Culina calls for league rethink

Culina, whose club was given a lifeline by Football Federation Australia this week after its owner Con Constantine declared he had hit financial woes, said football needed to take a deep breath and be more realistic in its aspirations.

“We all want to see Australian football prosper and be considered favourably abroad but we simply do not have the resources to do it yet,” Culina told The World Game.

“As soon as clubs are stretched to do a bit more they are forced to cut back on costs after a year or two or else go bust.

”Take Sydney FC who spared no expense in giving Pierre Littbarski and Terry Butcher whatever they wanted ... players, resources and support staff.

”When I got there I was told ‘we can’t sign anybody because we’ve exhausted our revenues’ and I could not have this or that."

Culina refused to discuss the Jets’ troubles and how they are affecting his players because he said he did not want to be seen as though he was seeking sympathy.

But he did say that the club’s predicament should serve as an eye-opener to the powers-that-be.

"The football is definitely improving generally although I have no doubt that the players’ technical quality during the best years of the National Soccer League was exceptional," he said.

"What we have now is a higher professional level. That’s the reason clubs are finding it hard to continue to do that because of the costs involved.

“My advice is ‘let’s not go there too quickly’. Success is not built in one year but over a period of time and we should learn to be more patient.

”We are aiming too high and too soon. We are putting enormous pressure on everyone, particularly the chairmen who must keep up with the Joneses.

”I ask you: how many of them apart from Mr Constantine have been here since day one of the A-League?

”It is very difficult to sustain losses. In the old NSL you only needed perhaps a million dollars a year to get by.

”Now everything is so much more expensive. It’s not the salaries for players but also those for assistant coaches, goalkeeping coaches, conditioning personnel, psychologists, you name it.

”You are also expected to be more professional off the field so you need to have a dozen people in the office too.

”That’s a hell of a lot of money to have to come up with.

”We have to remember that this is all new to us and we have to make sure that we build a football culture before we start aiming for the stars.

”I’ve been married for 33 years and at first it’s all lovey dovey but after a while it sort of drops off.

”You still love your wife but you don’t give her the same attention.

”Our football competition is in many ways similar. People were excited by the new A-League but after four or five years the lovey dovey began to fade so it is up to us to consolidate what we’ve got and hopefully in another four of five years add to it.”

With 11 teams in the A-League and a 12th on the way, Culina has mixed feelings about the competition's expansion policy.

”I am not against expansion as long as it is at the right time and in the right area because it is essential for our game to grow,” he said.

”Let’s face it, football is played not only in Sydney, Melbourne or other major cities but also in regional areas where there is probably a bigger potential to gather support because there are fewer things to do other than follow sport.

”But we can’t expand too quickly especially if those areas are not ready to embrace our game. We need to be positive but also realistic. We do not have the football culture.

”This morning I was reading the paper at breakfast. On the back page there was rugby league, then followed by union, then cricket, then athletics, then racing and finally football near the death notices – which is where some people want us to be – we find our game.

”We have to change that but we can’t kill our game by running too quickly and discovering we can’t keep up.”

Culina said he was grateful to the FFA for bailing out the Jets and other troubled clubs but he said the clubs’ viability was not the governing body’s responsibility.

”We can’t expect the FFA to come to the rescue whenever a club hits trouble,” he said.

Despite the gloom and doom, Culina said he was confident football was strong enough to emerge unscathed from a testing period.

”The game has always survived,” he said. ”And it will survive again. All you have to do is watch any Socceroos game to realise how many people support the game.

”People talk about the game. They do not necessarily go to the league games but they follow us.

”This is why we have to create a culture where fans feel they belong.”