I should start by saying that this isn’t some snap emotive response or knee-jerk reaction.

This column has been in a draft form, according to my Dropbox account at least, since about mid-2011. Bits and pieces of it existed even earlier. Perhaps recent events – Perth losing Jesse Makarounas to Victory, the problems faced by Adelaide fans with their administration, or the silly Glory ‘transfer’ sagas of David Beckham and Harry Kewell – might have been straws that broke the camel’s back, but they certainly didn’t start me down this road.

Perhaps the greatest contributor to the publishing of this particular article is one Newcastle fan, who offered the rather excellent quote below in response to me grumbling about sticking with the club after yet another somewhat 'inglorious' news story:

“The concept of sticking with your club through thick and thin resonates if it actually is your club, i.e. your membership allowed you a vote or at least some influence on how the club is run and its philosophy. In England, even if you have a Russian or an oil-sheik or a wealthy Asian businessman buy your club, and they do not share your football philosophy or club management style, at least you can just celebrate the on-field victories, grumble about the new fanboys, gripe about the how the club is being run and then just hope the owner gets bored and sells the club to the supporters trust [or you can start your own]. The A-League and FFA have never given supporters such an option; instead they have shut down clubs and revoked licenses even when supporters have formed a trust to try to buy the licence and keep the club going.

So when it comes down to it, it's not really your club, it is the owner's club and you just happen to be along for the ride. If you don't like his football philosophy or his club management style you can just lump it or leave it. Effectively, we supporters are more of an audience or subscribers to an entertainment service than members in the true sense. Which means that, in terms of the A-League, if you choose to change the service you subscribe to then it should be no more painful than changing your internet or mobile phone service. This should not be taken as a comment on your level of loyalty but on a comment on the commercial nature of how the A-League has been set up as a business and not as a grass-roots community.”

As the A-League continues to model itself, and its clubs, around consumers and customers instead of communities and football supporters - and I mean really model itself, not just advertise itself as doing so - I have eventually come to the realisation that I am not actually a supporter but a subscriber. This is how the league sees me; it is how Perth Glory sees me; so perhaps it’s about time that I saw myself this way too. When one does this, it’s quite amusing to see just how little value I’m getting for my subscription.

When Tony Sage and his original co-owners took control of Perth Glory back in the day, taking us out of what we then thought were our darkest days in FFA ownership, he earned himself a lot of credit in my eyes. Thus when other supporters began criticising him and the club, I’d always reason back with “well I don’t like X or Y, but he’s paying the bills each week and we wouldn’t be around now if it wasn’t for him”. Unfortunately, since then a succession of events have taken that credit and whittled it away – to such an extent where the owner is now in debt of trust with me, and his offices are being raided by the AFP.

Unfortunately, it seems that Sage promotes himself more so than he promotes the club; when Glory’s name gets in the paper for a big story, it is very rare that Sage himself isn’t involved. The most recent back page story in The West Australian on Glory that I can recall wasn’t actually about the football at all – it was Tony Sage taking a crack at ex-Glory owner Nick Tana once again, saying that Tana “hated” him. Well Tony, if that's right you can add a lot of ex-employees and ex-supporters of the Glory to that list, too. Tana himself is no saint – he had run-ins of his own with fans during his tenure – but he made Glory what it is, or rather, what it was – the premier football club in Australia, and a model for the new league to follow.

That’s not what Glory is now – fan involvement is but an illusion, or limited to clicking 'Like' on Facebook; there is clearly no long term model for the footballing department to follow; youth development is but a service for other A-League clubs; and we spend more time talking about people chatting with the likes of Owen, Beckham, and Kewell than we do actually getting on with the job of building a team. Now rumours have begun to surface over players being offered only short-term deals to join or extend their stay with the club, or murmurs over possible departures of players like Smeltz or Thwaite. The gradual progression of negative events around the club – somewhat masked by a great run to a grand final last year on the pitch – has resulted in people I was going to games with five years ago now only popping in now and then, or not going at all.

