So the new A-League season has well and truly begun, and so far the signs are looking good for Perth Glory. Crowds have been impressive at nib Stadium, Glory are sitting pretty on top of the table, and Robbie Fowler is ensuring that the club garners headlines both at home and abroad; during a recent jaunt to Bosnia-Herzegovina I ran into a local who knew Fowler was in 'kangaroo land'. (Incidentally, I know all Glory fans are desperate for news on former superstar striker Mate ‘Druggycheesebitch’ Dragicevic - he now plays in the Bosnian first division for Zrinjski Mostar).
Whether this success is truly a new golden age for the club - or whether it falls away into a false dawn - remains to be seen. But either way it's good to look back and see just how far the club has come in the last few years. After all, at one stage it looked likely that Glory would not have a future at all.
In the beginning...
When the National Soccer League was formed in the 1970s, it provided a league for the torchbearers of the game - English and European migrants - with which to play and develop the game at a 'national' level (if by national you mean two or three states). For the longest time, Perth didn't have a team in this competition due to financial and logistical constraints. By 1994 however the city was ready to have a crack at it - in er, Singapore.
Perth Kangaroos IFC (and the Darwin Cubs) went on to have a successful stint in the S-League; Perth actually won the league undefeated, with a team featuring players who would later become part of Glory proper. This happened in 1996 when Perth Glory Football Club was founded by owners Nick Tana and Paul Afkos and entered into the NSL. Glory was radically different to other NSL clubs - the colour purple was deliberately chosen to differentiate from the typical strips of red, white, or blue. The club had no single identifiable ethnic identity (though one could argue it was Brit-dominated) and it had secure financial backing that other teams could only dream of.
Perth bought good coaches. They bought good players. They played attacking football. They attracted large crowds of 10-15,000 people, which made a mockery of other attendance figures. They won two championships and finished as premiers three times. They appeared in four grand finals and set attendance records at Subiaco Oval. They were the club everyone wanted to beat, and the club everyone wanted to be. The west had well and truly been won for football.
Then towards the end of the NSL, when Glory won back to back championships, their attendances - and the competition as a whole - had started to wane. But not to worry; a new league was on its way, and Glory would have the honour of being the template off which all A-League teams were based. What could possibly go wrong?
Downfall
Season one of new football; 2005-2006. Perth Glory, long since down to sole owner Nick Tana - BBQ chicken tycoon of the west - are entered into the new league and by default essentially become the oldest professional football club in Australia. However, Tana and the rest of the club underestimate the quality and quantity of investment required to succeed in the new league. In coach Steve McMahon they had someone who believed Australian football was essentially a pub comp, and the players recruited - while perhaps of a level suitable to the NSL - could not compete with the likes of Dwight Yorke or even Perth's own 'Slobby Bobby'. Some, like Brian Deane and Steve McMahon Jr, probably would have struggled in the state leagues.
Tana was accused of cutting financial corners and the quality of football reflected this. Perth limped to fifth of eight teams and with the advent of Foxtel, this was the moment many fans chose to turn their backs on the club - to this day some have not returned, unable to comprehend a world in which Glory is not the biggest fish in a small pond, playing exciting football and winning everything. Indeed, some had even begun leaving after the first NSL win - dissatisfied with coach Mich D'Avray and his comparatively boring (but successful) brand of play.
At the end of the season, Tana pulled the plug. Having invested his own money and been a target of fan criticism, he decided enough was enough and he would pursue other goals. It was 2006, and the club was without an owner and now run by the FFA. If fans thought the bad times were over, they received a rude shock soon enough.
The squad of 2006-2007 was built on a shoestring budget, generally estimated at 1/3 to 2/3 of the salary cap. Caretaker coaches Damien Mori and Alan Vest were not kept on; FFA employee Ron Smith instead being given the role, with David Mitchell his assistant. Player stocks reflected the poor budget, and Perth's form and attendances plummeted. The next season fared little better, and large cracks began to emerge in the relationship between the club and its fans.
While in charge, the FFA-appointed administrators indicated they were open to the concept of changing the club's colours. They indicated a brand 'refresh' was required. They altered the 10 year anniversary of Perth Glory to a 'celebration of football' event, with little-to-no mention of past glories. To top it all off, there was a flat refusal to guarantee the club's future at season's end.
Salvation... Sort of.
