A-League growing roots

Good, experienced club coaches will tell you that it takes three seasons to build a consistently successful team: assembling the ingredients in the first season, mixing them in the second and baking the cake in the third.

This pastry cook analogy might also apply to a fledgling, brave new competition, such as the A-League.

If it does, and I believe it does, it is too early to taste the cake, for it is raw, is yet to be tested in the oven and has no crust.

But it is beginning to smell good.

Version one, the mixing phase, had its moments, as would a young chef whose overriding quality is his boldness and capacity to take risks but little else.

The boldness lay in his being brave enough to have a go with cocky confidence in his new, untried recipe.

The boldness was repaid with stunning attendances and levels of curiosity. A cumulative total of 1.05 million of them rolled up, an astonishing 70,000 for the four opening games.

That total for a weekend was never repeated in season one, probably because the curiosity factor had a natural loss of shine. But there were other elements that conspired.

One was that, while Sydney was flying on the back of Dwight Yorke and decent results, Melbourne Victory, the team of the league’s second biggest market, was tottering and, having drawn 18,000 to its first home game, could only muster 10,000 for its last.

Another factor was that the player recruitment, for a league which, according to John O’Neill, was in the entertainment business, was astonishingly bad. The chef got lost somewhere on his way to the market.

Player rosters bulged with some of the dreariest of men, honest, hard-working, functional stage hands suddenly thrust on to the stage.

Theatre and showmanship were left on the supermarket shelf. The poor silly sods who ran the clubs all thought the only way to market conquest was to stay relevant with results, lining up teams of coal miners for the trick, each eager to blacken their faces and chip away in the most mundane way.

It was a long way from showbiz but, even if the football was pedestrian, predictable and dull, and nothing compared to the show its dreaded predecessor had provided at its height, it was ‘new football’, untainted and ‘clean’ and, as such, attracted a new, virgin crowd, curious, responsive and eager, bubbling to line up with the revolutionary new order of Frank Lowy, O’Neill, Guus Hiddink and the rest of it.

The debut season of the A-League, Version One, pulled in 42,000 fans for the grand final and a season average of over 11,000 per game, an astonishing multiple of what had gone before in the dying days of the NSL.

Broad curiosity creates its own growth, like a snowball, and it was always on that the numbers would increase in season two. But then came Hiddink, Uruguay and the World Cup and a nation fell under the football spell.

Suddenly club memberships doubled and there were few hotter tickets in town than the A-League.

But all this had faddish, shallow roots. Football was in.

What mattered more was what kind of entertainment would be on show to vindicate the market surge, whether the substance of the league, as a genuine and competitive diversion, was enjoying growth parallel with that of the market interest, enabling that interest to be sustained.

I remember making this argument somewhere in the past, probably after seeing 40,000 show up for the 1997 NSL Grand Final in Brisbane, asking panting soccer optimists to calm down and beware of tall trees with shallow roots which could topple with the next breath of wind. And true enough, Brisbane was to never again come near having those sorts of crowds in the NSL era.

They botched it, as did Northern Spirit the throbbing promise of its debut season. People came, they didn’t like what they saw, and never came back.

Gratifyingly, season two of the A-League, in terms of the body matter on view, was an improvement on season one.

Three of the eight clubs, Melbourne, Adelaide and Newcastle, significantly upped their entertainment value: all three played flowing, attacking football, paraded personality players of box-office value and, of course, were generally winning.

Those three clubs drove the upsurge in attendances which, overall, culminated in a 21.6 per cent rise on season one for an average of 14,155 per game. They should take a bow and they should persist. And the others should learn from them.

Two other clubs, Queensland and Central Coast, remained static but sufficiently competitive to keep the turnstiles clicking. That said, both should begin to think about what extra they might bring to version three of the A-League.

Some creative management is in order. Unless they add entertainment value to what they dish up, week in and week out, they will wane next season, and deservedly so.

Example: if Dario Vidosic migrates to Europe, as is expected, Queensland will need to fill the void by a player, or players, of similarly refreshing excitement.

Example: the Mariners cannot forever maintain their provincial penchant for combat and dull competitiveness as the be all and end all of their existence. Sooner or later they will also have to have some class.

The remaining three of the eight clubs, Sydney, Perth and New Zealand, offered nothing to the league last season. Indeed they were only a regressive factor. A serious and urgent reality check is in order for all three of them.

The worst, because of its massive impact value given the size of its market, was Sydney.

Not of course because of their results or their eventual table position, which were respectable. But their box office value was down, driven primarily by the pedestrian, pub-football they played and, to a lesser degree, by the negative vibe of erratic management.

The signs of a turnaround are good. Terry Butcher, who brought nothing to the club outside of the mostly negative and large headlines commensurate with his boofy bulk, has been jettisoned and his interim replacement, Branko Culina, is now prescribing a dose of serene, technical sanity.

Sydney’s impressive Shanghai sojourn, their win and their sweet football, already suggests that Culina is ready to be confirmed as the permanent helmsman.

The dramatic change in technical culture he has brought to the club is already obvious so why the wait? Who better, why and why the search? Why not give him the keys now so the build for season three can now begin?

Whatever, Sydney’s lot is critical to the A-League.

What saved the appeal of the league, going from season one to two, was Melbourne. Had Melbourne faltered last season in tandem with Sydney, the overall brand attraction of the A-League would surely have been down and we would now be struggling for a way out of disappointment. Imagine that.

In review, the A-League is a success, a major success. But it will not last, or at least its upward curve will not last, unless it continues to captivate both of its biggest markets, Sydney and Melbourne, or at least one of them.

Both of those teams, ideally, need to charm a ready and willing public. At least until the roots grow deep, deep enough so the tree will not topple.

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