Ange Postecoglou
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/a-lea...#ixzz2EJXUdAHb
LAST week's decision by the Asian Football Confederation on Australia's participation in the Asian Champions League is an indicator of the biggest challenge that David Gallop has in steering the code forward over the next few years.
Australia's failure to truly engage in our region in competition terms is very visible now, but for me the underlying cause is our uncertainty in our own identity. Our code is a global sport but Australia has its own unique sporting landscape and how we juggle these two factors could determine the extent of growth in the game. The past seven years have been about laying a foundation, but now the time has come for some clear direction in leadership.
The biggest wake-up call for me was not our reduced numbers in the competition, but which club was actually nominated as champion by the AFC. There is no clearer indicator of our lack of identity than our acceptance that we don't even respect our own competition rules.
To make it clear, since 1984 our champion has been decided by a grand final. Apart from 1987, when the rules were changed before the season and APIA was first past the post, the winner of our competition for nearly 30 years has been the victorious team in the grand final. This is not an opinion, it is fact and it is written in the competition rules and recorded historically as such. The argument as to whether ''first past the post'' is more worthy is a debate I am willing to have, but I find it offensive that we cannot even acknowledge who is champion even by our own rules.
The AFC has made it clear it does not respect our champion team and I am surprised that both Brisbane Roar and the competition have taken this without any real measure of indignation. Our whole competition lacks credibility when we cannot even measure how our league is decided. It seems Korea is afforded more flexibility than us because its champion is determined after the league breaks up into two groups after 30 rounds. It is hardly a conventional or traditional model, but ultimately the format is respected by everyone involved.
This is not an argument about ACL participation, but rather our inability to respect ourselves as a code and a competition. This is where our identity comes into it and unless we have clarity in whom we want to be then we cannot expect others to treat us seriously.
In Australia we know better than anyone else what works in a competition sense. Our sports-mad population loves finals and it is why we use them to decide the winners of all our major codes. As a competition we have only cracked the 50,000 attendance mark five times, and four of those have been grand finals.
The argument for first past the post comes from what is tradition in other countries for our sport.
The main reason that this method lasted only one year in the old National Soccer League was that in 1987 APIA won the competition with weeks to spare and it was felt the season ended on an anti-climax. There is a history in all this that we constantly seem to ignore and the finals system is one of our few success stories.
My plea to Gallop and Football Federation Australia is this. On behalf of everyone involved in our game, who will be declared our champion this year: the grand final winner or first past the post? I am willing to respect a decision one way or another, but when participants and fans are spilling blood, sweat and tears to reach the summit, it is only fair that we all know what that is. Then, maybe, we will gain credibility in the eyes of those around us.
Originally Posted by Grimario
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