thoughts of doomed exile, then the most striking part is the sudden swiftness with which the treaty has been ratified.

Many of us had eyed, with no small amount of suspicion, the announcement that the member federations, the PFA, and the A-League had come to a consensus. This was the supposed stalemate-breaker, with the three federations who had once been lashed ideologically to the Lowy coalition now apparently switching sides and agreeing with the Congress Review Working Group’s recommendations.

Yesterday, when the critical moment arrived, two of them – reportedly the Northern Territory and Northern New South Wales – flipped back to Steven Lowy’s side, voting against the new amended constitution. Met with a wry smile, the cloaks were ruffling and daggers gleaming until the end, it seems, the very end.

And this does seem to be the end, for Lowy at least. He confirmed – accompanied by a willing posse of board directors – after the meeting that he will step down as FFA chairman next month. He said he “fears the worst” for the game in the wake of these changes; the powerful always wake in fright and torment following clammy visions of powerlessness.

Whatever comes next, the threat of expulsion from the Asian Cup – a very real one had the CRWG’s advice been rejected and the impasse persisted – is surely a more frightening dystopia than a Lowy-less FFA.

The new constitution was set out in full when the member federations announced their consensus a few days ago. It proposes a host of sweeping changes, the most notable of which being a reformed congress voting structure. The 75 per cent majority requirement for major constitutional change remains, but the voting breakdown will be as follows:

• The state body members will have 55 votes.
• The A-League club members will collectively have 28 votes, and any new clubs will be given a proportionate share of that total.
• The Players’ Member will have seven votes.
• Ten votes will be given to ten members of a newly formed Women’s Council.
• There is also an avenue for new voting members to be incorporated, those representing special groups inside football. The process for their approval seems fair and relatively expedient.

This means that the A-League clubs will need some support from the federations to enact changes, and will retain the power to vote down changes submitted by the federations.

No one group has ultimate blocking power, and it seems much harder to game. It’s a system within which the blockade Lowy built will not be so easily rebuilt by any of the parties.

A range of new bodies will be created; the aforementioned Women’s Council, a new working group for the A-League, a Compliance Committee, a Finance and Risk Committee, even groups designed to help bring futsal and national teams for athletes with a disability into the FFA fold.

Looking at the before-and-after, the point of the new constitution isn’t just to renovate the old structures; it aims to erect entirely new beams, slabs and walls, new grand architecture over which handsome new eaves might hang, from which bold new buttresses might stem, twirling spires overhead that might now be supported.

By the way, lost like tears in the rain, a new A-League marketing campaign was debuted – a strange concept based around Tim Cahill and Amy Duggan sitting in an empty movie theatre, watching a grainy montage of A-League clips so they can find out “who your club’s hero will be”.

Cahill is an odd choice to lead this particular search – a player whose hero status was significantly diminished by his brief, tetchy spell in the A-League; he’s playing in India, hero for the many fans of Jamshedpur FC, for the moment at least. Duggan has been retired for 14 years, only earned 20 Matildas caps when she was playing, and now works in the media.

It’s a little difficult to work out the logic. You can’t take it literally; fans don’t really need retired – or almost-retired – players to point out who their club heroes are, and besides, why would you need to pore over footage to work out that: “Hey, Keisuke Honda and Milos Ninkovic are pretty good at shepherding around that piece of pleather everyone’s focused on, aren’t they?”

The teaser has more footage of Cahill and Duggan looking sagely up at the screen, or tapping photographs on a dimly lit desk, than it does actual decipherable vision of currently active A or W-League players.

Hopefully some different ads roll out, and are launched on a day when they won’t be drowned out by more interesting football news.

But the lightness of being we’re feeling now can’t be dampened, no, and thoughts of the future swirl through the mind, all of them warm and welcomed. There is the possibility the new paradigm and what it will bring could delay the expansion announcement. Then again, that delay might be happily filled with thoughts of a rejigged expansion process; 12 teams in 2019-20 might become 14 or 16 teams quicker than we had thought.

Play everyone twice, with 14 teams, and you have a truncated 26-game season, or a marathon 39-game season if you play everyone three times. With 16, you can get a pleasing 30-game campaign playing every other team twice. Derbies would be less stale, and the season would still be spiced with variety.

Food for thought while waiting for the expansion dinner gong, if nothing else.

In order to gaze into the future with any sense of optimism, the horizon must be clear, and this new constitution has provided a sparkling vista indeed.

Dread has been replaced by hope. The new reality can help bitterness crumble away from the limbs, freeing them finally from that calcified state. There is every reason to think merrily of what lies ahead.