Sorry about that folks, as you’ll see from Trust Me’s comments after my last couple of articles he’s seriously embarrassed himself by making some pretty nasty comments and accusations about my motives and others’ for exploring football governance, only to have a shadow of doubt cast over his motives on account of his declining to dissociate “Trust Me” from FFV’s new president Nick Monteleone or his son Antony who wrote a piece for The Roar recently declaring Lowy’s time was up and to make way for the Victorians.

That’s what Trust Me’s curious, snivelling and seemingly pointless comment above is about — it’s nothing to do with the above article, it’s purely personal.

You get used to it.

Fuss, a piece by Antony Monteleone appeared on The Roar in early April saying Lowy’s time was up and it was time to make way for the Victorians.

“Trust Me” first appeared during a discussion over an article “Monteleone grasps FFV nettle” and has been immensely critical of any discussions about governance to the point of abusive.

We don’t know whether Antony Monteleone is any relation to Nick Monteleone, the newly elected FFV president — Antony certainly declare any link in his piece that was calling time on Lowy’s time at FFA.

Trust Me, on the other hand has declined to dissociate himself from the Monteleone camp — which he is welcome to do at any time, by the way.

You also say you believe that Trust Me is not running any agenda.

You probably know where this is heading don’t you, Fuss? I’m happy for you to keep carrying on like a pork chop — the more reckless with words you are now, the sillier someone is going to look later.

Carry on.

Hey Fuss, you’re a keen football supporter with a keen mind.

I know you enjoy ripping into me but how do you feel about “Trust Me” and his mates trying to snow readers into believing they were straight shooters with God on their side? They’ve spent the best part of a week tearing this joint up trying to shut down discussions on governance.

You’ve had some huge goes at me for raising doubts about the game’s governance — called me anti-football!

Now you know who “Trust Me” is running interference for — I’m presuming you didn’t know that before now or that would make you an unreliable witness too — how do you feel about that, someone with a hidden agenda trying to get you on board their bandwagon just by appealing to your prejudices?

Do you still trust the likes of “Trust Me” to look after yours and football’s best interests?

Point taken. Obviously more people believe what they read in the papers than the government admits.

Again though, are they the kind of people we want at the sokkah?

Are they worth scrapping for or does the game already have enough on its hands with morons like me?

As for Stevo’s mother-in-law, I couldn’t see her tagging along with Stevo to the sokkah anyway.

But that’s beside the point.

Yes, the evil mongrels will publish anti-sokkah stories, which is disappointing.

What I should have said in the piece was that today’s anti-sokkah headline was perhaps a consequence of the reaction to the last anti-sokkah headine which, instead of us ignoring it, we “drew attention to it as if Pavlov’s dog wasn’t a drooler, as if the workings of the mass media are a complete mystery too us, and thereby maximized the chances of a similarly bent headline appearing in the future.”

Maybe if we change our behaviour, they’ll change theirs? It worked with our sausage dog.

Wilbur is Dugald, obviously.

We’re both interested in why Trust Me has done this, pretending to be the voice of football reason when Trust Me — how long did you take to think of that nick! — is pretty obviously conflicted by his refusal to deny his being a very close relo of a high-ranked Victorian football politician.

It’s filthy stuff, it really is, but that’s what’s coming to FFA post-Lowy — a tiny handful of insiders thinking that if they tell enough lies to enough people they’re in — lie about history, lie about fees, lie about other people’s agendas and, above all, lie about who you are and what you stand for and just glide on in to the palace.

It’s a crying shame that most of the football community feel so alienated from their own game they don’t realise what a Mickey Mouse system it is that produces such Mickey Mouse governors with such obviously limited parenting skills.

I think we all got that.

Did everyone get that ?

“Trust Me” doesn’t want to say whether he has any familial connection the president of FFV … whatsoever.

Can’t imagine why that is.

Re fees, Epping City FC hits kids up for $450 a season. It would be impossible for an Epping City player not to know this and there are quite a few Epping City players contributing to The Roar.

