The A-League and the FFA have been working to try and improve many of the negative aspects of the past few seasons.  Have they gone far enough or have they been giving the complaints and concerns of the public lip service?

This time last year there was a game of football played in Sydney in which Central Coast Mariners fans had their first look at the newest star to wear the Blue and Yellow.  Patricio Perez played his first match for the club and in a controversial moment scored his first goal for the club after being awarded a penalty. 

After the game the Match Review Panel (MRP) deemed that the referee was blind and that Patricio was a liar, for this the fans were not allowed to see him for another two weeks.  The MRP slapped him with a two week ban with no right to reply or appeal to these charges. 

There were a number of opinion pieces written by many different people including myself about the problems with the system and how the MRP required an overhaul.  This much needed overhaul was delivered by the FFA during the long, long off season.

This week obviously the game between Melbourne Victory and Brisbane Roar saw two of the Victory men earn the ire of the official.  With two players facing time on the sidelines, Victory were always going to examine the incidents closely and decide if either or both were excessive and could be reviewed by the new enhanced MRP system. 

Victory to their credit decided that the charge against Ante Covic was not likely to be overturned but the second red card, dished out to Matthew Foschini, was deemed to be worthy of an appeal by the club. 

However as we know the MRP not only dismissed this appeal and upheld the ban but added an extra week to the charge.  This extra week was awarded as, in the MRP’s opinion, this appeal was frivolous and a waste of the MRPs time.

This has to be the height of arrogance from any judicial body; I have never heard of a magistrate passing sentence on a charged defendant and not only finding them guilty but adding additional punishment for defending themselves against the charges. 

Okay so the MRP and the FFA are not a criminal judicial body, they are however basically an industrial relations judicial body.  The decisions that the FFA enforces on players can and do affect their earnings and earning potential on the future. 

Would it be appropriate for the Industrial Relations tribunal that heard the dispute between QANTAS and the unions last weekend to order the workers back their jobs but also order a 20% pay cut for frivolous strike action?  Surely any player who is charged with anything on the field has the right to be defended against the accusation and the right to a fair and impartial judgement. 

The idea that a judicial body would punish someone who appeared before them for wasting their time by defending themselves is disgraceful.  Did the MRP have something better to do that day?  Was there a good movie they missed out on?  Why do our professional footballers not deserver Natural Justice?

Why didn’t the FFA look at other systems sporting bodies use in Australia and cherrypick some of the best parts of these judicial processes?  The National Rugby League tries to encourage players to only defend charges if they have a fair chance (which is the only thing I can imagine the MRP were trying to convey this week) with their early guilty plea system. 

Here they offer a player a reduction of punishment by 25% if they plead guilty to a charge by a set time.  This has some benefits but also some drawbacks as you could see players getting lesser sentences for violent play, as such I am all for this approach for anything that is not deemed as violent or intentional foul play. 

To truly make this work the FFA may need to introduce a points system where for every 100 points you accumulate you are suspended for a single match.  In this way a first yellow card in a match can be marked as a 15 point offence and this would mean that players are still suspended for 7 yellow cards.  Obviously a red card would be a 100 point offence and a second yellow in a single match would be a 75 point offence.  This sets the immediate 1 match suspensions for send offs as per standard FIFA rules.  The MRP could then lay additional charges if they decide that an offence is worse than the 1 match suspension but a player may gain a minor discount by pleading guilty to a charge rather than fighting before a judicial panel.  This is much like a plea bargain on the criminal law system.

Will the FFA take on such ideas and comments?  There is not really any hope of this given that the FFA have shown in the past that they do not like to deviate away from the old rules of FIFA.

Or do they?

This weekend sees a number of international matches and all major leagues class this as an international weekend, yet the A-League is playing a full round of football with none of the international players turning out for their clubs.  We know that last season clubs asked for a reduction in the number of mid-week games they played during the regular season. 

The FFA in the spirit of harmony and working with the clubs granted this wish and has cut the Wednesday night matches out of the calendar.  Unfortunately in order to fit the A-League season in between the end of one rival football code season and the kick-off of the next, the FFA have forgone the standard practice of no games on the International weekends. 

This weekend Melbourne Victory will travel to picturesque Bluetongue Stadium to take on a Mariners team starting to find its way again.  This would have been one of the biggest crowd games for the Mariners this season with the visit of Harry Kewell to Gosford.  Yet now this weekend, Victory are missing Kewell, their Costa Rican maestro, their first choice keeper and one of their defenders.  How many people will not be attending the game this weekend due to these players being unavailable?

Of all the clubs in the A-League the Mariners are probably the club that can least afford to miss out on a big crowd.  We all know the Mariners are the poorest club in the A-League now that the Fury have been cruelly cut and Roar have been thrown the big spending Indonesian owners. 

So how is it then that the FFA have not thought about the fact that the clubs they need to operate a competition will miss out on revenue if the big name players are not available during the weekend games?  I honestly believe that the Mariners will lose as many as 8,000 to 10,000 paying spectators this weekend now that Harry is not playing.  If Kewell was unavailable for the game this weekend due to his aging body breaking down again then the club would have accept this as being part of football. 

But to miss out on all of this possible revenue because the FFA could not see that losing the best players for a weekend would affect gate takings is just another example of the short sightedness of the administration.

Rather than looking at the desires of the clubs, the fans and the commentators the FFA appear to have tried to make a few placebo changes and hope that everyone would accept it as great change.  Well I for one do not think that the FFA administration have earned the massive salaries they are paid if these changes are the best they can make.