Why be a Soccer Fan Prt 2
When I first read your comment, Ed, I had to go back and re-read my article. I didn’t realise how much it came across as so dark on the A-League. When I sat down to write I had in mind a bit of a comparison of the two soccer experiences of the day, highlighting the simple joys of junior and amateur league soccer. Clearly more than that came out.
The fact is that I too would be heartbroken if the Roar folded, and even moreson if the A-League suffered collapse. That neither of these things is impossible is of major concern.
Thanks all for your comments. I love the idea of a state champions / A-League top 6 Cup, or something. And you’re absolutely correct Guido to point out that the reasons people follow a sport can be very diverse and personal.
I want to write more about these sorts of topics – trying to really scrutinise, from a consumer’s point of view, what the A-League is. There’s a lot of unfiltered optimism about the rise of soccer in Australia, but if you read the introductions of soccer books from Australia going back to the 1970s, this optimism is nothing new.
Les Murray was quick this season to talk up A-League crowds, but we all can see the A-League isn’t in the clear yet. Why? What can be done? Does it matter?
I want the A-League to survive forever. Connectedness to the communities, however that is developed, is very important in my view but so is quality. When people follow Rugby or AFL in this country, or for that matter cricket or motor racing, they know they are watching the best in the world; the elite. I mean if you’re going to dedicate a lot of your discretionary spending to something, not to mention emotional energy, you don’t want it in the back of your mind that you’re really watching a second division league.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan. ‘Fan’ is a shortening of ‘fanatic’ and in the football world we tend to wear it on our sleeves. The important realisation is that we are not the game’s locus of growth, or even survival. Fanatics do not a mass-movement make. Fanaticism, as we are often heard to candidly celebrate (see Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch), is a disease. It’s not even particularly healthy.
I’ll digress more. I am a ‘new fan’, as I’ve said. On the face of it, the FFA should see a bloke like me and say, ‘cool, a new fan; hope there’s lots more like that’. But they would be mistaken. You see I am someone who is guilty of having been utterly fanatical about various religious and political ideologies throughout my life. I may not have been a fan of soccer, but I have been previously diseased nonetheless. From my own mental health’s point of view soccer is a wonderful way to live out my disease with minimum adverse impact, a sort of ideological methadone program. So the FFA should not see me as the thin edge of an ever-broadening wedge.
The FFA also must know that to get people interested in the A-League you have to get them interested in the game of soccer, but their immediate dilemna is that an interest in soccer can exist in its own right, and they have only one product available, for which they’re asking real money. Back to quality.
I reckon the salary cap needs to be a) kept permanently, and b) raised, a lot. To begin with I think it should be doubled. Basically the criteria should shift from “What sort of figure could all the clubs afford?” to “What sort of figure could the four wealthiest clubs realistically afford?”
I think about the ‘market’ for Clubs. Not tickets, TV subs or merchandise, but actual Clubs. Dudes like Clive Palmer or the various Russians and Arabs who are buying European clubs for fun. A bloke has to have his train set doesn’t he? I think having a salary cap, and a set of reasonable restrictions on foreign players, actually makes the prospect more fun for your average fun-loving billionare. It’s just part of the game, and it keeps costs down to the merely stupendous. I’d like to see salary capping across the world for this reason. Note that a high cap can still allow for really amazing teams.
In ancient Athens there was apparently no business taxes and there was hence a very wealthy merchant class. Although these individuals paid no direct tax, they had burdens as citizens. It was normal for an individual to fund (and command) a warship for example, or a production of a play, or a sporting festival. There’s a certain sense to this, and there’s no real losers.
To have quality teams you need to be able to buy the best in the World. As Ed points out, the A-League is improving and there’s no doubt that every top player who comes into the league makes it more attractive for other top players. Lifting the cap on teams like Sydney and the Gold Coast, who can afford better players, would accelerate this process.
Of course these rich teams would come to dominate the league. It’s common knowledge that playing against superior opposition helps lift your own game so the result would be a better quality league and the extra drama of actual, rather than merely statistical, ‘David and Goliath’ stories. And then there’s always that other bored billionare…
Finally here, can we allow ourselves to be as ambitious in the long term for the A-League as we dare to be with regard to the Socceroos? We do dare, don’t we, to dream for our countrymen the Socceroos to be in the top 10 in the World? Top five even? I have had halucinagenic moments of even thinking that they could, just could, with a mixture of luck, terrible luck for various other teams, and perfectly timed form, win the World Cup! Admit it! You’ve done the same.
Shouldn’t we be aiming to have one of the top 10 leagues in the world? Top 5?
Just as a post script, I also said in my last article that ‘Queensland’ teams meant nothing to me. What bullshit! Queensland teams all in the top 3 by season’s end, and I will be hyperbolically happy.
