Disco Damian's FFA Cup final farce

For both my regular readers you will know that we had a bit of a chat in an earlier post about the FFA Cup and primarily the decision to locate the final in Melbourne because it needed a full ground and much atmospheres (or fluffy words that meant the same thing).

As 6500 left AMI stadium after Melbourne Victory had embraced the magic of the cup by pasting Hume City the FFA got out the shotgun and aimed straight down at their designer thongs as they announced the ticket prices for the final:

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

This brought us up to grand final week last week.  On Wednesday SEN radio had an interview with Damien De Bohun (which I notice they made sure was early on Wednesday - not cup day - and was well before the Melbourne nightlife fired up) where he made the somewhat brave call that the FFA Cup final would be a resounding success and that he expected it to be a sell  out.

Now obviously we'd all like some of what he'd been drinking but how out of touch do you have to be with the market to think it was going to be a sellout.  All media had roundly condemned the pricing and indicated a lack of support for the event and even in the SEN interview there was a significant vibe of defensiveness about his responses.

The next day the FFA started panicing as they realised how few of the Victory's large member base had actually bought tickets they discounted prices as they scrambled to cover for yet another PR disaster.

The end result though is a crowd of 15k and a half empty AAMI Park.  The catalogue of FFA gaffs continues as they not only manage to price the supporters of the playing clubs out of attendance but then become defensive in the media when their grandiose claims are questioned.  Again the good burghers of Surrey Hills must have heard the SEN interviews and dropped their slightly oaky chardonnays all over the polished concrete floors of their collaborative workspaces.

The one bright spot is that by leaving 15k supporters at home by their pricing they did at least push the TV viewer numbers to something less embarassing drawing an audience of 82k but wouldn't they have looked much better covering up the sea of green seats?

On that subject is this article from Con Stamocostas detailing how the much-hyped Free-to-air deal for the A-League has been a disaster for the broadcaster.

“The A-League has been a disaster for SBS and they are very keen to dump the rights as quickly as they could. They tried to get rid of the rights of the A-League in these past 12 months and they couldn’t find anyone to buy it off them.”

You can almost hear the bidders for the next TV deal sharpening their pencils with glee as the cost for A-League rights plummets under the current guardianship.

...and finally because FFA Cock-Ups always seem to come in threes their other cracking own goal of the weekend was at Hunter Stadium where the club run by the FFA managed to embrace the spirit of Christmas...

...Island.

This might be a small blip if our news feeds weren't bombarded on Monday with a picture of a suited David Gallop looking anything like a footballer on the Parliament lawns in Canberra launching a new initiative called 'football cares' where he talks about the need for football to support refugee communities and particularly the Syrian community.

“Now we ask our football community to show that football cares by donating,", so they want your money but no visible signs of support.  

Once again you have to ask whether the FFA Grandstanding on the make up of the league is just an attempt to deflect from story after story and the almost daily embarassments they are engineering themselves.

At what point do the larger media outlets put this all together and start asking genuine questions of the people who are turning our league into a laughing stock?