After a week of A-League chaos, with Clive Palmer speaking out and Nathan Tinkler threatening to sue, it’s fair to say our national league is in a perilous state.
Palmer appears to be an enemy of the (football) people – however, ridiculous as it may sound the worst thing he can do to the FFA isn’t to stay where he is. Nor is it to walk away from the game altogether. The worst thing he can do (for the FFA) is to start up his own league – and that’s exactly what former A-League boss Archie Frasier believes he may be planning.
If Palmer were to convince Tony Sage (Perth Glory) and Nathan Tinkler (Newcastle Jets) that they would be better served in a renegade breakaway competition – then the FFA would be left trying to negotiate their upcoming televison deal with a league of just seven clubs. Based on recent evidence, finding investors to plug the gaps would be a Herculean task and it’s unlikely the FFA could pull it off. Sage has distanced himself from a breakaway this week, but has left the door open by stating that change has to happen – if it doesn’t, he’ll obviously consider other options. Tinkler on the other hand appears to be right with Palmer – angry with the FFA and keen to get some manner of retribution for the governing body apparently taking advantage of his naivety in the world of football.
Palmer’s breakaway league, unbounded by the FFA’s ownership model would be able to invite the likes of South Melbourne and Sydney Olympic on board, they would be able to approach former bidders from West Sydney, Canberra and Wollongong, and former owners of Perth, Brisbane and Newcastle who walked away when the going got too expensive and the decision making process too distant. It’s easy to see how this would be attractive to the kinds of rich businessmen the FFA has courted in the past, and at the same time to the traditional member owned clubs. It would be football for the sake of football – run on a budget that matched income.
With that in mind, it’s hard to imagine that other A-League franchise owners wouldn’t switch allegiances pretty fast from the expensive and shrinking FFA competition to a low cost and explosive new rebel competition.
The FFA would argue, with some justification, that this wouldn’t be in the interest of the national teams – probably not in the interest of the national coaching program either – and that a breakaway could bring down the FFA itself, which is precisely why it’s essential that they pre-empt a breakaway by giving the owners what they’ve been asking for, namely the governance structure that was recommended in the Crawford and NSL Reports all those years ago.
