#NotMyChairman

You turn your back for a second and the next page of the PR trainwreck that is the Football Federation of Australia delivers yet again.

While we all engaged in our usual Friday afternoon planning for the weekend's football and how to get out of work early, an elderly gentleman escaped from whatever retirement village he is currently domiciled in and broke into FFA headquarters.  While there he managed an impersonation of an interview from the TV series Grumpy Old Men.  Oh how we laughed as he called out Graham Arnold and Scott Barlow and re-iterated the falsehoods the FFA keep maintaining about the Wellington Phoenix.

It reminded me of this:

Even by the increasingly erratic standards of behaviour from Frank Lowy.  This was a cracker, the collective gasps could be heard all across Surrey Hills as Australia's finest spin merchants caught an earful.

Lowy strongly criticised the actions of Sydney FC (a club he owns 10% of) - and coach Graham Arnold who Lowy stated was involved in "a debate he knows nothing about."

Of Sydney FC Chairman Scott Barlow he stated "This is why there is no point in conducting an uninformed public debate, which simply creates confusion and unnecessary anxiety. I explained this to Scott directly which is why I am disappointed he has chosen to make an emotive public issue about it at this stage."

"As is stands, (the) Phoenix has four years to demonstrate that they are an asset to the competition and not a liability instead of simply asking for a 10-year extension to their licence. Ultimately, if (the) Phoenix is not part of the A-League then FFA is obliged to explore options to maintain a 10-club competition," blathered Frank.

What it has made clear though is that some of the irrational decisions attributed to David Gallop would appear to have come from the meandering mind of the FFA's head dictator.  What is also pretty obvious is that Lowy still hasn't woken up to the fact that it's no longer 2003, and Oz football fans are no longer even residually concerned about clubs having undue influence on the decision-making process. They're a bit more concerned about the FFA treating the clubs like serfs. 

Which brings up an interesting point.  Am I right that my fees pay for Frank?  Do my finals 'presented by the Football Federation of Frank' series tickets? I'm sure the breakdown of my registration as a player includes a national levy.  So I pay for him to jet off to FIFA, I pay for him to hand Jack Warner $500k of my money, I pay for him to threaten the clubs and owners I support and to make idiotic decisions that threaten the existence of this league?

 ...and while I'm on the subject of our elected representatives, how does he get to annoint his son as the new leader?  João Havelange to Sepp Blatter anyone?  Although at least the FIFA democratic process (albeit corrupted) at it's base let's the stakeholders choose who they want.

As a footnote.  Interesting to see the number of viewers for free to air A-League coverage collapsing week to week as well as the Pay TV figures.  At this rate the $800k a year paid by Sky TV in New Zealand will be worth more to the FFA than the Australian coverage is when Fox calculate what that next new deal is worth.

First four rounds on SBS2: 78k, 68k, 58k, now 39k

I can't help thinking the FFA have got some priorites wrong... or is it just that they think that the focus on Wellington and South Sydney will distract people for the touch of Warner's grubby little hands and the collapsing demand for A-League content?

Won’t someone think of the Children

It’s been an interesting 12 months for youth player development in Australian football.  At the start of last A-League season the normal hype was being thrown about the National Youth league developing talent and being an important pathway for players to full A-League contracts but how quickly things have changed.

From these platitudes we have now ended up at a point where the National Youth League has been turned into nothing more than a token commitment to a future pathway for players, the national Under 17s have been humiliated at the world cup and the clubs have lost any obligation to promote players from within.

I guess the first signs on this slippery slope were the rumblings in March last year that clubs were not happy with the costs of the competition and the obligations they had to enter the competition even though it is part of each club's licence to have a youth team. 

Next up was towards the end of last season as Melbourne City started having injury issues player appeared from around the world and around Australia to replace these players when the City youth team had just won the National Youth League, once again proving the FFA enforce their own policies based on a one rule for some policy.

Once the FFA had undermined their own competitions and authority so much there really was only one direction and that was the reduction of the national Youth league and the movement of the youth teams to the state based competitions.  This of course was the final nail in the obligations for the clubs to provide injury cover from their youth teams.

It is also a very odd choice as the Youth league was also the method of getting fringe players match fitness during the season and helping players recover from injury in match conditions.  How this will work in the revamped 8 game plus finals (yes, really) season seems impossible to me.

This brings us on to this morning’s result in Chile.  Now while we got a result against Argentina, they are clearly a side in decline and the fact that we were relying on a New Zealand win against Paraguay to even get out of the group was a concern.  Then while New Zealand were suffering an unlucky exit to a 4^th minute injury time penalty to Brazil we were surrendering meekly 6-0 to Nigeria.

Now, while I fully expect to see the coaching staff get the full Ange treatment from Craig Foster as he prattles on about whatever footballing nation he is currently enamoured with maybe we need to go back to where we started in this.

In that team were only four players currently with A-League clubs, three form Melbourne Victory and one from the Central Coast Mariners - interestingly the only two clubs that seem to provide more than lip service to the concept of player development.  The majority of the side play for the FFA ‘excellence’ side that finished so far last in the Youth League last year that some questioned whether they even started.

Meanwhile across the Tasman the Wellington Phoenix supplied five players to the New Zealand side and the Wellington region supplied a further four.  Of those five, two of those players are on full first team contracts at the Wellington Phoenix.

Following rejection of applications to enter the NYL in Australia the Wellington Phoenix owners have looked at how they can develop players for their own club but also the good of New Zealand.  With fulltime School aligned academies in both Auckland and Wellington prospective players are being recruited as young as 13.  National team Captain Winston Reid funds 2 players a year to scholarships to these academies – both of whom are in Chile.