Odd that none of our objective citizen journalists pointed that out.

Where were you when I needed you, Robbie?

I hope everyone in here is a bit wiser now about what’s going on — it’s a bunch of kids from Epping City FC with high-placed connections in FFV trying to make it look like FFV has a million-man army behind it.

To wit, they’ve spent the first week of their school holidays destroying every attempt by The Roar at facilitating a reasonable discussion on football governance.

I’m not sure why they’d be so threatened. Perhaps they see Epping City in HAL down the track if they can keep a lid on what’s going on for another few months?

I wonder if anyone else sees Epping City in HAL?

Cut them some slack though, folks — they’re just trying to look after the club … as was Tony Labozetta.

Epping actually, AF. I have family there.

You’re right Bondy. The piece was written before they announced Australia’s new ranking. Book it up to an error of timing, none of it matters tuppence now. Move on now, there’s nothing here for you to see.

I have no idea how you distorted Crawford’s observation about financial barriers as you have if not to come up with something that looks like a pretty dumb conclusion, nor do I wish to know why you’ve chosen to do that.

Hi “Trust Me”.

I’ll take the time to answer all 40 of your questions in exquisite detail over the next few days on the condition that you answer one question I have for you.

I have that one question for you because I think it’s important readers can be confident about the integrity of this discussion and that we are in fact football cleanskins approaching this discussion as honest brokers with the game’s best interests at heart and wholly unencumbered by political connections that could lead to a perception of ulterior motives.

For the record I am an ordinary — yes, very ordinary, I know — member of several clubs across several leagues; HAL, VPL, prov league and juniors.

I hold no club position or occupy any office related to football governance.

Nor, more significantly for the purposes of this discussion, am I related by marriage or otherwise to anyone who holds a position in Victorian football governance.

What we are trying to avoid here is a scenario — and we certainly don’t want this scenario eventuating because it would be more revealing than anything about the quality and tenor of Victorian football governors than anything I could ever have written about it — where it’s revealed later that any of us did in fact have a material or vested interest in discussions about governance and the direction they take.

A couple of weeks back and just a few days before The Roar published a piece by myself entitled “Monteleone grasps the FFV nettle” that detailed the constitutional mechanisms by which Nick Monteleone rose to the presidency of Football Federation Victoria and loom as a contender to replace Lowy, a piece by Antony Monteleone appeared on The Roar suggesting Lowy’s time is up at FFA, and that Victoria’s football governance was a high quality product and its governors the ideal people to to fill the vacuum post-Lowy.

The author didn’t declare any conflicts of interest so presumably there is no familial connection. Fair enough, I’m no genealogist.

Nevertheless, given the apparent coincidence, we probably ought to clarify for all concerned that TM — “Trust Me” — does not have a connection with anyone in Victorian football governance, if only for the sake of the reputations of all those occupying positions of governance likely to be harmed by the perception that there could be a connection.

That would be another lousy look for Victorian football, someone going to all that trouble to steer discussion away from governance by making wild and unfounded allegations about the author having conflicts of interests and running an anti-football agenda and getting roundly applauded by some for making those allegations.

That would onfirm the chief contention of the “Monteleone grasps the FFV nettle” piece — you get ahead in football politics by being against stuff, no one ever need reveal what they stand for, it’s a dirty game, and some people ride it all the way to the beach.

I thought that when I saw the piece about Lowy’s time being up. That’s all well and good, I thought, but one does need to be able to gauge his potential replacements, yet all they seem willing to declare is who they are against, not what they stand for or how they’ll go about their business.

It leaves punters having to read between the lines and draw their own conclusions about how football politics works.

I’ve forgotten the question.

Hi TM, I used to optimistic about football but things change.

Just recently, the last few days actually, I encountered a few “football supporters”, if that’s not abusing the term, and I ain’t optimistic any more.

Football has got way too complicated for a lot of football supporters to understand so they work of their imaginations, and not surprisingly they disagree when the cartoons in their head don’t match up.

