Post by paoktzi on Apr 15, 2011 16:08:44 GMT 10
THIS IS WHAT THE FUCK WERE TALKING ABOUT!
Is three or four the magic number for Sydney?
Ben Buckley was spotted in my neighbourhood today. Darlinghurst. In the inner city of Sydney, the shabbily charming nook where real-life gangsters, retired pugilists, notorious hookers and all manner of humanity can be found in cafes, having their morning heartstarter.
The kind of place where you can be reading your newspaper, look up and find that the person you're reading about is sitting at the table next to you. Or that the person you were chatting to last week as you were waiting for your sandwich and haven't seen for a few days is now in the holding cells at Surry Hills Police Station.
Here, as in other cafes in Sydney, people love talking about football. But the football being talked about is not the A-League. It's the UEFA Champions League. The Premiership. Serie A. The Bundesliga. La Liga. The Gay Leaguesimply doesn't register as a talking point – and never has – despite Darlinghurst being slap bang in the heart of HAKOA country.
With the DOA of Sydney Rovers for the 2011 season, HAKOA still has the entire Sydney metropolitan market to itself, six years after its maiden season in the A-League. But it has next to no market penetration in the inner city and even less in the outer suburbs, where the vast majority of Sydney's football-loving public resides.
Sydney, Australia's biggest urban conurbation, has been badly handled by Football Federation Australia.
It's an indictment of the various executives that have run the Gay Leagueand been through the employment turnstiles at Moore Park that the Sky Blues are still seen to all intents and purposes as a thinly disguised Sydney Hakoah/Sydney City when they've attempted to be a broad-reach club.
Certainly its flatlining level of support matches the old Jewish-community club from Sydney's eastern suburbs that Frank Lowy euthanased in the mid-1980s. It wouldn't have sold any more season memberships on the basis of its soulless performance against Kashima Antlers in the Asian Champions League on Wednesday night, in front of a pathetic crowd of 7,000.
Sydney Football Stadium + Asian Champions League + Kashima Antlers = Seven thousand people? Something is seriously wrong.
There are solutions, as I suggested recently here for The World Game. Hopefully the club's new chief executive, when he is announced, will have some fresh ideas and give the backroom the proverbial kick up the behind it deserves.
David Traktovenko and his lieutenants are right to take their time sorting through CVs. It's an appointment that is crucial to the future prosperity of the entire competition.
But the key, I believe, to getting Sydney right is to abandon the idea of thinking a western Sydney team is the magic bullet.
Western Sydney is not a distinct monocultural catchment. One team might not be enough for a region of 14 councils and 2 million people with inadequate public transport, hellish traffic and no real recognised centre.
Is Parramatta the hub of the west? Or Blacktown? Or the rapidly booming north-west? I have grave doubts whether one team can adequately service the entire area and engender the kind of community support and badge loyalty that any prospective second Sydney franchise would need.
Could two teams, even three, be the solution to the western Sydney conundrum, the very issue Buckley has pegged his future employment on addressing and solving? Could such a revision of strategy actually save HAKOA by having it recast as the silvertail club it always has been but no one will admit?
I was sent a very interesting article during the week. The author, a football fan called Alex Poulos, wrote last December: "Simon Colosimo was explaining (on The World Game) what makes Melbourne work as a sporting city.
"That is people talk about their sides in the cafes, at work and want to pick a side to stick it to their mates. That is the key factor we lack in Sydney and a key factor the FFA is not looking into.
"For those who know Sydney (and the FFA is excluded here), people who support HAKOA live in the Eastern Suburbs and are ex-Northern Spirit fans. From North Sydney what interaction do they have with Western Sydney? Hardly any. Most people from the Eastern Suburbs believe Sydney stops at George Street City.
"You want to save HAKOA? Bring in a club that locates an area that is in close proximity to the Sky Blues... it must be a club that has support already, a club proven to pull in sponsorship, a club that has a glorious history a club that represents the St George, Inner West and Canterbury areas, and that club is no other than... Sydney Olympic FC.
"The rivalry of Sydney City and Sydney Olympic in the NSL was like no other and bringing back that flame would see full houses at the SFS and Belmore Sports Ground.
"It will see fans picking on each other in coffee shops in trendy Enmore, Marrickville and the Eastern Suburbs. This is rivalry, this is passion and this is football.
