This week’s Melbourne derby highlights the enormous differential between the mighty Melbourne Victory and the youthful Melbourne Heart – it also illustrates the importance of derby games in football.
The derby showcases the immense power of such rivalries to create hype and get people talking – that in turn attracts casual supporters, and this helps to create full stadiums with a genuine matchday atmosphere, something rarely seen in the A-League outside of Adelaide. How can we best handle this for the good of the A-League? Football people all know that what is required to raise interest in the game in Australia and to engage the passions of supporters is genuine local rivalries. Melbourne vs Sydney has a certain historical edge to it, but it will never compare to Melbourne vs Melbourne, or Sydney vs Sydney.
The game here desperately needs an effective second team in Melbourne, and second sides in the other major cities. Crowds may take a hit initially, but Heart has proven that there is always a market for an alternative option, and derby games prove that this market stretches beyond regular attendees. The side effect of increased publicity and greater passion, and of more supporters discussing the upcoming games and analysing the performances afterward, is more casual fans getting along to enjoy a better atmosphere. This can only grow the game.
It’s true that Melbourne Heart’s average without the two home games against Victory drops to an alarming 5,828 – but that’s the whole point of the derby games, to provide that bump in interest. Let’s have more of them, I say. I say that the FFA do a great job of finding rescue packages for failing franchises (North Queensland Fury aside) and they should be battling now to find backers for second teams in Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane – teams that will keep the existing clubs on their toes and provide unengaged locals with an alternative to follow, as well as the explosive derby atmospheres.
And what about Melbourne? Do we have to stick with two teams here? The AFL copes with nine teams in our fair city – could we handle three? Where would we get a third from and how would it be differentiated from the other two? Heart’s low non-derby average demonstrates how hard it is to build a supporter base from nothing if no one knows what you are. They have been dismissed in some quarters as simply being the red team rather than the blue team.
Is there a group of investors with something different to offer? A group who can bring a concept that will attract some, whilst stirring up rivalry everywhere they go? We’re all aware of one huge sporting organisation in the city that inspires such polarised feelings of exhileration and sheer disgust and it has it’s own distinctive colour differentiation – they’ve even toyed with soccer in the past. We’ve got red and blue, I keenly await the arrival of black and white. After all, who wouldn’t love to hate Collingwood United in the A-League?
