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The Roar

Simmo

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Joined April 2019

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Canberra-based Football fan

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especially if there are alternatives to stopping the game

In-game commercials are the necessary evil the A-League can't live without

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Football
 
Feb

As an example, there aren’t any existing clubs in Canberra that are the right fit for NSD.

But Canberra is a prime candidate city for NSD nonetheless

Socceroos fans want him, but Volpato's international future up in air after Roma breakthrough

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Football
 
Feb

Good point. I’m very in favour of pro/rel for a few reasons:
– It’s a sound principle to allow the cream to rise to the top;
the prospect of promotion motivates fans, players, managers in a way a closed league never can;
– The strongest lower divisions globally have pro/rel. Countries without pro/rel have much weaker lower divions (eg/ US, Mexico).
– Pro/Rel creates far more fan interest, and therefore commercial appeal. Commercial appeal will determine whether the league survives or not.

But I also think we won’t need to actively lobby for pro/rel after the Championship is in place. It will be a natural fit that most fans will see as obvious and necessary. How can authorities push back against Pro/Rel when there will almost certainly be clubs in the Championship pulling bigger crowds than Western United and Macarthur? The unpopularity of those two clubs will be the elephant in the room in no time at all. Ironically, those two pathetic franchises will do more to persuade everyone of why Pro/Rel is important than any good old-fashioned internet arguing.

The A-Leagues' brand managers deserve to be sacked

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Football
 
Feb

Well said, been thinking the same. Promises for a new era are unfulfilled. I can’t really sense anything different from last season to this. It’s the same malaise amongst league, club and broadcaster that we’ve had for 4 or 5 years.

The A-Leagues' brand managers deserve to be sacked

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Football
 
Feb

I didn’t realise it was on until after it had finished

As quality Australian football writing continues to decline, the Jamberoo Writers' Festival attempts to revive it

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Football
 
Feb

Time for a boycott. If the club hierarchy simply doesn’t care enough to bring competence to the way things are run, the only people who suffer are the fans and players.

A public boycott will turn the spotlight where its needed. It will put pressure on the club in the media and on the APL. The APL will in turn put pressure on WSW to sort themselves out. There’s none of that pressure happening now, so the rot will continue.

The fans can be the circuit-breaker

Unproven coaches, low investment, lazy scouting: Why the Wanderers’ women continue to fail

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Football
 
Feb

I haven’t been to the festival before, but I’ve seen bits and pieces of it on social media before. It’s not just for journos, but for fans who really care about the deep issues and want to interact with writers, former players and administrators

As quality Australian football writing continues to decline, the Jamberoo Writers' Festival attempts to revive it

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Football
 
Feb

Stuart, great article, you’ve convinced me to find some time to attend the festival!

I’ve been thinking for a while that football in this country needs an independent think tank to explore and pursue policy options for reforming the sport. We’re nowhere near good enough on the results side of the fence, despite a wealth of talent, passion and expertise. Organisationally, we’ve never been very good.

Someone, I suspect you 😉 followed me on Twitter (ewokhunter) this morning with The Meadowbank Ultras account. Do you guys meet up virtually or only in person? I’d like to chew the fat with you guys some time

As quality Australian football writing continues to decline, the Jamberoo Writers' Festival attempts to revive it

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Football
 
Feb

Preston North End consider David Beckham a club legend even though he only played 1 season there on loan from Utd. The whole of the pyramid matters; not just the apex.
Edit: only 5 games at PNE but he impressed them a lot.
This story is worth reading for the contrast to how we do things here: https://www.lancs.live/sport/football/football-news/david-beckham-manchester-united-preston-18188685

Commercial success follows great football, not the other way around

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Football
 
Feb

it would be a worse outcome if clubs, players, fans, managers in the second tier have nothing to play for. Like we have now

Commercial success follows great football, not the other way around

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Football
 
Feb

That’s some amazing fixture congestion. Managers are going to have rotate squads like never before

Commercial success follows great football, not the other way around

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Football
 
Feb

Early history was from the Chronices of Soccer in Australia. A good descriptive book that relied heavily on newspaper research from the olden days: https://www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/products/chronicles-of-soccer-in-australia-the-foundation-years-1859-to-1949

Post-war history would be Joe Gorman’s Death and Life of Australian Soccer. It’s a great re-telling of history, but I find it has a fatalistic attitude that I didn’t like at all. Gorman seems to believe that our situation is impossible improve: https://www.uqp.com.au/books/the-death-and-life-of-australian-soccer

I’d also recommend Code Wars by Hunter Fujak which is more of a contemporary data-driven research effort into how the different codes have grown, but it has enough historical info to give context of the competition between the codes down the decades. https://www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/collections/fair-play-publishing/products/code-wars-the-battle-for-fans-dollars-and-survival

Commercial success follows great football, not the other way around

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Football
 
Feb

This is surprisingly good to hear. I’ve got an article due to be published tomorrow and one of the assertions is that the raw talent we have in Aus isn’t the problem. It’s the broken system that wastes talent and produces substandard footballers

Socceroos' World Cup hopes take hit after Oman draw

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Football
 
Feb

Similar note, a little while back I listened to a podcast that Ron Smith did with Gary Cole. Ron was invited to Liverpool FC for a month by IIRC Rafa Benitez just to hang out and observe Liverpool’s academy, training program in depth. One of his observations was that Liverpool had changed its recruiting requirements to prioritise athleticism.

