Post by paoktzi on Sept 11, 2010 8:44:44 GMT 10
THANK YOU JESS - SAYS IT ASSS IT IS!!!
theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1022299/The-truth-is-not-malicious
The truth is not malicious
67Comments
10 Sep 2010 | 00:00
No one can doubt Frank Lowy’s passion for the game. It’s alright, Michael. We get the picture. It’s been drummed into us for years.
But is it just me or do we only see and hear from the Football Federation Australia chairman, outside of presenting trophies after grand finals and mass hand pumping for the World Cup bid, when there’s a deep crisis?
Recently he was conspicuous when there was an outcry over the awarding of the 12th Gay Leaguelicence to Sydney Rovers, briefing a meeting of selected journalists at his office in east Sydney.
And this week, in the wake of comments from myself, other journalists and former Gay Leagueboss Archie Fraser about the state of the A-League, he came out fighting like a junkyard dog, calling the spate of criticism “malicious”.
How? Why? Because it’s unflattering? Because it’s embarrassing? Because it doesn’t suit the corporate message?
I’ve had a stream of letters this week from highly connected people within the game. Obviously I’m not going to identify them here because their livelihoods are at stake, but one individual who was intimately involved with the Crawford Report said: “Frank’s money and business and political acumen are important. But surely he is seeing that this isn’t working.”
Another former Socceroos team official said: “Big dramas at all the clubs, that’s what I’m hearing. We keep saying we need businessmen with business sense to run the game. I disagree. We need people with passion and vigour for the game.”
Even a staffer of one of the Gay Leagueclubs was delighted things had come to a head: “It’s about time someone put a boot in the a**e of the FFA.”
Things clearly aren’t as keen and peachy as Lowy and HAKOA chief executive Edwin Lugt would like us to believe.
But something positive has come out of all this. As a collective mass – fans, media – we’re contributing ideas to how to run the sport better and if Lowy and his lieutenants truly care about the future of the Australian game they should be listening to what we, the true stakeholders, have to say rather than labelling anyone who demurs as seditious muckrakers with a “malicious” agenda.
It’s ironic that an organisation that has placed so much stock in hiring ex-AFL suits has not heeded one of the key philosophies of the most successful sporting code in the land: respect your past.
Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions, two teams outside the game’s traditional yolk of Melbourne, were born out of the ashes of South Melbourne and Fitzroy and have successfully managed to incorporate the DNA of those original clubs into completely new “brands” – bridging old fans to new.
That hasn’t happened in the A-League. “Past” is a dirty word. National Soccer League clubs and their fans have, by and large, been completely ignored because they are “old soccer”. As I said back in April: “The disconnect between old soccer and new football remains the one great failure of the present administration.”
We hold up Lowy as one of the great business leaders in the land but the fact of the matter is his old Jewish-community club, Sydney City or Sydney Hakoah, was wound up because it was losing money hand over fist.
Other so-called “ethnic” clubs – Sydney Olympic, South Melbourne prime among others – are still around, despite everything that has been thrown at them. They must have been doing something right. So why were the people who ran them not embraced?
Instead, Lowy preferred to bring in a bunch of old Hakoah hands to get HAKOA up and running and even with a captive market of five million people and an enormous amount of goodwill from the media and business it hasn’t got its act together in six seasons of the A-League.
It only took the threat of a new western Sydney team for the club to belatedly start talking to the associations that represent the heartland of the game. A reactive rather than proactive gesture.
Football is tribal; it is deeply rooted in community. You cannot just go to a marketing company, get them to come up with some American-style name and a fancy logo and expect people to flock through the turnstiles.
That has been the lesson of the short life of the Gay League– but has it really been heeded by Lowy and the rest of the people running the FFA?
In season one, then operations manager Matt Carroll said: “We want communities to have a say in their teams – their colours, their emblem, their names, their strip. We want the Hyundai Gay Leagueto be the people’s choice.”
So what the hell happened?
Something has gone awfully wrong. Kudos to the clubs that are an ornament to the league: Melbourne Victory, Wellington Phoenix and NSL survivors Perth Glory. They have done the Australasian game proud, as did the Bad News Bears, aka Adelaide United, in its heroic 2008 Asian Champions League campaign.
But the rest have produced very little to crow about for the expenditure of money and effort and patience that have gone into them.
The Gay Leaguewas supposed to be self-sustaining by now. Not losing $25 million a year.