You think it’s about winning the disagreements. Guess what, TM? It ain’t.

It’s about decide on what you agree on before you can move forward on anything.

This football community is too busy arguing over tosh to be a threat to anyone but itself.

So after all that, Fuss, you finally reveal you don’t actually care if the A-League and organised football in its entirety went under tomorrow … innncredible.

Run it by me again … you love the game, it’s your life, but underneath all that you couldn’t care less about it.

And you’re trying to label me as anti-football?

Dunno what you’re on there Fuss but I wish I had some, it’s obviously pretty potent.

1. The NSL was comprised of football clubs. FCs play football, that’s their raison d’etre. They generally don’t curl up their toes because they’re not making a profit since only about three FC ever have made a profit.

How many clubs played in the NSL, TM?

It must have been 40-50 clubs. When they dropped out they were replaced by another temporarily cashed-up club with big dreams and enough dough to last about two seasons.

Can you see any difference between clubs having a dip at the national league and then dropping back to their state leagues to recuperate?

Or are you under the impression NQF has dropped back to the state league to muscle up and come back and have a go at HAL down the track?

There are differences between a traditional football league and the free-standing closed-shop HAL. HAL “clubs” pay big money to FFA to buy a license to make a profit out football — they’re not FCs, no more than FCs are TABs or dental surgeries are shoe shops.

HAL is an entirely different business model to the NSL, the AFL or the NRL. It’s nearest neighbour governance-wise is probably the NBL, No, I do not feel like arguing over that or whether Eddie Palubinskas was better than Andrew Gaze.

But you know more about it than me so lets just see what transpires.

Like I’ve said, you might get a 7th HAL season but unless there’s root-and-branch constitutional reform, there won’t be an 8th season, not without some state league clubs getting some serious incentives to co-operate with HAL, and those “incentives” would result in a HAL meltdown since the value of the existing franchises will be slashed to ribbons with the spectre “old-soccer” clubs reentering the national league.

2. Irrelevant

3. That’s one thing you’ve got right about my opinions — I’m not optimistic about football. Its governors and its clubs are off the leash and some of the the rank-and-file, the loudest ones unfortunately, discuss the machinations behind it like they’ve been concussed.

Sorry Fuss, if you’ve been around paying fees for 15 years and you still haven’t got your head around how football is structured and funded, I can’t explain it to you in 800 words or even 80,000.

More to the point, how can you such strong opinions when you admit yourself this stuff is out of your league and you’re guessing?

You will have to read books, and quite a few of them. Maybe start with and Andrew Jennings’ and Barbara Smit’s stuff to get a handle on how FIFA keeps the national feds in line.

When you’re done there, go local and start with Shootout (Solly, ABC Books) and then all three official Crawford reports on Oz sport, and maybe anything Roy Masters wrote between 2001 & 2006 on the ASC.

But most of all, you probably need to read Braham Dabscheck’s stuff, much of which you can Google.

No, you’ve probably never heard of Dabsheck despite him being Australia’s foremost authority on sports law and industrial relations who said five years ago football under Lowy was heading for a big fall.

Dabsheck’s reasoning was too complicated for many to understand, not unless they’d read a few books, so the football community dismissed him as it did Crawford or anyone else who threatens it intellectually. What would these idiots know about soccer?

What would they know about steel production or lager brewing? That doesn’t stop smart BHP and Fosters seeking their advice on governance issues. And who do you reckon is going the better, FFA or those outfits?

After cramming in all that heavy reading — if football really is your life, you owe it yourself don’t you think? — you’ll be as gobsmacked at what passes for debate around the soccer community.

As I’ve said previously, the debate is dominated mainly by people who think they know heaps about football because they know a bit more about it than their AFL or NRL neighbour. Like yourself, they’re fans of football, not students of it and they don’t even know how much they don’t know.

That’s the difference between you and me, Fuss — I’ve got a rough idea of how much I don’t know but you’ve got none.

