Lyall Gorman sent me an email last week. The subject was "Help shape the future of the Hyundai A-League".

Excitedly, I opened up the email only to find that rather than personally congratulating me on my helpful skepticism through this blog on his performance as A-League chief so far and inviting me to Sydney to sit on the A-League board with the newly created role of "Snarky Observational Tips Provider", it's that time of year where the FFA pretend to have a passing interest in what Fans have to say about the league that we are all consumers of by requesting that we fill out a survey.

I don't like FFA surveys. I think my dislike of them mainly stems from working in Market Research and maintaining the desire to keep my work and Football lives generally separate. There's also the smaller issue of surveys from the FFA being geared completely away from pertinent issues that the league is facing - including crowds, Active Support and teams bleeding finances thanks to the fairly small minded policy of putting all eggs into the World Cup Bid basket and assuming that everything with the League will be fine as long as the world decides to "Come Play" in 2022.

My interests, however, don't ultimately lie in finances or why crowds are dropping. They do lie in Active Support, and it's tough to be supportive of an organisation that doesn't appear to even try to understand the mentality of the section of their consumer base that they have stifled, whilst simultaneously exploited horrendously in advertising and promotional material throughout the years, including the most recent "Fan Made" insult.

With push-polling questions such as "Do you find that certain aspects of fan-based supporter groups do not appeal to your football-watching experience?", it's not hard to see why Active Support sections of crowds are getting visibly smaller and quieter by the week.

That tackle

By now, everyone's seen the Surat Sukha tackle that blew Matthew Leckie's knee. If you haven't, go and watch it - it's not pretty.

Before I go any further on what I think, I need to clarify my position in the interest of full disclosure.

Surat and his family are close personal friends of my wife and I and it's something that makes looking at the tackle and the rhetoric surrounding it objectively difficult, but not impossible.

The tackle was poor, mistimed and reckless. The tackle was not malicious, and as fans we tend to forget that footballers are people just like you and me, and these situations often emotionally effect the player that has accidentally put a fellow professional out of the game for an extended period of time just as much as the injured player themselves. Although it's not my place to suggest that Surat has been emotionally traumatised by what he did, he remains genuinely remorseful - and apologised immediately after the tackle as well as a heartfelt followup apology on Facebook.

I have no doubt that there would have been any complaint from Surat or Melbourne fans if Ben Williams had decided he had the stones to give a card, whatever the colour, for the tackle. I don't think that's an excuse to call for his deportation or to sever diplomatic ties with Thailand either and some of the bile directed at Surat from the greater football community this week sped way past the line of racism.

In the greater context of the game, we have to remember that we see these tackles every week, some intended to hurt and most not. The reason this one gets so much attention is the profile of the player that was on the receiving end. Whilst I wish Leckie all the best with his recovery and look forward to seeing him play in the A-League early next year, I can't help but wonder if the reaction was this strong had a player that doesn't have the hope of a nation of Socceroos supporters sitting on his shoulders. I don't recall the same amount of vitriol when Terry McFlynn stomped on Robbie Kruse which looked like had resulted in a broken leg (which thankfully was later downgraded to ligament damage).

Relevant also is the fact that football fans all over the world love seeing a good football tackle, and wince seeing a bad one. Begs the question - if we ban every player that performs a bad tackle in a MRP style witch hunt are we also eradicating the beautiful, perfectly timed tackles that make football great? At what point does football cross the line from being the game of the everyman, to the sterile and uninspiring display that has plagued the AFL? It's something to think about, at any rate.

Fan Watch

Take a bow, Cove lads. As much as I detest Halloween in Australia, this was simply awesome.