Mnemonic Miscellanea
First getting to the game. For the first time I drove, and somehow got a park right next to the Paddo Pub, a mere block from the stadium. We were over an hour early but there was already thousands of people milling about (both the Paddo and the Caxton were packed with Orange), and we felt damn lucky to get the park.
Jacob and I were meeting a friend, Donald, at the Wally Lewis statue at 7pm, half hour before the game. (The game had already been rescheduled from 7 to 7.30 in order to get the expectedly large crowds into their seats.) So we had some food and wandered to the stadium, which took ages because of the crowd.
Almost there and a Sydney contingent of about 20 were marching directly behind us singing, “Oh, oooohh oohh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.. SYDNEY!” at the top of their voices. They sounded great – a bit too great for me so immediately after they got to the second, “SYDNEY!” I rejoined, “CAN’T PLAY!” at the top of my own not-soft voice. I didn’t even look around to see their response. Didn’t dare. But they shut up. The little bit of truth in what I shouted comes back in a reminiscence of a shouting Sydney crew after a QRvSFC game last season, “WE’RE SHIT BUT WE BEAT YOU!” It was great humour at the time and I remember Jacob and I laughing respectfully at their militant honesty. But last night they were shit and they didn’t beat us.
Ok, we met Donald. It was obviously going to be a huge crowd and I’m glad I bought my tickets on the net, which I’ve never done before for an A-League game.
Later Donald said he’d seen the ominous clouds in the sky, but I knew nothing. Seemed like great weather for 35,000 people to be milling about in.
The tickets were for the second level – Section 526 – but accidentally we ended up on the top level (eventually in 722). On the way up the stairwell, caged from the open air outside the stadium, we noticed it was raining (the view’s great anyway btw). When we got to the top (we didn’t dawdle or stop for drinks from the time we entered) we looked out into the stadium into an impenetrable curtain of sheeting water. Jacob and I spontaneously sprinted to the gate – one of those adrenalin-from-nowhere moments. The boys were still training, but there was already a glisten of water across the whole pitch. There were thousands running from the stands to the back areas. A long ball would land on the pitch and stop dead.
It was an extraordinarily timed (potential) disaster. First, if the game had have kicked off at 7pm as originally scheduled it would have had to be stopped, with very little warning, and there would have been a horrible stampede of 35,000 people. As it was the 35,000 people had well-and truly mobilised – they were for the most part in the stadium or directly outside it (there were many waterlogged people in the stands by kickoff), when the torrent hit. As it was there was a brilliant scene of an almost empty stadium (for the front three quarters) with a ring of packed people. Cancellation? Impossible. But if that rain had continued it would have been simply impossible to play. Extraordinary theatre.
The icing on our spectacle from above (where we were dry incidentally, apart from light spray from the lashing winds, and I’m sure we weren’t the only ones to permanently migrate to the very back) was the home and away hardcore crews at each end. Many of them stuck it out, leaving a blue and an orange front section full at respective ends, dervishly dancing and chanting in this outrageous torrent of water (it was too heavy to be called ‘rain’), knowing, so I think, that to break and run was to allow the other side’s fans to win. The players had gone off, the world had evacuated the cyclonic zone, except for these fans. In ones and twos members of each crew fled, having had enough, but as groups they held out until the end of the inclement. If anything, my report is that the Sydney fans won the contest. At the end their group was bigger, until the stands were reoccupied of course.
The next piece of Miscellanea is brought to you by the letter M: Matty McKay, Massimo Murdocca, Moore, Miniecon, McLaren, McLoughan, McMaster, Michael, Mitch and Marcinho. If we still had Milicic we could put out a fit, fairly coherent M11 to maul Melbourne and mince the Mariners. I’ve left out injured Matthew Ham.
Finally, with no bearing on last night at all because Reddy had sweet F to do, I think it is time to tribute Roar coach Fernando vas Alves. We’ve heard about how great Frank Farina is and we hear about how great many of the players are. But when we hear about how good Reddy is, and he has improved enormously since I’ve been watching him, and now how good McMaster is when he had to step up, surely it’s time to mention the Goalkeeper Coach.
For example, we heard of how last season McMaster as number two was snubbed for import Tando Velaphi, as if this, and the subsequent faith in McMaster this season, was all Frank. Surely Alves would have had a big part in these decisions, as he is the one constantly working with McMaster. But more broadly, this Alves bloke can obviously spot and develop young goalkeepers. I’ve never heard about the international market for goalkeeper coaches, but I reckon Alves could get ambitious if he wanted.
Have a good weekend. And good luck to the Mariners. I haven’t got any really strong feelings about who I want to win, and neither is this post especially mnemonic, but I’m moving with the letter M.
