This week another fat cat walked away from the game, the FFA lost another franchise, and we were faced with the prospect of more legal action both by and against the sport’s governing body.
There are supposed to be three sides to every story in my little world. In this case it should be the Football Federation Australia, the Hunter Sports Group, and my arrogant little rant. I can’t bring myself to give their sides of the story though.

Do I have to? Ok…
The FFA would say blah, blah, blah.
The HSG would counter with blah, blah, blah…
Nobody cares.

Why? Because like me no one can trust Nathan Tinkler, just like no one could trust Clive Palmer last week, and just like no one can trust Frank Lowy. Why? Because they are all billionaire businessmen, and businessmen don’t become billionaires by playing nice and telling the truth.

They do it by being brutally selfish and bloodily single minded.
Eight years ago I learned that there would be no place for South Melbourne (or any of our great rivals) in the new national competition. It was hard to swallow, but I accepted that this was progress. The new governors of the game were doing it for the greater good and it would lead us to more stable times. The new governors would do things properly and we would no longer be embarrassed by terrible administration, mistake after mistake, arrogance from the top and debts. Terrible debts.

Let’s make this clear. I love Melbourne Victory, and I love South Melbourne. It’s like my wife and my mother. One came along more recently than the other, but I don’t want to lose either.
Yet here we are, seven years into the A-League, and things are no more stable than they were before – crowds may have grown, player earnings are higher, the quality on the pitch is up, but where’s the stability I was promised? The debt is out of control. A-League clubs lost $27m last year.

They will do the same next year. Clubs were told last week that the new TV deal isn’t expected to be the silver bullet they had previously hoped.
Let’s not forget, no matter how you slice it up, the trouble with HSG started when the FFA sought to take advantage of his riches to gain a substantial fee for the Jets license. The defence for the FFA appears to be that HSG should have done their due diligence. But honestly, is that a defence that the governing body should be using? Is it their job to rip off investors? Is that likely to bring more investors in later on?

Many believe that the A-League model , a brand new league based around franchise clubs, should learn from the early mistakes and later successes of the MLS in America. Peter Wilt, having been heavily involved in those successes in America, told me yesterday that “the FFA should be of service to the A-League and it’s owners, not vice versa.” Forgive me if this is racist, but how come an American can see this from 10,000 miles away when our own glorious leaders can’t see it right under their noses?