Fiddling while Rome burns

The title of this came from a tweet I spotted this morning and accurately reflects the new mantra at the football federation of Australia.  Always put off until tomorrow something that you don’t want to deal with today.

First up it was an answer to a question at Steven Lowy’s coronation about the Wellington Phoenix situation saying it would be dealt with next year and now it is suggesting a change will be seen in the banning process and a solution should be due in February.

You are front page news, your senior staff have completely and totally made a hash of things so how you think a proposed solution in three months’ time would let this die down is mind-boggling.  As Kevin Airs said Lowy might just about have got away with it if his statement and conference had been on Tuesday instead of the shambolic David Gallop disaster but that ship had well and truly sailed.

Lowy did at least acknowledge fans as stakeholders in the game and condemned the articles but it was all about a week (or even two days) too late.

Lowy himself is not immune from prevarication though. Delaying a decision on the Wellington situation seems baffling.  You have the fans on strike, you have chairman coming at you from every angle, you have the media crucifying you and you have one of the best run clubs in the league dangling by a thread.  Why would you not just resolve a PR problem, put aside a simple issue instead of letting it grow?

Obviously the primary concern for supporters across the Tasman is player contracts.  Traditionally a player unsigned beyond the end of the year can be approached inside the last 6 months of their contract.  With the Phoenix unable to offer new contracts as they have no licence do they have a team of players able to be poached.  Would a deliberately weakened Phoenix even if they survive into next year be a competitive A-League force and if not how do they keep coaching staff?

Out of it all though it seems very hard to understand how David Gallop and Damian de Bohun remain in their roles with the organisation.  Firstly de Bohun needs to be bailed out by Gallop then Gallop needs to be bailed out by Prince Steven.  How does your role remain viable when you have to be bailed out by the chairman and you have alienated pretty much every stakeholders except for a few myopic members of the press?

The ‘fairer' sex
You can write off Wilson she’s long been a ghost writer for the Allan Jones’ of this world.  A typical tabloid journalist, the print version of a shock jock or an internet commenter.  She thrives on a reaction and if it can be manipulated to suit her (or the people telling her what to write’s) agenda then all the better.  Wilson is also a heavily accented aussie battler type of character who’s general demeanour is more likely to register with a section of the public already threatened by football’s growth in the Australian market.  She’s not going to resonate with Mrs lunchpail, mother of three little cherubs from Sydney’s northern suburbs.

Enter Susie O’Brien who has suddenly popped out of the woodwork with her comments.  She’s a sports fan who normally comments on the gripping excitement that is reality television but more importantly she’s a mother.  What could appeal more than a reality TV watching mother, blonde, perfect teeth to those that don’t identify with Wilson?  O’Brien’s appearance is a perfect play on the ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ front.

The disappointing thing is seeing my fellow women being used as pawns by an industry dominated by aging white misogynists who are terrified that their bucolic memories of Australia no longer match the Australia that actually exists.  It’s no longer as simple as the lower classes play league and the upper and middle classes play Rugby Union for the sydneyites and it scares Rupert and his scions.
 
A-League make my point:
So I see it's too hot at 16:00 tomorrow for an A-League game in Adelaide.  Common sense has come to pass and they have pushed the game into the evening.  Quite why this makes 16:00 still okay for the preceding W-League game instead I'm not sure.  Yes they have moved that game from earlier in the day but how was it considered acceptable to schedule that timing at this time of year anyway?  By the end of the W-League game at least the sun won't be baring down on the players but 16:00 in Adelaide is still likely to be dangerous conditions for a football game.

We're not Stakeholders we're shareholders

Okay. I admit it. I’m struggling to not bask in the glow of the footballing world coming to the realisation that the leaders of the Football Federation of Australia really do have no idea what they are doing.

Following on from Boozy Bec’s article last week the footballing world has collapsed around the ears of disco Damian de Bohun, David Gallop and the FFA board and while the football public have given them a chance to play out from the back all they have done is throw the ball in their own net.  

Nothing exemplifies more how much they have missed the mark than the message around the ability to appeal a banning decision.  From the start of the week pronouncing you cannot appeal to Friday’s statement that there has always been an appeals process to the disastrous performance on Fox yesterday from disco Damien where he stated a process was being implemented.  How do you get so many things wrong and so many different answers to the same question?  Because you lie, because you don’t value the people paying your salaries enough.

The two things that might finally wake someone at Oxford Street after months of neglect is the reaction from groups other than active supporters.  

There has over the years been a sense of entitlement from active supporters and the irony of active supporters of a plastic league biffing the ‘against modern football’ slogan about is not lost on me but this has spread.  It’s not ‘just’ the active support who have realised that the FFA are incompetent, no longer can people write it off as being a vocal 5% and who cares when there are 20000 other supporters in the ground.  Well what you have done now FFA is annoy those other 20000.

The resounding applause from the rest of the ground as the Northern terrace left on Saturday night should be ringing in their ears of the FFA leadership as it means it’s not just a vocal minority embarrassed by the behaviour of the Football Federation but it is all football people.  Of course based on Sunday’s almost bizarre appearance on FOX I suspect it has once again fallen on deaf ears.

Meanwhile the all-important Stakeholders are offside as well. Apart from a few outliers at FOX who are obviously more beholden to de Bohun’s expense account than others...

