A-League in Crisis?

Football fans fighting officialdom. Owners abandoning responsibility. Crowds dwindling towards nothing. History has a funny way of repeating itself, doesn’t it?

We’re all currently being told that the A-League is in crisis. Most of us over in the west can’t really see that - we’re pulling in 10,000 plus people a week (or were, before the last two horrible performances. God knows how many will turn up next time). Yet footballing websites and newspapers scream headlines about the death of the game (again), the downfall of professional football (again), and the mishandling of it by incompetent bureaucrats (again).

The thing is though, if football is in trouble in 2010 it must be trouble entirely of its own making.

Remember the NSL died not just through incompetence and mismanagement, but starved of the media oxygen it needed to get across to the general public. The A-League hasn’t had this problem - nice Mr Lowy has had some nice Sydney journalists to talk about his game, he’s had some nice magazines to print nice puff pieces about his nice shiny new league, and he’s effectively eliminated the racial element that so many media outlets could play on when creating stories that weren’t very, er- nice.

Yet here we are, supposedly in a right mess, and everyone’s talking mismanagement and public rejection once more. What’s going on? I think the failings of the NSL have been discussed ad-nausem on this website; but I violently reject the demonisation of the past that some come up with as proof the current system is The Right Way (TM). Rubbish - plenty of good came from the NSL, just as we’re finding the A-League has its flaws, too.

What people need to realise is that while our current league model is what serves us now, it is not necessarily the optimal solution - and given the current hullabaloo, we certainly better hope that’s the case! There is no shame in tweaking, proposing, seeking improvement - it is, after all, what makes us change for the better. So, where do we begin? Here’s three topics of discussion to kick us off.

Issue One: What IS the A-League?

Part of the problem for the A-League is that it doesn’t actually know what it wants to be. Like the rugby player who switches to AFL, or the unemployed software engineer who writes for a footballing website, it dithers between multiple roles or purposes without really convincing in any of them. Part ‘Number one code in the country’, part ‘Family-friendly boutique sport’, part ‘Active, fan-made support’... What exactly is it trying to be?

European football, from what I’m experiencing, doesn’t really have this issue. The English Premier League lives on its ‘Best in the world’ tagline, and spends cash to suit. They have the big clubs, the big players, and the big money. That’s what it does, and it does it pretty damn well.

La Liga is where the skillful artisans of the world ply their trade, and crowds roar for fluid passing play. The Championship on the other hand is exciting, anyone-can-win football full of end-to-end play and cracking goals. Sure, you still get bore draws - but you don’t associate them with it. Down in League Two football, this is your boutique family-friendly environment.

The local kids, their parents, supporting their local club. Father-son bonding and half-time matches for the local juniors. Pukka Pies and Bovril. Crowds of under 10,000 but clubs that are reasonably well-managed and structured to exist in the division.

The A-League on the other hand puts crowds of 5,000-odd people into a stadium that holds over 30k. Without doing anything to hide the fact that it’s empty (that is unless your name is Clive Palmer - and he’s probably not a good example). It struggles to promote itself in a way that uniquely identifies it in the Australian sporting landscape - anyone remember the famous A-League robots? What the hell was going on there? Since the campaign with that Scribe song and some cool street football moves, the league has struggled to garner meaning or definition in the eyes of the public.

Personally, I’d love to see the A-League start (or restart?) small - or at least smaller than it has previously tried. All football clubs have had to do this at some point. If we had a collection of small, boutique stadia with which to play with, this would be even better. You can still be a professional football club and play at a ground holding 8,000 people - there are examples the world over of this, and it is no shame to look at another club and say, “well - we’re turning a profit each game with our 3/4 full stadia - how are you going with your rent on 50,000 empty seats?”. Case in point - Central Coast don’t pull a huge crowd, but aren’t they the only club beside Melbourne to make a profit? Or, better still, the only club with future expansion plans thanks to their new facilities?

Honestly though, Marketing 101 could identify problems at the core of this league - anyone who took this as a university unit could tell you that unless you give your target audience a hook of some kind, they’re not going to take an interest in your product. What’s more, if you can’t tell your audience what the product is, who on earth is going to buy it? Apart from idiots like you and me, of course. “Hey - look at this... thing! It does... stuff. Isn’t that great? Only one-hundred and ninety-nine dollars!”

Which brings me to ‘Fan Made’, and some of the issues associated with that...

Issue Two: Fan Made Hypocrisy

I love the ‘Fan Made’ A-League ads - if only for the fact that they show how completely out of touch with reality some of the people running this league are. The idea that a bunch of guys could steal a sheet from somebody’s backyard, paint it up, get it into the ground and show their support is fantastic. The reality is a hell of a lot different. People may wonder why you don’t see more of this ‘tifo’, or more active support from the crowds in general. Well, that’s because if you go through the entry conditions of most A-League venues, then take into account the FFA Spectator Code of Conduct, most activities you’d like to do become either an incredibly complex and bureaucratic farce involving three different sets of approvals, or outright illegal.