Maybe you could moderate some of your opinions until you’ve done some proper reading and save yourself embarrassment later.

Fuss, what bothers me about your carrying on like this is that you’re not just embarrassing yourself, you’re making the dialogue around football appear infantile.

The article was about football governance.

You don’t want to talk about any of that because despite football supposedly being your life, you haven’t got a clue about it and you’re not even inclined to developing a clue about it.

But you still want to participate in a discussion that’s about 10m over your head, so you take issue with all the peripheral stuff you think you might be able take a point from.

You’re playing semantics but I won’t — you’re behaving like a fool. Stop it.

Here, go have a browse and see what all the other sokkah haters like me are saying ….

http://www.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/soccers-future-needs-bigger-round-figures-20110409-1d8o0.html

http://hornsby-advocate.whereilive.com.au/news/story/ku-ring-gai-soccer-set-to-pull-out-of-football-nsw-over-player-fee-cash/

You really can be a goose sometimes, Fuss. Do you think airlines put up their pilots as collateral for their borrowings?

Stop trying to pick a fight over every tiny thing and address the topic, which is that your game’s governance is in trouble. If that’s too much to ask of you, go and bug someone else with your nit-picking.

Ring Vince Foti at Marconi for a quote. Do get back to us with the details.

Who am I to argue with Mark Arbib’s assessment, or yours for that matter? You sound like you know exactly what’s going on out there and why.

I’ll still try to answer some of your queries and allegations though, even if does feel like a set-up and you’re angling to unmask me as an anti-football AFL plant.

Why does HAL need to be profitable before it can be overseen by an independent commission? Trading while insolvent is against the law, for a start. Otherwise HAL needs financial guarantors, which until now has been FFA.

Read the stuff above and see what you think of the states holding HAL’s purse-strings. Where does that leave HAL? Don’t say “approaching a bank” or you’ll have to go and sit in the corner with your back to us.

The key is profitability and HAL isn’t even close. It’s independent commission could mortgage its trade-able assets I suppose — the players presumably since the whiteboards won’t fetch much on eBay — but the mortgage insurance would be crippling since players all have two knees and two ankles and banks aren’t completely stupid. .

So far as examples go of the Victorian football landscape being littered with so many discussion-hijacking stereotypes, I’m tempted to put your comments here in in a glass case. What has the treatment of “the Tasmanian AFL” got to do with a discussion about football governance?

If it peeves you that I haven’t weighed in with a puff piece about football being superior to, I don’t know, opera or chess or whatever else it is you think has sent spies over to ruin your otherwise perfect game, tough.

Football does have some problems. If it’s too fragile to even acknowledge them, then it really is gone for all money, it’s just too stupid to live in the big house it’s got its eyes on.

I am more optimistic than that and think there are people around football capable of looking beyond the cliches and stereotypes and ensuing turf wars, and the inferiority complex that sees football forever talking itself up and relying on gimmicks but never doing the hard things and getting its governance right so the rest can follow. You’re obviously not one of those people but that’s okay.

Just for you, next week I’ll knock up a poisonous anti-AFL piece so you know for sure I’m on soccer’s side, or at least conform to the useless and unproductive stereotype of someone that is.

Thanks for taking the time though as I’m sure you care as much about football as anyone else in here.

Great link, NY, have just spent an hour reading all 148 comments!

Ben G refers to the KDSA issue below, and those comments that are about the most instructive reading I’ve done in a while.

Should be compulsory reading for anyone who says FFA are clowns for not pouring enough dough into HAL. They’re probably clowns but it’s not cut and dried.

Crikey, sounds like my sadness is rubbing off on you, triff.

C’mon, chin up. With a hundred good men we could take the whole thing — all the states and FFA too.

I know, we’d have no moral authority either and no one would trust us and we’d do a lousy job because I for one would look after myself, but at least we’d get to hang out with Holger. We’d be happier even if everyone was still miserable.

