Flair

As some wags have put it, it’s well and good to have a ‘flare review’ but where is the ‘flair review’ after the disastrous and embarrassing Socceroos collapse in Doha.

Regular readers will know that our abandonment of a commitment to youth from the FFA and A-League clubs has been a bug-bear of mine for a while but I’m not sure I have vented enough on it.

While the usual (read South Australian) suspects defend Vidmar and promote how the lack of overseas players killed their chances the question still remains how he got a second crack at the Olyroos after the disaster of his first stint.  As good as those 12 or so months between early 2008 and early 2009 were for Adelaide domestically and internationally, he's now got a very barren head coaching record otherwise: 6th (of eight teams) and ACL group stage elimination in his first year at Adelaide, wooden spoon in an expansion season and a so-so ACL Ro16 campaign in his third year, and now two awful Olyroos campaigns in which there has been no signs of improvement.

Although as lame as his teams undoubtedly look, they're pretty much playing the way the whole revolution - and all of it's staunch admirers - seem to want them to play. Much useless possession that occasionally looks pretty with no real desire for outdated ideas like winning and absolutely useless in the final third.

They have taken the one real strength of Australian football - a very competitive mentality - and wiped it.  Same with the once plentiful diversity of styles, gone. They've then replaced that with a bunch of listless drones with zero flare or ability to actually win in this manner.

We weren’t hard to beat in Doha, you just had to give us the ball.  Everything  is painfully telegraphed, boring and dim-witted. Hold defensively and it probably won't be long before you snatch a goal. Because our defenders are ordinary, as are our wingers, goalscorers, and pretty much anyone tasked with creating a threat on goal

The FFAs revolutionary National Curriculum is a fail. Pretty much zero Return on Investment. We've gone backwards and the HAL seems to be spitting out an ever growing list of over-hyped young players who head overseas and inevitably get spat straight back after failing miserably, often in some fairly average leagues. Mostly it seems to be because they're not nearly as good as they have been led to believe they are, and because the once strong competitive mentality and diversity has been neutered by the bland, sterile, sheltered environment they have played in.

Meanwhile of course as I detailed here the FFA have retrenched on the commitment to the National Youth League and any commitment from the clubs to bring players through from these sides.  The Majority of A-League clubs have no academy or development strategy at all and the NYL is basically now a glorified holiday programme as the player base to select from continues to shrink

Transfers

Was I the only one basking in the schadenfreude of David Carney in Sky Blue at the weekend as Sydney meekly surrendered to what is a pretty average Perth Glory side? It really must be a breath of fresh air for Carney being in a team playing largely uninspiring football, committing stupid costly mistakes like Vedran did for Keogh's goal amidst a dying home atmosphere. Totally validating his desperation to move from the Jets by the looks of it.

Another interesting weekend in Melbourne as well where City, a top 2 or 3 team most of the season, drafted not one but two of the midfield from the worst team in the comp straight into their starting line-up and have been pretty ordinary. Fitzgerald is a chronic fizzer and will find a way to miss an open goal tap in. If he ever has the ball in the front third, just look away for your own sanity. Meanwhile Caceres cops his 2nd stupid red in just his 3rd game.

The transfer system in this league is laughable.  If you are a ‘big’ club you can sign who you want despite there being no transfers between clubs.  From the blatant piss-take of Manchester City signing average midfielders to loan to the Melbourne outpost to the Carney debacle where Newcastle demanded two players in a swap, then one player in a swap and then no players in a swap between the FFA owned club and a team in a key market.

It’s not hard to write a set of rules that are fair and balanced, that have the loopholes filled and to enforce them but that would mean the FFA would struggle to play favourites and have to pay more than lip service to the idea of a level playing field.

Still.  It could be worse.  New Zealand Football could be managing the transfers.

Alex Jones - A quick update

I mentioned yesterday about New Zealand Football's aspirational aims of usurping the FFA as kings of the Cock-Up...

New Zealand Football confirmed today the FIFA Player Status Committee have declined the application to approve the short-term loan transfer of Alex Jones from Birmingham City to the Wellington Phoenix.

New Zealand Football Head of Nationals Competitions Daniel Farrow said: “While FIFA acknowledged the individual circumstances at NZF which led to the delay of Alex’s transfer, they have ruled to protect the integrity of their global deadlines for the transfer of players.”

“Given the unfortunate circumstances, we are obviously disappointed at the outcome for both Alex and the Wellington Phoenix.”

Read it here.

Flares

Yeah, I’ve been quiet for a while even though we see the FFA continue their fine form of public relationship disasters.

The reality is they are all just revisiting subjects we’ve already seen.  Youth development disasters, comedic transfer rules and front page grist for the AFL and NRL media mill.  It gets tiring covering the same subjects over and over again. 

Flares 
I’ve been loath to get into this subject as the blog is primarily a chance to vent on the idiocy of the people charged with running our game but the time has come to call out some idiots for the idiots they are.

The rights and wrongs of pyro can be debated long and hard but the simple fact is they are banned in this league and to continue to use them is ignorant and provocative.