I’d like to get a drum to hit during the game. Okay, you’ll need an instrument pass for that. That’s cool. From the club, from security, and from the venue. Alright, got my pass. Now I won’t be here next week so I’ll give the pass and drum to my friend. No, your friend needs a separate pass. Oh. Well, okay, so I’ve rocked up on game day with my approved drum. Where’d you get that approval from? Hmm - I’m not sure if that’s clearing our regulations...

You get the idea? Banner vetting and approval, poles for banners being 5cm too long, plastic swords on dress-up days being classed as weapons, and banners like David Mitchell: Football Hooligan (Kicking the bottle for Glory) being ‘ummed’ and ‘ahhed’ over because they might encourage hooligan behaviour. Is it really that surprising that only a small section of the fanbase bothers with this crap?

Those same fans would also point out that the attitude of security and venue control officials outrightly discourages active support. To an extent, they’d be right. But in part, that’s our own fault. Every ‘active support’ group in the A-League has that tiny minority who goes that bit too far - and when the near-imaginary policy of ‘self-policing’ fails, security and stadium officials - or groups like Hatamoto - are bound to get involved. It’s someone like painting a big red penis on their head and screaming, “Look at me - I’m a dick!”.

The sad part is, all your fellow home end fans are tarred with the same brush and things just go from there. People end up accusing the FFA of being soulless beings with Stalinist ideals, and the clubs and organisations charged with matchday control get the hysterical idea that they’ve got some kind of guerilla war being fought in their ground each week.

Issue Three: Corporate Family Friendly

Staying with active support for a second, and they’re forever being told to mind their language and actions because there are nearby families with children, and that the game needs to be made accessible to these families in order for it to survive. For example, some Perth Glory fans have recently come under fire in media for the use of the ‘C-word’ at games. (Yes, it’s Cookies. Mmm... Cookies.) The idea is that such vulgar words put families and women off ever coming back to our games, which hurts our gate figures, and in turn the club’s revenue streams. Personally, I feel that swearing has it’s place in the matchday experience - but the C-word’s probably going a bit far (I wouldn’t use it in the presence of my family for instance) and I’ve never been a fan of people swearing ‘coz I can lol’. So the club has now urged all members to help us achieve the goal of bigger crowds through a bit less coarse language.

Yet some fans find the actions of the clubs don’t always match their supposed goals. Barry W is a Perth Glory who had followed the team since migrating from England - and credit to the bloke, he’s followed them through some right rough times in these past few years. “Former Australian champions? You’re having a laff!”. This year Barry and his wife sent back their season memberships after a single game for a refund. I asked him why:

“In recent times Glory seemed to be making progress, with a decent members' bar being made available and other fan-driven initiatives. Then, out of the blue, the club decide they want to milk the Robbie Fowler effect, shunt members off to a tent behind the family stand (with no live view of the game) so they can squeeze in yet another corporate event.

Add to that the fact that the grassed areas have gone, making way partly for another corporate area, and it makes a mockery of the club's claim to be a "family club"...

At the end of the day this was the final straw for me - the FFA seems to be modelling the A-League on all that is bad about the game globally, without realising the need to build up the core loyalty and support of fans before crapping on them.”

I’m sure everybody understands the reality of corporate sponsorship in the world of modern sport. You get sponsors, you get their logos on your shirts, you get money and you have to give them a little bit of special treatment in return. “Here Mr CEO, have a free shirt and a front-row ticket”.

But surely there is a point where all these corporate niceties have to stop - and that point has to be when you’re starting to accommodate them at the cost of the loyal fan. Companies give you revenue, sure - but so do your members. In fact, they put their money where their mouth is each and every year, while sponsors tend to come and go. What’s more, fans also trade in social currency - the matchday chants, the flags, the banners, the atmosphere, the free promotion of “come along to the Glory - it’s an awesome day out!”. I doubt many companies really, truly love football like these people do. They simply find it a useful way to get their brand across to potential consumers.

Clubs can ill-afford to lose families like Barry’s. After all, aren’t they the holy grail who we’re trying to reach out to in the first place?

At the end of the day, these are just some of the issues affecting the game at present. We find ourselves in a situation that is similar in some ways to the end of the NSL, and yet completely different in many others. The A-League itself shouldn’t be in danger of collapsing - but it is the credibility of the league, and of the people who run it, which might be called into question if some of these problems aren’t addressed.

At the end of the day, as we’ve seen above - we’ve all got a role to play. Families and active support; corporate sponsors and day to day fans; league bureaucrats and club owners. To quote the tagline of one well-known forum member -