It’s not just limited to Perth, either. We saw entire football communities fold in North Queensland and the Gold Coast; we’ve seen Adelaide fans protesting against their administration this year; and the Newcastle fan originally quoted above has seen his fair share of drama with Con and Tinkler too; to the extent where he’s considering ‘changing subscriptions’ to Western Sydney as he so well put it. Tiresome, childish, and repetitive arguments around the A-League have always focused on so called ‘new-dawn plastics’ and ‘old bitters’ – but slowly, just slowly, a third group is emerging. Bitter Plastics, as I’ll term them, loved the A-League and their relevant franchise, but are now growing tired and jaded of the way it operates. At a time when the FFA is focused on winning new fans for the code, they’re an important group of people who represent the fact that for some, the A-League isn’t 'sticky' – it can be unsubscribed from in the same way one leaves a forum, cancels Foxtel, or unfollows the @Aleague twitter account - which allows about as much genuine interaction as the Glory Facebook page does.

This concept of sticking with your club through thick and thin is all well and good; but frankly, the modern Perth Glory FC is as much a Football Club as the Northbridge McDonalds is. A club is run for its members; Perth Glory isn't run for its members any longer, it is run for the benefit of the owner and the people who sit with him on the board. It's there so board member and “NRL Legend” Benny Elias can try and set up a rugby team in WA, make some business connections, and try and kick some goals in a half time challenge. It's so Sage can cross-promote his fashion magazine, mining interests, hobnob with some celebrity players, and aim for some Asian exposure – all things I wouldn't begrudge a normal owner doing if for the rest of the time the club was focused on serving its paying customers. It is clearly not. We have no AGM or shareholders' meeting at which to express our frustration with the board; we cannot stop our talented youth from being let go, influence the signings the club is after, or even sustain a conversation about getting clearance for a megaphone to be allowed into the home end.

People state that complaints only come out when the team's not winning – but that's just not true; the complaints are always there, just masked by a general satisfaction with a decent run of play. The most frustrating part is that what the club says that it will do, and what the club actually does, are two different things:

  • The club says that there will be a dedicated active support area at NIB stadium; yet megaphones are not allowed, people are removed from the stadium for jumping, and compounding this there is no clear indication of what is and isn't a sanctioned activity in that area (which is obviously the main cause of the issue)
  • The club says it undertakes a massive internal review, and that it will ensure only the right playing staff are signed on, for the right wages, and everyone will have a opportunity to work towards a spot in the team – but the same players are selected week in, week out, in many cases despite poor form or not even being played in their correct position.
  • The club says that it is focused on developing Western Australian youth; yet one of the best young players we sign to a pro contract is let go to Melbourne Victory, because he's frustrated with just four substitute appearances in two seasons.
  • The club says it is committed to entertaining the WA public with good football; but actually adopts a 'any kind of win is a win, and people like winners' approach.
  • The club says we will undertake a wide search for an appropriate replacement coach, and has now twice in a row simply appointed the predecessor's assistant from within the club.
  • The club says it's committed to building the gameday experience for its fans – and yet it cannot employ a ground announcer who knows the difference between Chris Harold and Jacob Burns.
  • The club says that issues around the stadium, fixtures, and administration aren't its fault – but fail to take enough ownership or have any accountability for issues it simply tries to pass off as somebody else's problem.

It's not just internal reviews either; fan boards, forums and committees with the club that I was involved with four or more years ago kept addressing some of these same problems; problems that still continue. It is this repetitive cycle of failure, incompetence, and spin from what should be my football club that enrages not just me, but a lot of my fellow fans. Some have already abandoned Glory; some retired to their couches years ago after Nick Tana left, obviously far better at judging the future than I. Some are only now demanding that changes be made at the club, for their money back, or threatening to not sign up next year. So they should, and free of criticism – because if this isn't a football club, it's just a business; and any customer that gets badly treated time upon time has the right to express their feelings to management and make them accountable. In absence of those shareholders meetings that a QANTAS or Westfield exec might suffer at, I and other supporters want to express our dissatisfaction in a way that makes things clear; and I’ve come to realise there is one way, as a consumer of the A-League and Perth Glory, a subscriber to their current product, that I can do that.

I can unsubscribe.

This is the best way that someone truly dissatisfied with the direction of their A-League franchise can provide feedback; especially if the existing feedback mechanisms such as surveys and social media pages are flawed and continually skewed to the positive.

I, like other Glory fans, have been treated like mere consumers long enough. Perhaps it’s time to act like one too.