Already we are seeing the same defences from the leaders of the active supporter groups involved ‘it’s a small minority’, ‘we can’t control everyone’, ‘it wasn’t us’ but the whole small minority thing is a complete myth. Flares and detonators aren't frowned upon in these organisations, the perpetrators aren't ostracized.  Those who don't set them off give widespread tacit endorsement, cheer and chant and laugh and generally find the whole thing very cool and amusing and nver mind the fact that the capo and other key members can be seen front and centre sitting on the fence with fingers up in the air. They love the attention it garners, and love even more about how victimized they are if anyone calls them on it.

Since the primary clubs involved and their crowds suddenly came about it seemed like an awkward dynamic to begin with. You don't suddenly have all that passion and colour for a club that's just been created out of nowhere (a plastic club) if it's really just about the club and football. The attraction for some went beyond just thinking the Wanderers are great and love how connected they felt to a club closer to them than the state league clubs or other A-League clubs in their Cities.

Rather, they seized on the chance to go into full on ultra-mimicry mode and have a bout of self-congratulation about it as the media and club itself loved suddenly seeing big loud crowds in general and overlooked the bad potential side.  A lot of those in the media and at the FFA who are now trashing people involved didn't think twice about earlier praising these groups to the hilt and thinking they were simply the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The timing of course has been absolutely catastrophic.  After the work Mark Bosnich and others put into the December meeting to get active support back into the grounds and to improve the transparency of the banning process these groups have spat on those efforts.

The commitment out of that meeting was to have a new process in place this week.  There is a meeting today to discuss where the FFA have got to with this and these groups have undermined the position of the united fan groups.  Their self-indulgent behaviour and rule-breaking will undermine the position of the collective.  If there is a contention with the FFA the media are far less likely to offer an opinion in support of the fans when certain groups have put the game on the front page of the papers and given the old school tie media a chance to put the boot in.

If the active support decide to walk out the story will no longer be about the lack of due process around the bans but that the fans are walking out because they are not allowed to use flares.

The sad reality here is that the people involved think they are more important than the club they ‘support’.  They look forward to being ostracized and the club losing points would just amp up their persecution complex.  They don’t care about the club, they don’t care about the other 12000 fans that turn up each week, they care that they look hard.

There is no denying the FFA caused this mess by not clamping down on this behaviour when they ran one of these clubs or when it occurred earlier in the A-Leagues history but the self-indulgent idiocy from those who continue it is almost a bigger threat to this league than the incompetent people running it. 

Anything you can do:

Also a late shout out to our friends across the Tasman.  New Zealand Football do try hard to keep up with our own administrators and credit to them for their efforts.  Their latest bungle on the back of getting themselves disqualified from the Olympic Games is likely to cost the A-League a chance to see a promising young talent out of England.

The organisation that famously got Glenn Moss banned from a World Cup because a fax fell down the back of a filing cabinet managed to fail to approve an international transfer for Alex Jones to allow him to play for the Phoenix.  The Phoenix raised the transfer request, it was approved by Birmingham City, the English FA and the Football Federation of Australia but New Zealand football it would appear had all gone to the beach and decided they didn’t need to click the approve button.

This leaves Jones in Wellington but relying on an exemption from FIFA that they have never shown any inclination to give in other cases.

Well done NZ Football.  I look forward to your CEO taking over at the FFA sometime in the near future, he must be ticking all the relevant fields in his linkedin profile.

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.

One rule for some

Another day, another FFA bungle to make the league a laughing stock as their attitude towards anything proposed by Melbourne City and the Abu Dhabi United Group gets an instant thumbs up despite the impact on the league.

This time it is gaping hole in the transfer rules that supposedly stop players moving between A-League clubs but is easily circumvented by utilising a middle club elsewhere.

There is no one in this league including even the most deluded Mariners fan who thinks Anthony Caceras is Manchester City quality yet he is on their books.  Of course the financially bereft Central Coast get some money for a player and magically he is loaned to another A-League club.

It's a farce, a fix worthy of a FIFA ethics committee and most of all it is negligent of the FFA to have rules allowing this and to approve the transfer.  Terrified of the signs coming out of Gosford that the club is a day to day proposition they have come up with a scheme to effectively bail out the Mariners, to allow their pet owners to try and buy some success in Melbourne and once again undermined the level playing field that this league is meant to be.

As the crowds for the second Melbourne team continue to make the 'all derbies' attitude of the FFA look like the folly it always was they have found a way to let them strengthen their side to attempt to buy success.

Already the chairmen of other clubs are expressing their concern for this action with Tony Pignata again the voice of reason.  Tony sees the potential risks here, sees that this league is still in it's infancy, sees that this needs to be as close to a level playing field as possible.  It's about time the FFA did.

It's about time the FFA separated this league from their organisation and gave the clubs the right to control their destiny and to put some rules in place for the collective viability of the A-League.  Despite what the marketing men in Oxford Street think this league will survive on a level playing field and diversity, not manufactured rivalries and backroom financial dealings.

Unless something is done soon I fear five years tops might be an optimistic estimate for the life of the A-League.