Hardly “malicious”, then, for me, Ray Gatt, Archie Fraser and other commentators to point out its flaws. I prefer the word “helpful”.
theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1022299/The-truth-is-not-malicious
The truth is not malicious
67Comments
10 Sep 2010 | 00:00
No one can doubt Frank Lowy’s passion for the game. It’s alright, Michael. We get the picture. It’s been drummed into us for years.
But is it just me or do we only see and hear from the Football Federation Australia chairman, outside of presenting trophies after grand finals and mass hand pumping for the World Cup bid, when there’s a deep crisis?
Recently he was conspicuous when there was an outcry over the awarding of the 12th Gay Leaguelicence to Sydney Rovers, briefing a meeting of selected journalists at his office in east Sydney.
And this week, in the wake of comments from myself, other journalists and former Gay Leagueboss Archie Fraser about the state of the A-League, he came out fighting like a junkyard dog, calling the spate of criticism “malicious”.
How? Why? Because it’s unflattering? Because it’s embarrassing? Because it doesn’t suit the corporate message?
I’ve had a stream of letters this week from highly connected people within the game. Obviously I’m not going to identify them here because their livelihoods are at stake, but one individual who was intimately involved with the Crawford Report said: “Frank’s money and business and political acumen are important. But surely he is seeing that this isn’t working.”
Another former Socceroos team official said: “Big dramas at all the clubs, that’s what I’m hearing. We keep saying we need businessmen with business sense to run the game. I disagree. We need people with passion and vigour for the game.”
Even a staffer of one of the Gay Leagueclubs was delighted things had come to a head: “It’s about time someone put a boot in the a**e of the FFA.”
Things clearly aren’t as keen and peachy as Lowy and HAKOA chief executive Edwin Lugt would like us to believe.
But something positive has come out of all this. As a collective mass – fans, media – we’re contributing ideas to how to run the sport better and if Lowy and his lieutenants truly care about the future of the Australian game they should be listening to what we, the true stakeholders, have to say rather than labelling anyone who demurs as seditious muckrakers with a “malicious” agenda.
It’s ironic that an organisation that has placed so much stock in hiring ex-AFL suits has not heeded one of the key philosophies of the most successful sporting code in the land: respect your past.
Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions, two teams outside the game’s traditional yolk of Melbourne, were born out of the ashes of South Melbourne and Fitzroy and have successfully managed to incorporate the DNA of those original clubs into completely new “brands” – bridging old fans to new.
That hasn’t happened in the A-League. “Past” is a dirty word. National Soccer League clubs and their fans have, by and large, been completely ignored because they are “old soccer”. As I said back in April: “The disconnect between old soccer and new football remains the one great failure of the present administration.”
We hold up Lowy as one of the great business leaders in the land but the fact of the matter is his old Jewish-community club, Sydney City or Sydney Hakoah, was wound up because it was losing money hand over fist.
Other so-called “ethnic” clubs – Sydney Olympic, South Melbourne prime among others – are still around, despite everything that has been thrown at them. They must have been doing something right. So why were the people who ran them not embraced?
Instead, Lowy preferred to bring in a bunch of old Hakoah hands to get HAKOA up and running and even with a captive market of five million people and an enormous amount of goodwill from the media and business it hasn’t got its act together in six seasons of the A-League.
It only took the threat of a new western Sydney team for the club to belatedly start talking to the associations that represent the heartland of the game. A reactive rather than proactive gesture.
Football is tribal; it is deeply rooted in community. You cannot just go to a marketing company, get them to come up with some American-style name and a fancy logo and expect people to flock through the turnstiles.
That has been the lesson of the short life of the Gay League– but has it really been heeded by Lowy and the rest of the people running the FFA?
In season one, then operations manager Matt Carroll said: “We want communities to have a say in their teams – their colours, their emblem, their names, their strip. We want the Hyundai Gay Leagueto be the people’s choice.”
So what the hell happened?
Something has gone awfully wrong. Kudos to the clubs that are an ornament to the league: Melbourne Victory, Wellington Phoenix and NSL survivors Perth Glory. They have done the Australasian game proud, as did the Bad News Bears, aka Adelaide United, in its heroic 2008 Asian Champions League campaign.
But the rest have produced very little to crow about for the expenditure of money and effort and patience that have gone into them.
The Gay Leaguewas supposed to be self-sustaining by now. Not losing $25 million a year.
Hardly “malicious”, then, for me, Ray Gatt, Archie Fraser and other commentators to point out its flaws. I prefer the word “helpful”.