Above the Academies the club has a side in the New Zealand National Youth League and a team in the New Zealand national domestic competition that provides a place for players returning from injury, a place for fringe players to maintain match fitness and more importantly a place for the next generation to develop.

Aligned to this is a winter team playing in the local regional competitions.  Including the first team this gives Wellington a five tier commitment to developing players and is so well run and such a success that two Australian youngsters are likely to pave the way next season for an increase in recruits from this side of the Tasman. 

Why are our young players going to New Zealand?  Because the programme there is better than the majority of our clubs offer, because they can get an A-League chance there.  This year the Phoenix have seven players in the first team squad who have come through this system as it develops, and along with the three players they have signed from the Australian State Leagues have the strongest commitment to player development of any side in the A-League.

I guess the question out of this is why a club in New Zealand can achieve this but the clubs in Australia can’t?  Certainly the Phoenix have a stable ownership group and driven people behind the scenes but - despite the FFAs best attempts - so do many of the other clubs in the A-League.  Maybe it’s just that the Phoenix understand what sustainable means unlike the decision makers in Oxford Street who make all the right noises but did nothing to enforce the development rules they established.

All Derbies all the time

Found this on Twitter this morning and it amused me.  The ideal 2020/2021 A-League table according to David Gallop:

What a difference a day makes

This was meant to be a blog about how the FFA have abandoned A-League player development in the last 12 months and how some clubs still work towards doing something genuine but in the last 24 hours we’ve seen some seismic movement in the items we talked about yesterday.

Let’s start with the big story.  The fate of the Wellington Phoenix and what appears to be a misguided attempt to manufacture a third club in Sydney.

The day started with support from the Phoenix coming from Social media and finished with half the A-League in open rebellion against David Gallop and the rest of the FFA.  The landslide started with Scott Barlow steaming in from the Cove end (yes I stole that from Twitter):

"A new team in Sydney, in the heart of arguably our most important region, would effectively cut our market in half.

"It would be a devastating blow for our club and certainly not what we signed up or agreed to invest in 11 years ago.

“We don’t agree with the way Wellington have been treated, they deserve more respect,” Barlow said.

Followed quickly by Sydney FC supporter group The Cove:

"Placing a team in that area in an ill-conceived attempt to replicate the WSW-SFC (Western Sydney Wanderers-Sydney FC) rivalry is doomed from the start.

"There is no pent-up demand, as there was in West Sydney, and nine derbies instead of three will simply take the special and make it commonplace."

Next off the block was Greg Griffin from Adelaide United:

"We are the major stakeholders, the clubs that is, and if you're going to take one of our group out it's extraordinary to do it absent our input," he said.

"I'm a great fan of Wellington and every chairman of every club shares my view that Wellington should stay," Griffin said.

"It's a decision that's been made without any reference to the clubs, which I find extremely disappointing but not surprising.

"I also feel very sorry for Sydney where [chairman] Scott Barlow is faced with the potential for a new Sydney team and you have a cannibalisation of his hard-worked market and that's scary for every club."

These were followed by similar statements from the Central Coast Mariners and Perth Glory expressing serious concerns about how this situation has been handled.

Maybe it is time the FFA fixed their own issues before looking to make major changes to the league.  With TV Audiences in freefall and a drop in crowd numbers over the last 2 years their talk of metrics to judge the Phoenix situation is laughable.

In fact the Phoenix have seen a 27% growth in the last 2 seasons as the overall league average has dropped 1%:

Av Attendances	Phoenix	# Change	% Growth		A-League	# Change	% Growth
12/13	6879				12659
13/14	8168	1289	16%		13477	818	6%
14/15	8713	545	6%		12528	-949	-7%

The next blow came in the evening when Melbourne Victory hosted Hume City in a much hyped FFA Cup semi-final match.  After earlier in the week pretty much locking in a Melbourne based final the crowd of 6.5k (a fraction of Victory’s membership) has surely added to the pressure on the leaders of the FFA.  Interestingly 4,100 spectators for the Perth Glory semi-final matched well against 5,200 members as opposed to the 6,575 who attended the Victory semi from 26,000 members

I imagine the metrics and the costs for this game were not exactly met with these numbers despite what appear to be quite exorbitant ticket pricing, but it gets better.   

The ticket prices are out for the final:

Category A - $80 Adult, $60 Concession, $40 Child, $195 Family

Category B - $60 Adult, $45 Concession, $30 Child, $150 Family

Category C (including Active Supporter Areas) - $40 Adult, $30 Concession, $20 Child, $99 Family

Really? How bad do you have to be at marketing to try and charge like that for a secondary cup competition the fans have clearly not engaged with?

So with feet lodged well and truly in mouth the FFA sent out some of the Fox Sports mouth pieces on Social Media to spread the party word.  By the end of the night Nick Meredith was blocking Twitter accounts left, right and centre as the party line was systematically pulled to pieces by fans and journalists on both side of the Tasman.

Where to from here though?  Do we just let the FFA truck on or is it time for something genuine to happen.  Ray Gatt has lead the charge for an independent inquiry into the FFA’s management and it’s hard to disagree with him but surely this should go further.

FIFA recommend that a nation’s top league is run independently of the national body so the interests of the league and the clubs is paramount.  With the current dictatorial leadership from a group that have clearly lost touch with the clubs and lost the confidence of the owners surely it’s time that the A-League takes control of its own destiny and a proper independent group takes over the running of this league.