They had had so many disappointing recruits who were very highly skilled and excellent players in other Euro leagues, but who just couldn’t adjust to the EPL. Without the athleticism they couldn’t last long enough in games, or their skills would deteriorate.

Ron Smith also mentioned one of our golden generation who was let go by Ajax’s academy not because of talent, but because he *looked* lazy in games. In reality he used good game sense and positioning to be where he needed to be but Ajax thought he didn’t work hard enough

Socceroos' World Cup hopes take hit after Oman draw

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Football
 
Feb

Yep, England changed its ways and no longer embarasses itself at major tournaments.

Gareth Southgate has done wonders, but I’m sure there’s loads of other people that contributed to the necessary culture change behind the scenes

Socceroos' World Cup hopes take hit after Oman draw

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Football
 
Feb

Robinson is just the symptom of the disease afflicting WSW, not the disease itself. The disease is the talentless people running the club.

Wanderers make the call on Carl Robinson

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Football
 
Jan

Exactly what I was thinking watching SFC v CCM yesterday.

Feels like we’re missing a page in the national curriculum that says “a cross is a pass to someone in a scoring position. Aim for them! Don’t just lob it in randomly.”

It’s the curse of Australian football

Matildas collapse at the Asian Cup after Gustavsson's 'Kerr or bust' approach fails dismally

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Football
 
Jan

Gustavsson must go.

The WC next year is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here. Not just for the team and staff, but for the entire football community. Underperformance is intolerable. We simply can’t afford to indulge sentimentality or favouritism with team selections and managerial recruitment.

Football Australia needs to be cold and professional right now, because there isn’t any time left to dilly-dally around this team.

Matildas collapse at the Asian Cup after Gustavsson's 'Kerr or bust' approach fails dismally

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Football
 
Jan

The vibe for that post-game analysis was something else. Tara was heartbroken. Andy was ropeable and I thought he was about to unleash a Bosnich or Foster tirade at any second.

The Matildas really, really matter to the football community now. We’re all emotionally invested in their results. That means we can’t tolerate poor performances from manager or players. We should expect total professionalism from all involved

Matildas collapse at the Asian Cup after Gustavsson's 'Kerr or bust' approach fails dismally

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Football
 
Jan

On your first point regarding who actually manages Aus football, I’ve been thinking about this as well.
Being a public leader is part and parcel of having the job of FA Chair, FA CEO, and also the CEO of APL. Of those current 3 people, only Danny Townsend appears to be working hard on the public leadership front. I suspect that board members of FA, who set the short, medium and long term agenda for the game have forgotten how critical it is to have public advocacy, public leadership for their reform agenda.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re preparing to fight a lot of important battles right now, but they need to take the football community with them. A good public persona, a character that inspires should also be part of the job description when they recruit.
If we look at Peter V’Landys for comparison. I don’t rate him as a strategist, but he is pretty good at rallying the troops. He gets the RL rank-and-file talking and thinking about their future. We need some of that from our leadership.

It's time for some scrutiny on the decision-makers in Australian football

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Football
 
Jan

Good article Mike. Sarah West’s twitter thread is a great reminder about how neglectful our football leadership is about the systems that create good, if not great, footballers.

If I could characterise generations of football administrators at the national level: they want Australian football to be commercially successful, but without being successful at football first.

Commercial success follows great football. Not the other way around.

It's time for some scrutiny on the decision-makers in Australian football

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Football
 
Jan

I’ve had similar thoughts. Previous administrations have failed to see clubs as assets to be allowed to grow and prospeer, and instead see them as inconveniences to be micro-managed. When the NSL was canned there were still a number of clubs pushed into state leagues that had important capabilities that should have been maximised (Wollongong, South Melbourne, Melbourne Knights and others). Economists call them “stranded assets”.

I understand why FFA wanted to give the A-League and the new clubs clear air to become the national league in the public imagination, but a lot of valuable clubs were allowed to whither away when they should have been given opportunity to survive at a higher level. At about the 5 year mark post-NSL the FFA should have come up with a UCL model or a NSD as part of their thinking about how football as a whole can prosper

Australian football's long-term future is looking a lot brighter

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Football
 
Jan

Interesting – which association is this?

Central Coast Football [Association] deregistered by Football Australia

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Football
 
Jan

True. The reality is the “official participation numbers” are only the numbers of players affiliated to Football Australia. There’s loads of football played independently of the FA system. Maybe as much as 20% above what the FA publicly claims.

If they were a lot more supportive and nurturing to grassroots they could make their official stats look even bigger by persuading all sorts of comps to come in from the cold and affiliate

Central Coast Football [Association] deregistered by Football Australia

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Football
 
Jan

This story got a bit of traction on Twitter last week and the reaction from #sokkahtwitter was a kind of muted “seems about right”

Central Coast Football [Association] deregistered by Football Australia

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Football
 
Jan
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