The other option is we call the spooks and the ATO and tell them there’s some evil triad behind it all that’s raking in millions.

.

Hi again NY.

Fair comment about my moaning about it, I do moan about it. Don’t know what the alternative is though. Reiterating that I like football and want the best for it doesn’t advance the discussion much.

We could go all day about what the Africans are up to and like I said, I’d be thrilled to be proved wrong.

It’s not about that though. It’s not even about football pricing itself out of the market, that’s a side issue that’s crept into this discussion down here.

Back to the original piece — it’s about governance and the states shaping up to take FFA, and who “the states” represent. They represent the clubs charging the fees, not the people paying them. If they thought fees were too high, they wouldn’t be charging what they are.

Take a look at the Crawford report and his rationalisation for voting rights being in the hands of “the fee-paying participants” — it was to avoid this very scenario, where the punters had no voice and they either walked away from the game or risked being accused of “dragging the game down” for raising hard questions like me. Next lifetime remind me to walk away, this is too hard. Fuss is good but Mahony? Phew.

Crawford’s was and is the only solution — make the state federations accountable to the rank-and-file players, participants and club members, and give clubs a say through standing committees. No one would get exactly what they wanted, but it would be better than a handful looking after themselves while the other 99% bled.

It would have produced an entirely different breed of football tragic running the federations since to get elected it would mean getting out there and trying to rustle up the votes of a few hundred football people supporters and not just a club president’s.

I don’t know what the solution is. It’s a Labor govt, they won’t dare offend soccer clubs, the federations are happy because the staff have their jobs, the present governors are happy because its them and not someone else running the show, and the punters don’t get a vote or have a rep body of their own to speak up and FFA thinks the state feds are our mouthpiece, and the state feds are happy for FFA to think it.

My solution is to drink. It helps.

Hi NY,

I don’t know what’ happening in West Sydney other than soccer club fees might be the highest in Oz. How many African kids pay the club fees, I have no idea.

Perhaps you guys can find some credible stats to refute my claim which is not only anecdotal, it is self-evident when it cost 8-10 as much to play soccer than footy.

I’m happy to stand corrected — would be thrilled to stand corrected. Get back to me on it if you find those stats.

No, not every person from Africa or the ME is doing it hard financially, nor are they all soccer nuts, but that’s beside the point about financial barriers — you don’t need to be a refugee to find the entry-level fees to much of a burden.

Forget the stuff about it being the people’s game or the world game that kids from the back-blocks can make a life from, about all that’s left of those are footy and boxing.

Football, like most of our “Olympic” sports with AIS involvement and pathways are for kids with a lot of dough behind them.

Don’t hold your breath for the Australian cricket to pick up, or tennis or football, or anything else the rest of the world takes seriously.

We’ve gentrified all those sports over the last 20 years, football is just the last cab off the rank. It’s a rubbish sports development paradigm that only works for bureaucrats and the blazer brigade.

David Crawford did a report on Olympic sports funding a year or two back and made the same observations, that it was killing grassroots sport having the AIS and elite sport wag its tail, but no one ever reads Crawford or takes his advice so, you know …

Maybe if he’d entitled it “AFL home and hosed” it’d have got more attention.

Hi Ben G,

We probably need to careful about who is saying what about where the money goes as it tends to be self-serving — bag a club for its high fees and it’ll blame the state federation and the state will in turn blame FFA etc. All the numbers are big but some are just much bigger than others.

Maybe approach it from the other end and take one player in one team and do the maths from there.

How much does it cost to play with the club, what’s the federation charging to register that player, what’s the team entry fee, apparel costs etc

It varies hugely, whether it’s Goalkick, a junior or senior and the level of competition. Some of the costs are hair-splitting but you’ll soon twig to where the bulk of the money is ending up.

It’s a secret world, club fees. A handful of clubs reveal them publicly but the ones charging top dollar are careful about it or kids might not trial with them.

