With a well-attended A-League Grand Final still fresh in our minds, one has to congratulate all those Brisbane fans who have stuck with their club through thick and thin. Through difficult periods full of mediocre or ego-driven players, to the arrival of Gold Coast and Fury diluting your fanbase; and finally to the highs and lows of finals football and financial strife. You've done extraordinarily well to stick by your team and you should enjoy your double success to the full. The atmosphere of the Grand Final, to be part of that great throng of noise and colour, surrounded by a crowd swelled with bandwagoners and blow-ins, must have made you feel that it was all worthwhile.
And yet, it's hard to ignore a certain negativity flowing out of the remnants of that great day at Suncorp. Where were these people all season? What kind of rubbish football support do we have, where only an average of 9,000-odd turn up week-in, week-out and then all of a sudden the big day pulls over five times that? You might guess - and you'd be right - that exactly the same thing happened to Glory in the old NSL. For those that stick by their team through thick and thin, the temptation grows to grab these tag-alongs and stick their heads on pikes as a warning to all future bandwagoners; you either support this club properly, or you don't support it at all.
Likewise, it's often very tempting to sit there and rage at people who criticise the A-League but don't go along to the games. How can you judge, you might ask. How can you say you care about football, and then at the same moment not contribute money to helping it get a foothold in this country? Why do people insist on criticising and being negative about the game, instead of giving it encouragement? Why can't we just shut up all the part-timers, bandwagoners, and haters once and for good?
Well we could - but then we'd be royally screwed.
The thing is, we need bandwagoners. The financial benefit is of course the primary reason; it goes without saying that whilst 10,000 A-League diehards are all well and good, you miss out on a lot of dosh if that's all that packs into a stadium on the biggest day of the A-League calendar. The second reason we should all love bandwagoners is the atmosphere they bring. Before you call me crazy - no, they don't sing or chant for the most part, and they can actually be pretty damn ignorant - but have you ever compared the difference between the roar of 5,000 people and a crowd of 25,000 when your winger takes the ball down towards goal? Don't you think your home end sings louder when they've got a crowd to perform for (or be heard above?). Of course these blow-ins bring atmosphere with them - they bring wagons of it!
Now they're never going to be able to tell you who won the MGP in '97/98 (Danny Hay) and they're not going to be able to wax lyrical about the talent of Ivan Ergic or a very young Nicky Ward. They probably won't even be able to name everyone in the lineup on the pitch that night. But they're giving us cash and they're boosting our sound and numbers - what more could we want?
The same can't be said of the stay-at-homes; the couch potatoes, Eurosnobs, NSL bitters and state league suckers. None of these groups are interested in attending A-League matches; they all have their own way of getting their football fix, and it doesn't involve paying anything to a franchise at the gate. Perhaps here is where our anger should be directed?
Well, again I must protest.
When a business isn't attracting a certain group of customers, it doesn't blame, victimise, or attack them. It undertakes research, re-jigs its marketing schemes, changes product offerings, and launches an advertising campaign through one medium or another. No business has ever grown successfully by ignoring the needs of its target audience. Why then the denigrating approach by some A-League fans towards people who don't attend matches? Why the steadfast refusal to listen to any criticism of what the league offers? Surely we should be listening to our potential customers - not attacking them?
A lot of people throughout history, many of them in powerful positions among government, public services, or the media, have said that football has a culture problem. Well, I guess we do; though it's not the popular drunken, violent hooligan image they like to portray (that is a special problem that belongs to a small group of very 'special' people). Instead, I believe our problem is that we have become so insular after years and years of attacks on our game, we have automatically begun to view other codes and their players, administrators, and supporters as the enemy.
This is a culture born out of the racism, vilification and abuse of many of our footballing forebears; a group of people - predominantly ethnic groups in many cases - who brought the love of their sport to our shores together with their not-so-white skin and strange accents. Of course, in such situations it is only natural to turn to your own community and those who appreciate the same things as yourself - which is where Macedonian, Greek, Italian, Croatian, etc. clubs originated, as well as their footballing offshoots.
But history rolled on, and although the negative image of football in our mainstream media persisted for longer than it should have, we've now come to a point where we, as football fans, can enjoy a game that is played more than any other across the length and breadth of this land. How amusing then that some of us insist on rising to the bait and going on the offensive in our little code wars against the 'Neanderthals' of rugby and AFL. It's really no longer necessary - successive World Cup appearances and a (very) commercial league have ensured that the cries of 'Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters' are now the realm of a very small minority of Australians, many of whom simply do this because they know they'll get a reaction from "IT'S NOT SOCCER IT'S FOOTBALL!!!" supporters. Read PerthNow soccer articles and see just how badly we get trolled on a weekly basis. Why does it happen? Because someone always take the bait!
This is our real culture problem. The fact that after so many years of copping abuse, we've swung too far the other way. Now that we've got a foundation to be proud of, we refuse to believe that it has any flaws. It's almost at a point now where we're on such tenterhooks that anything we construe as an attack on the game gets shot down; instead of looking to attract potential supporters to the game, we instead abuse them for turning up only a few times a year!
Rather than listen to valid, constructive criticism about a club or the league, some would rather call the critic 'not a true football fan'. Good as some things are, others still need improvement - but try telling this to some football fans and they'll say you have to put up with it and pay whatever the club asks, because that's the only way you'll save football.
Sorry, but if we go back to business for a moment, customers will not keep coming back if they get poor service. They will look for alternatives if fees are raised in an unreasonable manner. They won't be happy with incompetent managers or staff. A company will not survive providing substandard service - poor companies simply don't. The only way it will improve is if people point out its mistakes. Some may choose not to believe it, but this is how the real world works. People appeal fines they feel were not justified; they fill out complaint forms when trains are late or cancelled; they send back food when it's not cooked properly; they even file bug reports against my code! The nerve!
You know what though, this isn't a bad thing at all - this is how we improve. We should feel proud that the footballing community here is engaged and passionate enough to offer suggestions for improvement. It is a good thing that some people who don't go to the A-League regularly offer their opinions; because it allows us (or more appropriately the FFA) a chance to listen and respond. It's great that we have journalists, bloggers, and publishers who ask the hard questions when they're required to, as opposed to just pandering to every whim. It goes without saying, surely, that we want more people to come to the A-League and enjoy it. So let'slisten to what they're saying rather than fobbing them off as not being supportive of our game.
Because this isn't just our game - the game of the 'best' supporters. This is the world game. It's played in streets, schools and stadiums. In the State League, the A-League, and the Pub League. By all sexes, religions, races and ages. It has universal appeal and near-unlimited potential. I know people may think the other codes are against us - but they're against each other, too. It's competition, that's just how it goes. They see football as a threat to their market share of the public's consciousness - just like internet media is a threat to traditional broadsheets.
I know it feels like the media is often against us; but like the average Australian it just takes a few bad apples to give a bad name to the whole crop. We need to remember, in the (arguably dying) world of newspapers, you publish to the majority - and it's hard to argue that in this country, definitely in my home state, the majority want to read about AFL. It's not the journalists' fault that their football stories are buried seven pages in - blame the editor and publisher who put it there.
This game needs critics - how else do you think we'll sort out the schmucks at FIFA? The A-League is no exception. So don't get too worried when they pop up. Realise that this isn't thirty years ago - no longer are we having our faces ground into the dirt. Rather, now we're being told how we can improve - both by those already going and those who might in future. We should celebrate that, strive to improve the game, and watch the sport grow and spread with new people - wagons and all.