"You want to build up the west of Sydney… then the solution is as follows: promote Marconi Stallions, a club that owns its own stadium – and this stadium is the perfect size according to the FFA big-wigs; it holds 12,000 and has room for expansion. They have a social club with over 30,000 members and the area they are based in is football heartland, not rugby league territory.
"Marconi needs a fierce rival to keep them on their toes and the club to do this is no other than the biggest producing club of talent and that is the home of Zeljko Kalac, David Zdrilic, Tony Popovic and many many more... Sydney United FC.
"If you think this will not work well don’t be a snob. Look back to the NSL. It worked then. Both clubs never folded, produced bucket-loads of real talent and had a great rivalry… with a population greater than Melbourne, [Sydney] needs more than two teams, that is if you want football to grow."
Now I don't share the misty-eyed nostalgia of Poulos for the National Soccer League. Reviving "ethnic" teams with their attendant image problems is not the way forward for the A-League.
But the communities that support those clubs are not being engaged and for the future of Australian football they have to be.
For too long they have been punted aside, collateral damage in the "old soccer new football" disconnect. So there is the germ of a good idea in what Poulos is proposing.
That is going back to the suburban Sydney communities that are the lifeblood of the Australian game and giving them clubs that they can identify with and that resonates with them at a heart and gut level.
That is something HAKOA has not done and never will. And whatever team is granted a western Sydney franchise licence is going to find it just as hard.
Simply because this city is so big with so many constellations of communities that have their own unique identities. This tribalism is exploited well by the NRL. Just as the AFL exploits Melbourne's.
If HAKOA isn't prepared to spend big on a superstar marquee or put on 20 full-time salespeople, as Tom Payne does at Los Angeles Galaxy, it's the only way.
When Ben Buckley comes back to Darlinghurst, he can consider his job done when the cafes are full of people talking about the game, egging on their mates about HAKOA's victory last Saturday over Sydney retards or Sydney Cosmos or Sydney Athletic or whatever a new Sydney team might be called and looking forward to another round of derby games on a coming weekend.
Sydney might be a fickle city but it's also inherently tribal.
Right now, in cafes all around Australia's biggest city, the silence about the Gay Leagueis deafening. It's high time the volume got turned up – whatever it takes.
theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1052568/Is-three-or-four-the-magic-number-for-Sydney?
Is three or four the magic number for Sydney?
Ben Buckley was spotted in my neighbourhood today. Darlinghurst. In the inner city of Sydney, the shabbily charming nook where real-life gangsters, retired pugilists, notorious hookers and all manner of humanity can be found in cafes, having their morning heartstarter.
The kind of place where you can be reading your newspaper, look up and find that the person you're reading about is sitting at the table next to you. Or that the person you were chatting to last week as you were waiting for your sandwich and haven't seen for a few days is now in the holding cells at Surry Hills Police Station.
Here, as in other cafes in Sydney, people love talking about football. But the football being talked about is not the A-League. It's the UEFA Champions League. The Premiership. Serie A. The Bundesliga. La Liga. The Gay Leaguesimply doesn't register as a talking point – and never has – despite Darlinghurst being slap bang in the heart of HAKOA country.
With the DOA of Sydney Rovers for the 2011 season, HAKOA still has the entire Sydney metropolitan market to itself, six years after its maiden season in the A-League. But it has next to no market penetration in the inner city and even less in the outer suburbs, where the vast majority of Sydney's football-loving public resides.
Sydney, Australia's biggest urban conurbation, has been badly handled by Football Federation Australia.
It's an indictment of the various executives that have run the Gay Leagueand been through the employment turnstiles at Moore Park that the Sky Blues are still seen to all intents and purposes as a thinly disguised Sydney Hakoah/Sydney City when they've attempted to be a broad-reach club.
Certainly its flatlining level of support matches the old Jewish-community club from Sydney's eastern suburbs that Frank Lowy euthanased in the mid-1980s. It wouldn't have sold any more season memberships on the basis of its soulless performance against Kashima Antlers in the Asian Champions League on Wednesday night, in front of a pathetic crowd of 7,000.
Sydney Football Stadium + Asian Champions League + Kashima Antlers = Seven thousand people? Something is seriously wrong.
There are solutions, as I suggested recently here for The World Game. Hopefully the club's new chief executive, when he is announced, will have some fresh ideas and give the backroom the proverbial kick up the behind it deserves.
