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The A-League has hit the right note; Now let the clubs play

The A-League has hit the right note; Now let the clubs play

Earlier this month, the A-Leagues released a hype video to commemorate the impending start of their 20th season. If you’re taking the time to read this article, you’ve probably already seen it; The shrinking presence of Australia’s top leagues in the media landscape is forcing those still involved in the competition to actively seek out coverage.

If not, here it is:

The response was swift and overwhelming; People loved it.

Above all, they loved it for the same reason they loved the A-League: because it was theirs. This was not a contrived attempt to appeal to a mythical mainstream by pretending to be something the league was not. It was a celebration of what made the A-League the A-League. Its ups and downs, its heroes and villains, its memes and its dreams and, above all, acknowledging that they all belonged to those who gave a part of themselves to make the competition what it is. Everyone who has given something to the league, be it their sweat on the field, their voice in the stands or their time and dedication to spreading the message, owns a part of the A-League Men and A-League Women This video addressed that.

– A-League Tip: Create a competition and compete with the best!

But aside from the exercise in soaring rhetoric, the ad also demonstrated the deep affection that still exists for the A-Leagues among a rusty group of hardcore fans. As shrinking as their numbers may be and as much as the league – or more accurately, those tasked with running it – may resent them, this cohort still has a deep affinity for the competitions, and they want to see the league and their club thrive. Most importantly, it gives them a sense of belonging, a sense of community and a sense of pride. Sure, it may seem nonsense sometimes, but that’s how it is her Nonsense. And it makes her happy.

Well, sometimes it makes them happy. Misery tends to be the default setting when playing sports, punctuated by rare moments of pure bliss that make the intervening periods of misery worthwhile. After all, suffering shapes character.

Heading into the first season of what is being described as a new “soccer-focused” A-League – which might be more aptly summed up if the league doesn’t have the resources to do much more than focus on the basics the operation of the sport – The content of the video and the response give reason to hope that the league’s leaders have recognized their priorities in their new era of back-to-basics forced by austerity. It’s not about attracting fans of the AFL, NRL or other rivals to the game, nor is it about persuading those who follow teams in Europe to abandon those ties in favor of their local A-League team .

Of course you can’t dismiss these people, but their own advertising has shown that there are tens of thousands of people who were once committed to the A-League, who were passionate about the A-League, but are no longer so. I’m trying to get these people back who have already shown that they are ready to support the league and who helped turn the competition into something that felt like it was at the peak of one almost a decade ago Riding the wave towards mainstream celebrity would completely change his direction for the better.

Thursday’s backflip, which restored goal difference and goals scored as the preferred criteria for breaking draws in the table, was promising in this regard. Yes, it may have been obvious, so obvious that most are still trying to figure out why the league made the change in the first place; let alone why they didn’t tell anyone, apparently including themselves, about it afterwards. But at the same time, absolutely no one would be surprised if the league had simply carried on, in the fine tradition of modern existence where those in charge don’t lose touch, but the consumers are wrong. Rather, an error was acknowledged and corrected at the first opportunity, without the need for protests or pressure campaigns. Anyone who has stuck with the A-Leagues through thick and thin will know that this is remarkable in itself.

That brings us to another important thing that played a role in the A-Leagues celebrating their 20th anniversary. Or more specifically, what not: suits. There were people in suits in the video – Aurelio Vidmar wears a pretty nice suit when he calls Adelaide a “pissed city” – but not the kind found in boardrooms and executive offices around the world. These figures undoubtedly play an important role in keeping the competition going, but ultimately they also play a supporting role, ideally when they don’t grab the headlines but enable their clubs and players to do so.

Missing from the league’s 20th anniversary celebrations, for example, were the sale of the Grand Final rights to Destination NSW or the ownership claims that threatened to kill Canberra United and the Newcastle Jets. Neither did the strategic miscalculations that led to Keep Up’s collapse and mass layoffs, nor the resulting impact on the lives of many of the people mentioned above who were committed to developing the game and the message to spread.

Our own appreciation of the league’s history shows us that the A-League Men’s and A-League Women’s are at their best when they are simply football leagues. They are at their best when the players on the field, the coaches in the dugout and the culture that develops around the clubs become the stars of the show. They thrive when fans are driven not by contempt for the game’s officials but for their derby rivals, and when their focus is not on the viability of the league’s balance sheet but on how much their club could get for the latest shining star that comes through their academy and how this can be reinvested.

In fact, it seems the best thing the A-League can do to get people to love the competition and win back those who became disillusioned and walked away is to simply not give them a reason to. It’s about doing the important and, yes, underrated work of creating a framework for the league and then letting it do its thing.

The obvious problem with all this, of course, is that while the league’s greatest strength is the sense of ownership and affection of its supporters, it remains a private, for-profit competition. It is insulated from the rest of the Australian football pyramid, and with Football Australia still tight-lipped about a domestic second-tier competition in 2025, that is unlikely to change any time soon. The announcement earlier this week that Central Coast Mariners chairman Richard Peil was handing the club back to absentee owner Mike Charlesworth – who himself is likely to hand the club’s license back to the A-League at the end of the season – due to the financial challenges the club faces in terms of funding, it has provided new insight into the ongoing sustainability issues that plague most clubs. Football clubs around the world are generally not profit machines, but the A-Leagues’ model almost requires them to be.

In the short term, however, it seems obvious that the A-Leagues are at their best when they are the A-Leagues; if they are allowed to be good, bad, stupid, brilliant, beautiful, ugly and any other adjectives that come to mind when this masterful video plays. The competition can do that, then there are no limits for the next 20 seasons.