Chris Nikou is re-elected FFA chairman, Heather Reid returns to the board and there are as many questions as answers around why four Olyroos may miss next year’s Tokyo Olympics.
Here’s a thought: can Central Coast Mariners coach Alen Stajcic be trusted to get the best out of young footballers?
Because if he can’t, why is he coaching the likes of Sam Silvera, Gianni Stensness and Danny De Silva?
Perhaps there’s a clue there.
One minute Stajcic is out on his ear after being sacked as Matildas coach ahead of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and the next he’s one of only ten coaches in the A-League.
That’s despite the fact that Stajcic had only ever coached women’s teams up to that point.
“If only you knew what we knew,” implied a small but significant clique of insiders at the time.
They were right. If only we knew.
Because nearly ten months after Stajcic was sacked as national coach for reasons that remain a mystery, some of the same problems remain.
Namely, ones revolving around transparency and accountability of the board.
Heather Reid (Photo by Stuart Franklin – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
It was perhaps fortunate for the FFA that Stajcic ultimately had an A-League job to turn to, but as Dom Bossi revealed for the Sydney Morning Herald in late May, it didn’t stop them from having to offer him a “significant severance package” and a formal apology from board member Reid.
And as Bossi wrote yesterday, Reid will now resume her role as an FFA director after being awarded a leave of absence last February to battle cancer.
Reid’s a familiar face on an FFA board that will contain two new ones after Robyn Fitzroy and Carla Wilshire were both elected.
Their ascension comes amid rumours that former board members Crispin Murray and Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned in protest after allegedly not being informed of an ongoing investigation into the four Olyroos players who were stood down this week by the FFA.
This forces us to ask a question we’ve already asked at least once before.
With all that’s happened over the past 12 months, how we can trust that those in charge of the game’s administration – including that of our national teams – are doing the right thing?
It’s worth acknowledging that if anyone has access to first-hand information about what’s going on in national team camps, it should be the FFA.
Only Riley McGree, Lachie Wales, Brandon Wilson and Nathaniel Atkinson will know quite why they thought it was a good idea to break curfew and engage in the sort of activity that might get them banned from an Olympic Games.
It was ABC journalist Jack Snape who broke the story of the impeding drama back in October.
And while more lurid details have since emerged of what actually happened in that Cambodian hotel room following the 2020 AFC U-23 Championship qualification campaign, the saga could readily have descended into a ‘he said, she said’ affair.
Perhaps that’s why the FFA were so careful to launch an investigation that was at least six months in the making.
And in an age where allegations of sexual impropriety are now treated with the utmost seriousness, that’s perhaps as it should be.
But the problem for the FFA is that they’ve already mounted an earlier investigation that resulted in the Australian women’s national team coach being removed from his post.
And the public still doesn’t really know why.
What we do know is that one of his staunchest critics has just returned to the FFA board, two more directors have recently resigned and Graham Arnold – who doubles as Olyroos coach – now has a monumental job on his hands just trying to get to Tokyo.
We’ll have to trust that the FFA have made the right moves here, and hope for football’s sake they’re not merely the administrators who cried wolf.
me
Guest
You do realise that Port Adelaide player who jumped off a building in Las Vegas was under investigation for gang rape. VFL players are so famous for rape in Adelaide it used to be openly talked about on radio as a problem easily solved with a brown paper bag of cash for the complaining woman. The radio announcer genuinely thought there was nothing with doing that.
Murray Dickson
Guest
Perhaps the remainder of the board should tell Reid's backers that they will resign en masse unless Reid quits.
Post_hoc
Roar Rookie
Nem brought it up? When? Looks like New was replying rather sensibly to someone who bought it up. Looks to me that Ad-O is obsessed with Nem, didn't we have another poster who was similarly obsessed with Nem? Where did they go?
chris
Guest
They broke curfew
Rellum
Roar Guru
Sorry I am confused, are these players being banned for having consensual group sex? Because it seems that way. Consensual is the key word here, if it was not consensual then we have an issue but that needs to be stated in some way. If you are banning players you need to state clearly why. Right now it seems these players are banned simply because some sponsors and fans might find their sexual actions perverted.
chris
Guest
It basically means if you watch for 1 minute or 1 hour you are included in the reach viewing numbers.
Football is Life
Roar Rookie
Don't get me started on Slater. Respect for him as a footballer but he's not the sharpest knife in the draw.
chris
Guest
There was a heavy influence of Brazilian coaches with the junior kids. Their programs are heavily geared towards individual technique and skill. One session we watched was essentially all ball juggling. However what impressed me the most was their awareness off the ball. Their movement and intensity in moving into space was not conducive to their ages. I thought to myself, these kids would kill our national teams and I was right. We need some drastic changes to our junior development.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Lampard in a sex scandal?! Do you mean John Terry?
Ad-O
Guest
I think you're a secret AFL fan, the amount of times you bring it up. Like one of those family values politicians busted at an Eyes Wide Shut party. LOL.
AGO74
Guest
The key word is “reach”. How is that defined?
Redondo
Roar Rookie
I don't know if you watched Nemesis but there looked to be a clear physical mismatch between Aus and France in the u17 world cup. Our guys looked and played like teenagers, whereas the French played like adults - physical, fast and aggressive.
Fadida
Roar Rookie
It's irrelevant. Sacked coaches get second chances. As do players in sex scandals; Rooney, Carragher, Bosnich, Yorke, Lampard etc
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
But Pochettino wasn’t sacked because of reasons Tottenham refused to divulge. That’s the difference.
jamesb
Roar Guru
I watch it on the MyFootball App all the time. Although unfortunately it does freeze from time to time and i have to keep restarting my tablet. Interesting figures. Looks like some people are watching the A League after all.
jamesb
Roar Guru
Good insight. If there's one Asian country that Australia can model itself on is Japan.
Waz
Roar Rookie
Off topic but no one will write about it so: “A body of research undertaken for the A-League owners by a global data analytical company has shown a reach for games via Kayo and the Telstra MyFootball app of more than 100,000 for each of last weekend’s four games – in some cases getting closer to 150,000” (Telegraph via A League Hub on Twitter)
Fadida
Roar Rookie
Coaches are sacked all of the time. They get other jobs. Pochettino is deemed no longer fit for Spurs but will pop at at either Bayern or Man U, bigger clubs.
chris
Guest
Nem I mentioned in another post how I recently attended a coaching trip to Japan. We visited some top J-League academies and their women club affiliates. The youth girls (11-16) were so technically advanced from our girls that it was plain that we are doing something wrong. The emphasis was on technique and ball retention. They simply did not give up the ball and if they did they worked as a group to get it back.
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
They sacked him. What more is there to say? The "young men" is a rhetorical device... whether Stajcic is coaching teenagers or Milan Duric the point remains the same: that Stajcic was deemed unfit by one organisation, the FFA, to coach a national team but without Stajcic saying or doing or changing a single thing, another organisation, the Central Coast Mariners, decided to employ the exact same coach. Those two positions are diametrically opposed, and even though this situation is obviously not so black and white, it almost looks like one of those groups have made a mistake. But which one?