...the football media are calling for action and Mark Bosnich’s ‘discussion’ with de Bohun yesterday should go down as a watershed moment for the A-League but I suspect it won’t.

Club chairman have almost universally condemned the situation and sided with their members and supporters and even the Fox Sports social media accounts are more supportive of their viewers than the FFA.  You can only imagine how the league’s sponsors are viewing this with many fans refusing to support those sponsors while the current regime mismanage the league.

Finally we’ve heard a lot lately from the FFA (through insinuation) and their media lapdogs that supporters are not Stakeholders.  No FFA we’re more important than that.  We’re your Shareholders.  We play this game, our kids play this game, our friends and family play this game.  We pay our subs that pay your salaries and allowances.  We pay for A-League tickets which fund the clubs to give you a product to sell.  We pay for your expense account disco Damian.  We are your shareholders.

I suspect that at the highest level of corporate governance the voice of the Shareholders should remain paramount and it quite clearly doesn’t.  The FFA from the Chairman to the PR department could not care less about their supporters and take their attendance and blind support for granted as they continue to do an immense amount of harm to our game. 

You are there to advocate on behalf of us, to represent us to give us and our sport a voice and a place on a national or global stage.  Your role is not to mute us or to undermine us, to side with those who wish the game of football would just go away.  Your role is not to side with the ingrained Sheila’s Wogs and pooftahs mentality that all football fans are just ‘ethnics’ looking for a fight.

It’s time for change.  The Board needs to be changed to accurately reflect the views of the shareholders and advocate for them.  The incompetent management needs to be gone and the A-League needs to decide its own destiny.  The league has been heading for this point for two years now and the time to prevaricate has gone.  Steven Lowy has walked into a train wreck of which his father is not entirely absolved of blame and it’s time he and his lap dog of a board made some decisions to fix this from the top down.

The obligation to adhere to the rules of procedural fairness and natural justice do not apply to our organisation.

"We then asked the FFA why there was no appeals process, and were told that there is an appeals process.

"We questioned the validity of this statement given the banning orders that we have seen of our own supporters (and those of other active supporter groups) contain no information on this process or even contact information for the FFA to further discuss the notice.

"We then asked the FFA to provide details as to how fans could appeal their bans, we were told the following: “Anyone who feels that they have been unjustly banned can present evidence to their club who will, if the evidence is convincing, appeal on behalf of the fan.”

or...

Someone is lying and based on the responses from every party on the FFA and Security side of the debate in the last 5 days that has re-inforced that they are the law and no debate will be entered into then I have a theory on who that might be.  

It's almost like they don't think the supporters can read.

Different class

I have been trying to write something in more detail on the situation with the Telegraph article and the banned fans but over three days I have struggled to find the right point.  I’ve mentioned the FFA lack of response, I’ve mentioned the FFAs complicity in the breach of privacy but the scope of the arrogance from the organisation is hard to put into words.

I’ll start with a comment.  There are some idiots in the fan bases of A-League clubs, any crowd of people will attract some morons and the A-League in certain regions attract more than their fair share.  There are a majority of people on that list that would be better exported to Christmas Island than let back into A-League grounds

However the key word there is ‘majority’.  There seems to be clear evidence that a number of those banned and now publically shamed have done nothing to earn these bans and when they have attempted to get this changed have been informed there is no right of appeal.  After the revelations about transparency within the FFA it should come as no shock that a due process doesn’t exist and while not ideal it was liveable when the names were kept secure.

Now however the list of identities is in the hands of a number of organisations with little transparency, standards or honesty and has been pushed into the public eye.  Now should have been the time for the FFA to stop hiding from the problems and actually own this one, a chance for a diplomatic and well put together response even, perhaps a policy that allows for review.  Instead David Gallup gives us this:

The actual crux of the matter Mr. Gallup is that if the police identify an individual who has engaged in serious anti-social behaviour they can’t just lock him up for 2-10 years.  There is a due process where that person can prove their innocence.  As per usual the god complex of the FFA Chairman and leadership puts them beyond being wrong and instead of a common sense approach to dealing with an issue for the A-League they have buried their heads in the sand and hoped to fix it with a sycophantic self-congratulatory paragraph at the end.

It’s not hard to do it right.  John Tsatsimas the CEO of West Sydney Wanderers managed to offer a comment with class, dignity and loyalty to the people that support his team and make our game.  Surely with the millions the FFA earn and the hundreds of thousands they spend on consultants they have one person who can advise them competently?

I also notice that the Telegraph have in fact removed the article and the names of those they have alleged to have been guilty from the website.  One can only assume that is related to legal issues.  It is interesting though that they have taken more action than the FFA have to recover the situation as Gallop continues the party line of guilt until proven... actually not even proven just guilt.

It seems that Messrs Gallop, de Bohun and Lowy don’t realise that vast majority of the fans of this league want the league to thrive and grow more than they do and it’s becoming pretty clear that the majority of them have a far better idea how to do this than those in charge at Oxford St.

This game and this league deserve better stewardship and the stark differences between these two comments underline the point that just maybe the league owners have a better idea how to make this league flourish and develop than the FFA board of Lowy Sycophants and the apologists they employ.