2016/17 - North of the border edition

Hi honey, I’m home.

So the A-League is back and so am I <waves>.  After an off season spent hoping the promising signs from the FFA at the end of last season were a beacon for the future, migrating north for the winter and watching hilarious videos of Nick Meredith ‘defending’ for the Brisbane Strikers I was expecting a quiet early season as news drifted in that the FFA were standing by the fans, the clubs, women's football, and the A-League and working to make the A-League great again.

I mean.  How hard is it to stand by the promises made and the public statements made?  Yet here we are again with the catalogue of catastrophes backing up already and the season is only two weeks old.

Ladies first
 
Brisbane Roar being a joke is hardly breaking news (Newcastle – chortle) but this article is a new low.

We’ve already had a look on here at how the FFA pay lip-service to the W-League despite the figures showing the tremendous growth in participation numbers for Female footballers of all ages.

If it isn’t playing on dangerous pitches in dangerous conditions it’s failing to schedule enough time for show-piece games in the league without even looking into how little the top women’s players are paid to make it look like the FFA isn’t the boys club that everyone can clearly see it is.

Isn’t it about time the FFA took some of that money they have been extorting out of this player base, the clubs, regional federations, Fox Sports and most importantly the success of the Matilda’s and offered something other than lip service to the Women’s game below the national side?

I mean it would take a fraction of what they hand the richest club owners in the world to pay Tim Cahill each week to ensure the W-League and it’s players are treated in a fair manner.
 
Officiating


We’ll look at this more widely soon in light of the laughable comments from the A-League that the A-League needs to clamp down on diving and time wasting (I would suggest a clamp down on season ending tackles might be a good idea as well).

However as we’re on a Queensland bent this evening.  How has Matt McKay got away with this without further sanction? 

It was clear to audiences all over the world yet the FFA judiciary show their usual backbone and pretend they never spotted it.  A footballer playing in the Gladesville-Hornsby Over-35s competition would likely be subject to a further sanction in this situation so how is a professional in the top league in this nation not?

Watch this space

Are the FFA once again reneging on promises?  I’m hearing rumors of discontent from within the A-League supporter groups.  

New lows

Yeah, yeah.  I’ve been quiet.  In my defence it’s mostly because I am grossly lazy and verging on incompetent.  

The good news though is that FFA are still there and still hopeless.  Any thought that saying goodbye to Damien de Bohun was going to be the panacea for all ills was quickly destroyed with the laughable behaviour from the FFA about Besart Berisha’s ban for clearly kicking another player.

Let’s start with one of the basic tenants of football and that is that you are responsible for your actions.  Provocation is not justification for any action on a football field and is quite clearly defined in disciplinary processes as such.  To see the FFA’s match review panel reduce Berisha’s ban because he was 'provoked' is laughable and an embarrassment to the players and officials at every level of the game in this country.

The precedent has been set.  Violent conduct is now a maximum of a one game ban.
 

You can bet more players will this precedent use in the future.  Harry Novillo is currently facing missing the first two weeks of the finals and should even now be looking to appeal the decision.  The good news is that he doesn’t need any facts to back up his position.  In fact if video evidence proves what he is claiming to be untrue that seems to be an advantage in an appeal.

He just needs to mention is that a couple more people will attend the game or watch on TV and the FFA will bend over backwards to ensure he is available for this weekend’s games but fuck the integrity of the disciplinary process.  Dollars before due process seems to be the FFAs new mantra for decisions without remotely evaluating the impact on others.

To see the FFA leading social media for this weekend with Berisha is cringe worthy.  It just underlines the commercial decisions at play before the credibility of the sport or the A-League players.

All of this of course is before you look at the lies that provide the basis of the fundamentally flawed decision.  This whole event is on video.  The referee was 3 feet away.  Photographic and video evidence clearly shows that Andrew Durante did not touch Berisha in any way, shape or form yet apparently he tried to choke the player.  How is such perjury allowed in what is meant to be a legal process to ensure a correct result for the parties involved?

I would think Andrew Durante would be talking to lawyers after such a public slight on his integrity and behaviour.  I would also hope that the Professional Footballers Association would be looking into how appropriate it is for this sort of action to occur in a forum that is key to their members.

The FFA would dearly love this brushed under the finals rug but the precedent it sets is dangerous at many levels from undermining the integrity of match officials, undermining the laws of the game and impugning the character of one of the most respected players in the A-League.  Andrew Durante’s reputation has been thrown out the door at the expense of chasing a dollar and the chance of Melbourne Victory going further in the finals.

Even by the disgraceful standards of FFA behaviour this year, this is a new low.

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.