Can anyone explain to me how Andy Harper still has a job?  His sycophantic fawning over anything related to Sydney FC is an embarrassment to Fox Sports.  Even when Sydney are struggling his commentary on games that do not even feature them would have a neutral believing they are a giant who dominate this league.

I quite like Sydney FC.  I think they go about things the right way and I think the Cove do an excellent job but Harper's blinkered prattle turns me off them completely.  He and Slater really add nothing to the Fox Sports product apart from inane platitudes, ill-informed opinions and thinly veiled bias.

Why does this league continue to provide a living for the incompetent?

Media. Mis-managed.

Well.  That was a fun break.  I was tempted to get out of my bikini and off the gorgeous beaches of NSW to blather about the refereeing we have seen over the holiday break as Ben Williams hit new heights and Gosford got to witness a display that even in the A-League's pantheon of horrific refereeing displays set new lows but in the end was anyone shocked?

You can make referees professional but if the people doing the job are so devoted to the cult of refereeing that they don't see themselves making errors you still end up with the game remembered for their actions rather than the football played.


Today's missive though harks back to points made in previous posts and asking just what the hell the FFA and club media arms are thinking in the way they attempt to manipulate the media and the narrative and what is appropriate content for these sites.

Is it this?

Apart from the fact that the A-League website has no place in publishing an article that is almost completely conjecture surely this line should send warning bells:

"According to a story in the Daily Telegraph"

If you have to preface an article on the league website with 'according to a story' and then name the paper that has done more to attack this code than any other media in Australia this side of Allan Jones then you have a gross misunderstanding of what the role of social media is in this world.

The next question is, why is it still there?  Surely someone in the social media department have raised a protest at the piece?  It's petty point scoring at the expense of an organisation that represents a key stakeholder in the league.  How does publishing this help the league's relationship with it's players, with the product they are looking to promote?

It smacks of the sort of public airing of arguments and the lack of good faith that has become the FFA trademark in recent years as the media comes under the guardianship of Kyle Patterson.

This also extends to club social media.  In recent weeks we've seen some absolute crackers.  Whether it was the West Sydney Wanderers attack on the decisions of referee Jarred Gillett vs Melbourne City or the Central Coast Mariners account offering O'Donovan a soapbox to claim the player he headbutted was acting as if that somehow made his action okay.

Next up is the surprising leak that the Wellington Phoenix have signed a new 10 year agreement to particiapte in the A-League.  While I'm celebrating this as it's the right decision for the league if it's true the question has to be asked as to where this has suddenly appeared from.

The Phoenix have denied it and have shown no previous interest in completing negotiations in the media and it appears to have originated on our side of the Tasman not in New Zealand.  So once again it would appear the FFA has more holes than a FIFA corruption investigation.  It would seem that nothing can happen in Oxford street without the media having suspiciously detailed information.

Luckily the FFA have no previous history of this behaviour so I wonder if they have thought about checking the offices for bugs, or maybe there has been a hack of their internal systems?

Considering how regulated and what a tight reign the FFA keep on so much of this league it seems odd that they allow these sort of social media gaffes to continue.  Surely even they understand that these channels are how the league is presented externally to football and non-football people?

...and don't get me started on the Facebook pages.


A couple of other brief points:

• I'm lead to believe that despite assurances the transcript from the 9th December meeting between fans and the FFA has not yet made it into the hands of the supporters groups.  I'm hearing rumblings about how this is hardly an endorsement of the good faith originally being sold the following day and suspicions about the FFA's ability and willingness to meet the commitments from that meeting as we have used over half the time towards the February deadline.
• Finally.  Can anyone explain to me why Damien de Bohun still has a job at the Football Federation of Australia, let alone an expense account? No, really, I'm completely baffled.  He's disenfrachised the fans causing the league's biggest crisis, he has little to no respect from the clubs, he's handled the media poorly for years and he's overseen a collapse in crowds and viewers of epic proportions.  I wish my employers were that understanding.  I'd be able to spend the whole year on the beach wandering back to my Holiday House only to catch up on the latest FFA mess.

Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out Nick.

To whom it may concern,

It is with regret that I must tender my resignation from Fox Sports.

Over the recent months I have waged an ill-informed and massively innaccurate campaign against an extention of the Wellington Phoenix' licence. Despite my best efforts (which would appear to be a pretty low bar) it appears that Wellington will remain in our league.

I have buried my head deep in the sand, ignored facts, blocked people on Twitter with contrary views and done all I can to ignore the facts that contradict my views but still the FFA seem to believe that the  successful and well run New Zealand club is important to this league.

As a matter of principle I am resigning my position with Fox Sports.  I can not credibly comment on the league when it is clear that the majority of people involved in the game are so completely wrong about what is best for this league.  Surely we are much better off with Australian clubs who break the salary cap, fail to pay obligations to players, bring in smaller crowds and require bailing out by the Football Federation of Australia.

In the interests of our viewers I will complete my employment as gardening leave.

Regards
Nick Meredith
Photocopier Salesman.