Anti-Social Welfare

There is quite correctly a lot being made of the ridiculous conditions that the sides were forced to play in in Perth at the weekend.  Another example of the TV dollar being put ahead of player welfare by the FFA but if the PFA mention it they get branded whingers and trouble makers. 

The reality is that these conditions are not only threatening to players health but they deliver some of the worst games in the A-League.  When your TV audience is dropping, having a game (a product) played at walking pace with no real threat from either team it becomes hard to encourage any engagement from casual supporters.  In fact of the weekends football there was about 45 minutes in total of watchable football.  The A-League is just not a very good product at the moment.

One thing missed in this discussion though is the number of occassions through the year where the W-League players are expected to play in these conditions.  Because it's 'girls' and not hyped up for Pay TV coverage they often end up on second rate pitches in condtions that are as dangerous as those in Perth or Albury last year. 

Then we see items like this:

Following stories of W-League teams having to get changed in hotel rooms it really does underline how the FFA have paid mere lip-service to wanting to take the woman's game further.  It's almost like they felt obliged to run a women's competition but actually treating the players with respect was less important than football politics.

While we're on the subject of player welfare how does Piovaccari get away with an action on the field that in the stands would get him a front page place in a Sydney paper?  While most people were wondering if he would see Yellow or Red for his assault on Wellington Centre back Ben Sigmund referee Delovski considered it not even a foul.  I can guarantee you if that had been the defender on Piovaccari it would have been a red and the Fox Sports commentators would have been in uproar over it.

In a day and age when concussion from sport is under such scrutiny across the globe an elbow led charge at a player’s head four feet off the ball deserves more condemnation and action.  Sigmund’s later collapse and need to be helped off the field underlined how poor the protocols are for a head blow in the A-League and how poor the standard of officiating is that that was considered to not even rate a whistle.

Like the undermining of the National Youth League maybe it's time the FFA did something for player welfare and developement instead of focussing on lavish 10 year anniversaries, farewell functions for retiring chairmen or picking fights with well run A-League entities.

Meanwhile...

Massive privacy breach and a revelation that there is no due process or right of appeal even in the event of wrongful identification and this is what the FFA give us.

“FFA works with all stakeholders (police, governments, security, clubs and venues) to have strong banning processes and robust security planning for matches, which includes listing banned spectators" 

I genuinely did not think there was scope for them to be less competent but new lows are reached daily and still few of the mainstream media call them on it with Ray Gatt being a noticeable exception.