Thankfully, three white knights appeared in the form of John Spence, Brett McKeon, and Tony Sage. With a combined investment they took on the task of fixing up Glory and getting the club back to its former standard. Fans initially lauded them as saviours, but became confused when they did not remove heavily-criticised coach Ron Smith and hire more backroom staff to deal with notoriously slow response times to fan communications. The club continued to stall on-field, and it took some time before Smith was finally removed.
However when Spence dropped out, to many fans it signalled the end - again. When McKeon soon followed, it appeared Glory were heading back to the FFA far sooner than anyone expected. To his credit however, Tony Sage kept to his word and continued to support the club. In fact, in the past couple of seasons he has demonstrated that the other investors were actually holding him back and limiting his outlay into the club, for fear of feeding a white elephant. Sage himself had no such reservations - and it showed when the club began to recruit players like Burns, Sterjovski, Coyne, and Fowler.
The installation of CEO Lui Guiliani brought the fans and the club back closer together through a series of 'peace meetings' which eventually turned into a constructive dialogue around security, catering, and home end support. Former Channel Seven man Steve Nelkovski took over the marketing and media department and Glory's advertising and product placement has improved tenfold over recent time. TV and newspaper slots with Robbie Fowler and co are now commonplace, where the club once said 'it's up to fans to spread the word - not us'. Improvements have definitely been made on the past A-League seasons; but are Perth really back?
How far have we really come?
Unfortunately, some fans will never come back. Formerly part of an environment where little money provided entry to a packed house with full strength beer, little restriction on activities in 'the shed' - tits and spliffs anyone? - and attacking football, they see little reason to spend more money on a restricted matchday experience and a side whose quality is limited by a salary cap. Some turn up to the odd game, others will come if they have a free ticket, but the rest will watch on Foxtel and criticise the club for not being like it once was.
The problem with this approach is that it fails to recognise that the NSL Glory was a freak of circumstance. A league whose quality was in decline, and whose other clubs suffered financial and crowd-related problems, was never going to be a place where a single-city team with secure financial backing struggled. The NSL also had the benefit of letting clubs deal with their own crowd's behaviour - meaning if you had a lenient owner or CEO, the act of lighting a flare, throwing full strength beer cans, or smoking in the shed wasn't going to be too much of a problem. Not so the A-League; and it is hardly the club's fault that the FFA will fine them up the wazoo for any crowd transgressions.
Looking at the club today, I don't believe it has deteriorated since the NSL became the A-League; it has simply adjusted to a new style of existence. Yes, advertising and fan relations hit rock bottom in the past few years, but these issues have mostly been rectified under the present owner. No, we will never dominate the league year-in, year-out like we used to; but no team will in the league's present format. Look at the past records of Sydney and Melbourne - there are no back to back defences after their title wins. The salary cap and even competition does not lend itself to a continued one-team domination.
Crowd-wise, this season has shown if the club plays its cards right an average attendance of 10,000+ is possible. In the end if the club does a bit of advertising and signs a recognisable face, the people will come. Of course, winning helps - but this is no different to any other A-League side. By the end of the season we will know how far Perth are from capturing championships once more - but in the meantime, we can no longer claim to be the competition's problem child. Even other FFT bloggers have given the club grudging praise! No more suggestions of 'chuck them out' then!
Chances are, if you know someone who no longer goes to Glory, it's not the club they're rejecting - it's the league, or something to do with it such as its bureaucracy (value for money, security, spectator code of conduct, anyone?). There are certainly issues that remain to be addressed - investment off-field is one that comes to mind - but nobody can claim that the club is badly-run when you consider all that has happened in the past five years. It is a pity that some people may have turned their backs - but it is pleasing to know that new faces have appeared to take their place in the meantime; people who never knew the NSL days in the first place.
The west is still somewhere that football can be at home; the crowd’s we’ve seen at ‘nibs’ this year prove this. The important lesson to be learned out of the above however is that people don’t want to be taken for a ride. The team can perform badly, the bandwagoners may go - that said even at their worst Glory attracted a hardcore (some would say, delusional) 6,000 fans - but if the club starts treating the fans like idiots, that’s when the real problems begin. At a time when the league wants to bring more people into the game, it’s important that the FFA looks at some of its past mistakes - in an effort to ensure they are not repeated elsewhere.