David Traktovenko and his lieutenants are right to take their time sorting through CVs. It's an appointment that is crucial to the future prosperity of the entire competition.
But the key, I believe, to getting Sydney right is to abandon the idea of thinking a western Sydney team is the magic bullet.
Western Sydney is not a distinct monocultural catchment. One team might not be enough for a region of 14 councils and 2 million people with inadequate public transport, hellish traffic and no real recognised centre.
Is Parramatta the hub of the west? Or Blacktown? Or the rapidly booming north-west? I have grave doubts whether one team can adequately service the entire area and engender the kind of community support and badge loyalty that any prospective second Sydney franchise would need.
Could two teams, even three, be the solution to the western Sydney conundrum, the very issue Buckley has pegged his future employment on addressing and solving? Could such a revision of strategy actually save HAKOA by having it recast as the silvertail club it always has been but no one will admit?
I was sent a very interesting article during the week. The author, a football fan called Alex Poulos, wrote last December: "Simon Colosimo was explaining (on The World Game) what makes Melbourne work as a sporting city.
"That is people talk about their sides in the cafes, at work and want to pick a side to stick it to their mates. That is the key factor we lack in Sydney and a key factor the FFA is not looking into.
"For those who know Sydney (and the FFA is excluded here), people who support HAKOA live in the Eastern Suburbs and are ex-Northern Spirit fans. From North Sydney what interaction do they have with Western Sydney? Hardly any. Most people from the Eastern Suburbs believe Sydney stops at George Street City.
"You want to save HAKOA? Bring in a club that locates an area that is in close proximity to the Sky Blues... it must be a club that has support already, a club proven to pull in sponsorship, a club that has a glorious history a club that represents the St George, Inner West and Canterbury areas, and that club is no other than... Sydney Olympic FC.
"The rivalry of Sydney City and Sydney Olympic in the NSL was like no other and bringing back that flame would see full houses at the SFS and Belmore Sports Ground.
"It will see fans picking on each other in coffee shops in trendy Enmore, Marrickville and the Eastern Suburbs. This is rivalry, this is passion and this is football.
"You want to build up the west of Sydney… then the solution is as follows: promote Marconi Stallions, a club that owns its own stadium – and this stadium is the perfect size according to the FFA big-wigs; it holds 12,000 and has room for expansion. They have a social club with over 30,000 members and the area they are based in is football heartland, not rugby league territory.
"Marconi needs a fierce rival to keep them on their toes and the club to do this is no other than the biggest producing club of talent and that is the home of Zeljko Kalac, David Zdrilic, Tony Popovic and many many more... Sydney United FC.
"If you think this will not work well don’t be a snob. Look back to the NSL. It worked then. Both clubs never folded, produced bucket-loads of real talent and had a great rivalry… with a population greater than Melbourne, [Sydney] needs more than two teams, that is if you want football to grow."
Now I don't share the misty-eyed nostalgia of Poulos for the National Soccer League. Reviving "ethnic" teams with their attendant image problems is not the way forward for the A-League.
But the communities that support those clubs are not being engaged and for the future of Australian football they have to be.
For too long they have been punted aside, collateral damage in the "old soccer new football" disconnect. So there is the germ of a good idea in what Poulos is proposing.
That is going back to the suburban Sydney communities that are the lifeblood of the Australian game and giving them clubs that they can identify with and that resonates with them at a heart and gut level.
That is something HAKOA has not done and never will. And whatever team is granted a western Sydney franchise licence is going to find it just as hard.
Simply because this city is so big with so many constellations of communities that have their own unique identities. This tribalism is exploited well by the NRL. Just as the AFL exploits Melbourne's.
If HAKOA isn't prepared to spend big on a superstar marquee or put on 20 full-time salespeople, as Tom Payne does at Los Angeles Galaxy, it's the only way.
When Ben Buckley comes back to Darlinghurst, he can consider his job done when the cafes are full of people talking about the game, egging on their mates about HAKOA's victory last Saturday over Sydney retards or Sydney Cosmos or Sydney Athletic or whatever a new Sydney team might be called and looking forward to another round of derby games on a coming weekend.
Sydney might be a fickle city but it's also inherently tribal.
Right now, in cafes all around Australia's biggest city, the silence about the Gay Leagueis deafening. It's high time the volume got turned up – whatever it takes.
theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1052568/Is-three-or-four-the-magic-number-for-Sydney?