We’ve crunched the numbers on dozens of teams and clubs down here in Mexico and it’d be a joke if it were funny.

One example … 15 y.o. playing A-grade paid his club $620, of which about $120 ended up at FFV — $80 player registration and insurance, team entry fee at around $15-20 per player, refereeing costs at about $20-25 per player.

The other $500 stayed with the club … kits, balls, ground leasing, coach’s petrol money etc, enough to swallow up the whole $7500 it got from the 15 players apparently. That club runs about 20 junior teams … and two senior teams.

The club is presently protesting to FFV about its fees and fines, which were nearly $10k in total last year. The other $140k of the juniors dough it burned up on stationery and coaches it ain’t too fussed about.

If FFV collected $3+ mill in junior registrations last year, which it did, Vic clubs are gathering up, god knows, another $15 mill or so give or take any number you like. Have even less idea what the equivalent would be in NSW.

Buckley has to wear some responsibility I suppose, I’m just not sure how much. The states don’t belong to FFA, FFA belongs to the states and is ultimately accountable to the states.

Lowy’s presence has confused that since the CEO is answerable to the board, which at this point equals “Frank”, not state delegates’ appointees.

FFA and the states could suspend all their fees tomorrow and if the clubs passed it all on it’d save juniors a hundred bucks at best and they’d still be looking at $3-4-500 to pull on the boots, at least until their clubs decided there wasn’t a lot of future in Ponzi schemes and gouging kids to fund their senior teams.

At the same time, I have no doubt FFA is hitting up people for dough just like the states but I don’t think — I’m certainly not sure — those cost are hurting as much as club fees.

Sorry Fuss, can’t help you, nor can I point you to the stats showing African kids drink more Moet champagne than Coke.

It’s self-evident, Fuss — your game charges like a wounded bull and footy doesn’t. They’re refugees.

Don’t take it from me, get out of the car and ask those kids what’s going on, they’ll tell you all about. You won’t be able to shut them up.

You’ve just been assuming all along that African kids play just soccer cos that’s the stereotype and you’re shocked at how dead wrong your assumption was, and why.

Don’t blame you.

That’s right, MLF, it’s that willingness to pay that’s holding it together at the moment.

The downside is what FFA’s national curriculum calls “loss of talent due to financial barriers”, which bangs on about “the best footballers having traditionally come from the lower socio-economic classes” and football having “a moral responsibility” to those kids and the game to make the game accessible to them.

The end game is AIS-developed Socceroos all from well-heeled families and, like our current-day AIS-developed tennis players, are mainly middle-class pussies and the project kids of deluded parents who’ll go nowhere professionally and then hang around the fringes of the game thereafter to make a quid from coaching and ensure the next generation of talented players has to be even richer than them.

Australian tennis destroyed itself in fifteen years of taking itself too seriously and putting up financial barriers and filling the suburbs with coaches for hire and FFA is pursuing the exact same user-pays “pathways” development model.

That’s right, Fuss, in Melbourne more African kids play footy than soccer.

Some African kids do play junior soccer but most have to wait until for seniors when the fees are cheaper or they might even get paid to play.

That ought to self-evident given the cost structures — it costs kids eight and ten times more to play football than footy so football isn’t exactly refugee territory — but it didn’t occur to me either until I was at an African community’s neighbourhood centre and got the full story.

That community centre did manage to get themselves up a couple of junior teams last season — their soccer rego fees were bankrolled by the Western Bulldogs and Essendon AFL clubs, out of their community welfare budgets.

I know, AFL clubs footing the bill for kids to play soccer doesn’t quite conform with the cartoons folks have running around in there heads about the code wars but what can you do? Some people just like fighting over nothing.

What worries me, Fuss, is that I’m not convinced that a lot of our most zealous and opinionated football supporters even know how their game actually works and what the food chain is and who bears the costs and how that impacts on its demographic and its future.

Ironically, many football supporters think their game works the same as footy and the AFL — which they profess to know nothing about because they’ve been too busy studying soccer.