Olyrooted

Well, hasn't it been another Blue Ribbon week for the FFA.  The Olyroos glorious campaign, the scheduling idiocy around the Monday night game, the National Youth League seating arrangements but it's okay because David Gallup picked up a gong in the honours list.

Let's start in Qatar, but not really because this is a story about the failure of youth development in this country for a number of years now.  This was the second U-23 campaign to have failed to qualify, the Under-20s missed their last World Cup and the Under-17s have only been to two of the last five World Cups.

As I outlined in an earlier post New Zealand put up a more credible display at the only youth tournament we have qualified for in the last 4 years and it's not hard to see why.

The people tasked with the developement of the game have withdrawn their committment to the national youth league while at the same time increasing spots at A-League sides for imported players and removing the obligation for teams to make injury replacements from their youth teams.

Once upon a time an Australian U-23 squad would be filled with players from Europe with a couple of domestic stand-outs who are playing every week.  In this squad there are no players with clubs in Europe's top leagues and the majority of the A-League players are squad fillers rather than seeing any game time.

The quality of young footballer being developed in this country has collapsed under the stewardship of David Gallop.  If there were some positive results in other areas you might accept that Youth Development has been sacrificed for other gains but as we look each week we see the game regressing on almost every front.

The old boys network of coaching selections doesn't exactly help the situation either.  How does Aurelio Vidmar retain his job after one failed campaign to fail at a second?  Surely this country has more progressive thinkers somewhere in the game?

It amazes me that we see so little noise about this and other issues with the national sides from the supporters of the game in this country.  Once upon a time we had a Green and Gold army, now they are barely a platoon and are unlikely to see a swelling in numbers with decisions like playing Jordan on a Tuesday night at Allianz in Sydney because they play so rarely there.


As I write this there are people in Wellington falling asleep at their desks after watching their team play last night.  Now many of them will have fallen asleep during the game or (no doubt) put their remote through the TV screen at the horrific display from their team but that shouldn't override the mess and embarrassment from the FFA last night.

Every other organisation in the world (even FIFA) manages to run competition finals with extra time and penalties and make scheduling allowances for these events.  Not the FFA of course.  As the W-league final approached the 90 minutes news filtered through that the A-League game may start at X with extra time or X+20 if there were penalties.  In the end it started at X+ about 40. 

What an embarassment.  TV has to adjust schedules, spectators have plans, families have children attending, some of the players are playing after midnight on their body clocks and all the players have detailed schedules and planning to prepare and play at a certain time.

How hard is it to have allowed an appropriate amount of time for the W-League match?  Once again the FFA have made the game a laughing stock in the eyes of almost everyone involved in the game.  As a national body they can't even properly schedule their own matches.

A secondary point here.  How come the only two Monday night games this season have fallen with the New Zealand side? A conspiracy theorist might look at the fact that the FFA are demanding more viewers for Wellington Phoenix games but then scheduling them at times that are entirely inappropriate for viewers across the Tasman as far from co-incidental.

Of course the FFA have no history of being disingenuous.

Shorts:

• I hear that it took a fan pointing it out to the FFA that stopped them putting Sydney supporters for the National Youth League final in the away bay that would be occupied by West Sydney Wanderers fans for the match straight after.  Geniuses.

• David Gallop honored.  Right.  That makes much more sense than him being sacked for negligence.  Order of Australia. Is Frank Lowy on the appointments Committee?

• How disappointing was last night's FFA mess for the Women's game?  They cared so little about the game as to not schedule enough time for the match and then ensured all the discussion is about their mess rather than the showpiece of the women's domestic game.