It's not easy running football down under. We're 32-times larger than England, but we've got a smaller population than Madagascar. We're also the only country on earth who reckon cricket grounds are best for contact sports. 

Perhaps that's why, 108 years after the formation of Australian football's first governing body, we still haven't got the hang of it. But now more-than-ever, the public knows what it wants.

In part one, we fixated on fans, but now we're going behind the scenes to look at some other solutions to save the game in Australia.

1. Governance crisis resolution

Every now and then, it’s fortunate that the mainstream media don’t pay attention to football. 90% of the Australian public are blissfully unaware that Australia has a governance crisis (unless you’re talking about 30 negative opinion polls) yet Australian football fans have heard little else recently and they’re sick of it.

Expecting FFA to successfully flaunt the A-League when they’re fighting with A-League clubs is like expecting a green grocer to flog fruit he’s just stomped on in front of the customer. It's time for everyone to see the bigger picture. 

Following the Crawford Report, Australian football had to get its act together quickly, so a bit like a benevolent dictator, FFA took control and began changing the game’s culture. And for a while, it worked.

But now football’s expanded beyond a simple top-down approach. Admittedly, there are risks involved in allowing private stakeholders greater control of Australian football. However, the system we currently have is unfair and disproportional, and it would be a lot easier to ignore that fact if it wasn’t also stagnating the A-League.

We can tentatively expect a resolution to happen this year. A Congress Working Group has been convened and FIFA – that’s right, FIFA – are hopefully going to sort out our mess.

When a power-sharing agreement is finally reached, like a derelict Soviet state creeping into democracy, Australian football can finally step out of transition and into a new era.

2. Marquee power

Sydney FC drew fewer than 10,000 people to their 3-0 win over Adelaide United, despite showcasing Bobo smashing the A-League record for most goals in a season. The classy Brazilian was lining up alongside Adrian Mierzejewski – an actual possibility for the Polish World Cup squad – and Johnny Warren medallist Milos Ninkovic. But if you think that’s enough to attract your average Sydneysider, think again.

Despite a record-breaking second successive Premiership, Sydney’s average attendance this season has been 4,000 people fewer than their first season with Alessandro Del Piero, when they finished seventh.

Yes, marquee signatures are competitive, but it’s also worth remembering that practically no superstar retires before 40 these days, so there’s no shortage of them knocking about.

Australian football fans are some of the widest-reaching in the world, strongly supporting leagues all over the globe. They had footballing heroes well before the A-League existed, so if our biggest clubs can't tap into that, they'll stick to watching them on TV.

They're used to that by now. 

Marquees are more than just a face on a billboard, they're the point-of-reference for fans when they think about their team. If you love Barcelona, you don't love the Barcelona crest, you love Lionel Messi and everything he represents. 

If 85,000 Australian football fans will happily shell out three-times the price of an A-League ticket to watch Arsenal’s ‘B team’ waltz around Allianz Stadium, spending the extra-money on marquees is a risk the A-League’s biggest clubs are mad not to take.

3. Free to air coverage

331,000 TV viewers tuned into December’s Women’s Big Bash League fixture between the Sydney Thunder and Melbourne Renegades on Channel 10. On Channel One at the same time, the Sydney derby only attracted 55,000 viewers.

Does this mean the WBBL is six-times more popular than the A-League? Well, given the WBBL attracted 8,726 fans for four of its competitions first six matches – a significant increase on the previous season – while the Sydney derby alone attracted 36,433 people, that seems unlikely.

A reasonable assumption would be that scheduling the Sydney derby on a secondary channel at the same time as a rival sport on a station’s main channel is a certain way of securing poor television ratings. While Channel 10 accounts for 10% of Australian audiences, Channel One accounts for 2.8%.

The A-League’s previous home, SBS Viceland, accounts for 0.8%.

As it’s so often said, more Australian kids play football than any other sport. But only 30% of these kids have Foxtel and it's fairly clear the rest don’t watch Channel One or SBS Viceland, they watch the major television stations. 

