Professional Footballers Australia believes that even if Fox Sports do decide to quit the A-League "...we can replace them" – and sees a massive chance to reset the top tier in this country.
The pay-TV broadcaster sparked fears it had ditched the A-League when it ran weeks late on its final payment of the season to the FFA, only coming through with the cash last week.
But the future of the Fox Sports TV deal still hangs in the balance after the A-League, like other sports, ground to a halt because of the coronavirus crisis.
The broadcaster has been keen to renege on its six year $300m-plus deal with the FFA after just three seasons after dwindling ratings and massive cutbacks at Fox Sports HQ.
But while some fear Fox Sports walking away might spell disaster for the top tier, the players' union is confident it would simply be a catalyst for positive change.
"I've got zero doubt that we can preserve a top level elite professional competition," PFA chief executive John Didulica tells the new FTBL Year Zero podcast.
"It's always hard to speculate what Fox may or may not do. I think they've been a really incredible partner for the last 15 years.
"We just have to believe in our game - we have to have the self-confidence in the sport, in our product that if, worst case scenario, we lose our broadcast partner, we can replace them and move on."
But Didulica concedes that may mean fundamental changes to the A-League we've known since 2005.
"That might require an economic shift, it might require a correction," he says. "Whatever happens, we can always reposition who we are.
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"The game itself will carry on, we just need to work a little bit more strategically and co-operatively as a sport – and that would be a good thing.
"The game is robust - support one another and we can navigate this. I'm really confident about that – but no one stakeholder can do it by themselves.
"It needs to be done in collaboration and a really trusting way."
The Fox Sports TV deal effectively covers most of each club's salary cap and without that some clubs may struggle to survive.
Didulica adds: "If we have to scale down what we do, that's fine. A lot of nations have scaled down and repositioned themselves over time. The world of football has changed.
"If Australia needs to go on a different trajectory as a competition then that could be a really great opportunity to reposition the league and connect it more closely to the community, to young talent.
"These are narratives which I think resonate with Australian football fans – but equally might actually be more aligned to where we're at in the global pecking order.
"It's not even a negotiable point that we need to have an elite professional national competition... but how we position and define that competition needs to be fit for purpose.
"That needs to fit into economic opportunities, our economic context and the production of high quality players.
"I think whatever impact this has on the league, it gives us the opportunity to reposition ourselves for the better."
However, Didulica - a former veteran of both Sydney United and Melbourne Knights - warns against shoehorning clubs into a new model and wants to see it create more naturally and holistically.
"One of the flaws in our thinking is often about designing a conceptual model and then reverse engineering it into reality," he said. "We need to continually look at our competition design across Australia.
"It's not just about what the A-League looks like, and how other competitions intersect with that. We need to have a broader debate about the national footprint. How we can connect...
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"The great thing about football is there is so many of us and we're an incredibly diverse group – and when we try to have this homogenous football model, it works against us. Our community's eclectic so maybe our competitions need to be a little more eclectic.
"We need to connect people to our elite stream of football who may be a little more geographically disconnected, culturally more disconnected – and then we need to design around what we can do economically.
"Competition design can't just be, 'We're going to have this A-League and let's see how everything fits around it...'
"Let's take a step back and design something that connects as many people positively to the game as possible, something that can help us produce the best possible players but also do that sustainably."
He added: "That not necessarily about doing it on the cheap - it's about doing it in a way where the economic engine you're creating can build and compound year on year."
But he admits the decision to stand down key staff members at FFA HQ and at clubs means the opportunity may be missed to make these changes during this once in a lifetime break from normality.
"What we're in now is preservation mode," he told the podcast. "We need to try to preserve what we have, particularly at the professional level but also at the grassroots level.
"It's challenging times, even to local community football. Everybody will suffer if we can't reactivate football.
"I don't think you want to put additional pressure on people to redesign the entire landscape while you are trying to preserve some measure of the status quo."
He addedL "I heard someone once say, 'Perfect is the enemy of good'.
"Rather than striving for perfection, we need to get something that works and then continually improve that year on year...and have an open mind to change it.
"You could add a second division or have a 16-team A-League or a lot of other things - you can tinker around the edges and that might be great and give you a little stimulus.
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"But they are not going to solve the threshold issues which are in governance, around culture, around our national and international pathways, broader commercial design - how we commercialise two million participants collectively...
"There's these big picture issues which I think we can sink our teeth into and that could unlock a lot of positive outcomes.
"The global pandemic has hamstrung the FFA's ability to reboot the sport with a new CEO and new board. They'll need a little bit more time to start addressing these threshold issues.
"But I have no doubt there is a good energy within the football community to support them and contribute to that process."
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