The title of the article (Why acts of fakery are holding the A-League back) appears to lament bad behaviour that prevents the A-League from attaining the heights that football is capable of reaching. In reality though, the article is a not-so-subtle shot across the bows of football in the increasingly bitter fight for hearts and minds among the various football codes.

The article was written to achieve no other purpose than to fire up the anti-football brigade (who yapped up a storm on The Australian website), and maybe to influence the mothers who choose the sports their children play.

That is, after all, the real subtext to the article – the battle for athletes, participants and consumers of the various football codes which has noticeably escalated since the A-League commenced and Australia started making the World Cup Finals on a regular basis. There were figures out last week showing a drop in rugby league junior participation rates so the attempt to portray football as a game for cheats was a direct appeal to mothers to pick more nobly violent games for their children.

The article itself is wrong in many ways, but I shall just focus on some of the more glaring examples. It begins by suggesting that football’s growth is only recent as a result of over-protective mothers preferring it over the more violent codes. Sorry, but football participants in Australia have long outnumbered the other three codes combined. That’s not a new thing. It’s been the case at least as far back as the 70s.

Mason then switches gear to say that, despite its popularity, ‘the world game will never become Australia’s number one game’. The reason for this he suggests is while ‘there may be no violent physical contact in soccer…that doesn’t stop players pretending there is – generally to milk a penalty.’

There is so much wrong with this one sentence I barely know where to start. Okay, for starters – football (The Australian seems to have a policy about insisting on the word soccer despite the FFA’s preference for football) is a contact sport and that contact can be very physical indeed. When I was younger and playing district Premier League the constant comment I got from people who came to a game for the first time was: ‘I can’t believe how violent it is!’ Similarly at A-League games, when you’re close to the real action the physical contest is clearly a lot tougher than it looks on TV – but that’s a small point.

The main point from the sentence above is the implication that simulation to get a penalty is a serious problem in the A-League. Where are your statistics Mr Mason? How often does simulation occur in the A-League and where (before Jade North’s sorry episode last week) are all the column inches critical of diving cheats?

That’s right. It almost never happens, so no-one has been talking about it except opportunistic dog whistlers.

In contrast, just about every single game of televised rugby league (the game Mason used to play) has incidents involving players lying down feigning injury after a tackle so the video ref has time to watch the action in slow motion and find a penalty. But that’s a noble and violent game, where players ‘make 40 bone jarring tackles a game with barely a wince’, so the lying down must be strategically heroic rather than low cunning for the sake of a penalty.

Mason continues to lay it on thick: ‘The prevalence of the dive is a massive joke at the expense of soccer.’

Prevalence? I think we’ve dealt with that, but the Sports Editor of The Australian is starting to show his true colours here. He can barely restrain the bitterness he has for football which he clearly regards as a ‘massive joke’ and goes on to say when soccer players ‘fall to the ground and roll around in agony after have [sic] been tripped…most of us just roll our eyes.’

Really, Wally Mason? I don’t know what you are watching if you are seeing that many players rolling around in simulated agony, but it’s not A-League. Beyond the Jade North and Neil Kilkenny incidents I can barely remember another example this season (or any other season) and I watch nearly every game. But the real issue here is the implication that Mason watches A-League football – enough to be regularly rolling his eyes at any rate. And yet, when I did a search on his published articles for 2016, I couldn’t find a single other article on football. Plenty on AFL, NRL and cricket, but none on football until his propaganda piece on Jade North’s folly.

A ‘Sports Editor’ who never writes about football (except just once to bag it), does not fill me with confidence that he regularly watches the game, and his opinions about it must therefore be given due weight.

The last point he makes is a doozy. ‘Soccer players get away with [diving] in countries where their code is dominant and sports fans aren’t regularly exposed to the big hits and physicality of rugby, rugby league and AFL, but in Australia it just makes the international game a national joke.’

Wow.

Tell us what you really think Wally.

This is why the article seems so disingenuous. Mason writes from the apparent position of a man who cares about the game and is aggrieved to see it letting itself down with bad behaviour. But that’s not what is really happening here. Mason is aggrieved by the success of football (especially in attracting junior players who will later become elite athletes) at the expense of the more concussion inducing codes. That, for Mr Mason, is the true national joke.

So, is the A-League really being held back?

Not if the constantly growing numbers in the stands and watching on TV are any indication. The imminent expansion of the league and next TV deal should take the game to yet higher levels which will continue to generate interest and attract more players to the game.

And that, friends, is what keeps Wally Mason awake in the wee hours. Maybe he should actually watch a few A-League games. He is a Sports Editor after all.

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Adrian’s latest book Political Football: Lawrie McKinna’s Dangerous Truth is in the shops right now or available through Booktopia. Adrian also wrote Mr Cleansheets.