Interestingly, the Big Bash provides the perfect example. Originally, Foxtel had the sole broadcast rights and the ratings and crowds were poor. When the competition moved to Channel 10, there was a massive increase across all metrics.

There's no doubt there is waning interest in the A-League, but prime television exposure is a crucial way of engaging the Australian public in football.

If FFA’s broadcast negotiations can’t ensure that games are shown on one of the four major television stations, then – apart from it being a failure of governance - they should bite the bullet and approach a streaming service like Netflix.

The current deals are just further damaging the A-League’s brand.

 

4. Boutique stadiums

Smaller, football-specific stadia are about a lot more than just atmosphere. Australians consume more sport on television, per-capita, then any other nation on earth. 41% of the entire country regularly watches AFL. This makes broadcast negotiations crucial to a sport's popularity and there’s nothing broadcasters hate more than showing empty stadiums.

It’s damaging to a network’s brand and ratings because people don’t like watching or attending empty stadiums. Television broadcasters have even pressured state governments to reduce the size of their infrastructure to accommodate widespread dips in attendances across the NRL.

Having A-League clubs take greater control of their stadiums is also integral to encouraging the public to take the competition seriously. After 13 years at Central Coast Stadium, the Central Coast Mariners still play at a ground with the name of a defunct NRL club displayed across the seats.

Giant sauce bottles and a blimp? No worries. Spraying the team name on some seats? Too hard. 

Football specific stadiums and carefully designed stadium-sharing agreements could also bring an end to pitch-wars. Although it happens less now than ever, Australian football fans shouldn't have to watch the beautiful game played on sun-baked, rock-hard, turf-rotting cricket pitches. 50 metre-marks still painted on, the Toyota logo clearly visible in the middle.

It's admittedly a very long-term strategy, but a publicly-available, long-term plan is exactly what the A-League needs. If FFA begins to prioritise realistic venue selection when releasing fixtures and setting targets for football-specific stadiums then they'll be on the right path.

Their recent inclusion of stadium-specific criteria for A-League expansion bidders is exactly what the A-League needs. Whether it will be followed through on, however, remains to be seen. 

5. Marketing 

If you've watched FFA’s advertising campaigns over the past few years, their target demographic is undoubtedly kids. Arguably the most successful, the ‘Yoshi’ campaign, pleaded for youngsters to choose an A-league side.

This season’s marketing was practically indistinguishable, yet less memorable. The “You’ve Gotta Have a Team” campaign undertook an even more literal approach, which judging by attendance numbers, failed dismally.

Confusingly, FFA also preached a ‘soft launch’ mantra, ostensibly to save money on advertising, which could then be reinvested in defending VAR cock-ups or crafting Star Wars merchandise.

But are Yoshi commercials or ‘You’ve Gotta Have a Team’ campaigns the right way to target Aussies who would rather squint, bleary-eyed through a 3am EPL match then attend the A-League?

Australian football depends on this demographic, but its current advertising ignores them. Well-targeted advertising delivers a financial return, so it’s hard to blame limited funds. FFA’s marketing strategy seems to think the horse has already bolted; there’s a generation lost to foreign football, so they’re focused on saving the future.

Critics jested that Yoshi will end up supporting an EPL club, but there are sombre reasons for that, that A-League campaigns ignore. Say Yoshi’s family are EPL fans, just like all his friends’ families are. The chance of Yoshi rebelling against the curve and supporting an A-League club are next to nothing.

You’ve got a better chance of waiting until he’s a teenager and attracting him through the promise of flares and crowd violence.

Instead, it makes sense to target the older football fans who inspired his love in the first place. They’re the role models for the next generation and if they’re already lost to the sport then their kids and siblings will be too. 

Identify what the A-League offers that other sports - especially on television - can't (it begins in 'a' and ends in 'sphere') and improve it. Then base a widespread advertising campaign around it.

The current slogans are ineffective and possibly a little desperate.