Gold Coast – it’s not a cap, it’s a snub

The old, miserable NSL in its dying days that’s what, the competition that had to go because of its rotten image, partly due to its pissant attendances, which in turn suggested that nobody wanted to watch it.

Now this is not to claim that the modern A-League phenomenon is somehow regressing to a point where one must make such nervy comparisons.

To the contrary, my view is that the A-League averages of around 10,000 are in fact good, healthy and promising and that they have shrunk to that level, from the once lofty 15,000, only because the novelty and curiosity factors have worn off.

What we have now is genuine football aficionados rolling up to the games, without the fly-by-night, sexed up tourists who got off the bandwagon as quickly as they jumped on it.

But the Gold Coast case is different. This is a club which, for the second time now, actually told its fans they are not wanted.

Hence the above turnout figure for its second home game of the season, a drop of almost 50 per cent on its first fixture at Skilled Park.

Just so you don’t think I’m talking out of my ear, here are the sums, and why Clive Palmer thinks his draconian and highly unusual move makes commercial sense:

Clive forks out a rent of $120,000 per match if the stadium is fully opened but only $39,000 if it’s not. So keeping the stadium partially closed, and restricting its fans only to the western stand, saves him around $1.8 million per season.

Sounds like good commercial sense. But not quite.

The dark message of a crowd cap, the inherent suggestion that the fans are unwanted, brings a crowd slump that must have massive counter-costs.

I can’t claim to being privy to GCU’s gate takings (although these, like they are in some other countries, should be published) but surely an almost 50 per cent drop in paying customers, as was the case between the club’s first home game and its second, adds up to an awful lot of dollars in losses over a 15-home match season.

My own sense is that Clive may have been better, and certainly braver, to invest more in aggressive and creative marketing so that the break-even threshold in average crowds was reached. But he’s the big guy when it comes to big business so who am I to argue.

More to the point, the GCU crowd cap is not just a GCU problem but a potentially nasty A-League problem.

What does it say about the buoyancy and ambition of a league when doors are being shut to the fans in order to save money and the fans respond by doing what was asked of them and not turn up?

What A-League boss Lyall Gorman told TWG’s Philip Micallef this week, saying, ‘No way in the world will the FFA or Gold Coast raise the white flag,’ is not good enough. They just did.

FFA has a responsibility to act and it must.

Thanks to last week’s paltry Gold Coast home audience the A-League crowd averages have dipped to below 10,000 and, unless the GCU problem is fixed, are bound to dip further still.

And then it’s not just Gold Coast but the league as a whole that has an image problem.

When video don’t prove a thing

You and me may well rejoice at the clampdown on simulation and the two-game suspensions that have been handed out to Patricio Perez and Michael Baird for diving.

But I am troubled.

Having spent an afternoon viewing and re-viewing videos of the incidents, I remain unconvinced that there was enough proof to convict them.

This is not to say they didn’t dive. It’s to say that there was insufficient evidence and their right to natural justice, including the recourse to appeal, was denied them.

The consequences of this miscarriage of justice are distressing. Two footballers have been branded as cheats with lasting damage to their character and reputation.

Both will be absent from games and their entertainment value denied for the fans.

And then there is the precedent.

At best the two were 50/50 cases with the judges choosing to err on the side of a broader argument for punishment and eradication. What will this mean to the inevitable future similar cases where simulation is suspected but doubts linger?

I think the match review panel should go easy on the steroids.

And finally there is the shrine that has been built to the power of the video. In these cases, as in most cases, the video proved nothing.

In the case of simulation what has to be ultimately proven is that there was intent, an intent to deceive. Intent is a human emotion and no video replay can ever prove or disprove it.

How not to treat imports

The Shane Smeltz case highlights a global incompetence in the wide world of international player movements that has been the undoing of many ambitious and expensive transfers.

I speak here not of Smeltz’s move to Turkey (if it happens at all) but rather his earlier bolt from Shandong Luneng after about a five minute stay.

The incompetence relates to managing the relocation of players by recipient clubs who seem to think that all it takes to relocate a player is to promise him a fat salary, pay the transfer fee and put a roof over his head.

I can’t be sure what it was that made Smeltz blow his Chinese joint so quickly but I can only assume that he just wasn’t happy there and, more importantly, neither was his missus.

Something similar happened to Nick Carle when he went to Turkey, from whence he soon made a dash for the much more amicable provinces of England.

And there have been many many other such cases in history, the most famous being that of Ian Rush who never settled in Italy – famously been quoted as saying 'It was like living in a foreign country'.

Robinho, subject of one of the most expensive transfers in history, left Manchester without making a significant mark, in the end whingeing that he couldn’t even play his Brazilian music on the stereo because the neighbours were constantly complaining.

Do you think Manchester City, with all its petro dollars, thought of forking out a few bucks on a relocation advisor or expert? Well of course not.

It happens here too.

There was the case of a South American triallist in the A-League who was told he was successful and would be offered a contract and then, after training, was dumped at a bus stop and given advice on which bus to take to his hotel which was 20 kilometres away.

The Brazilian boy Patrick, who had a short stint at Sydney FC two seasons ago, was given accommodation in a dreary suburb in Sydney’s inland north when common sense would have suggested that he should be planted near the beach suburbs, like Bondi or Manly, where the Brazilian community congregates.

He grew bored and lonely, was unlucky with some injuries, and ultimately couldn’t produce on the field. Newly-appointed coach John Kosmina, rather than try to fix the problem, jettisoned him and sent him back to Brazil.

The attrition rate among imported Brazilian players in the A-League is high. Could it be that they fail at least partly because their relocation management is being bungled?

The culture gap between ours and those of many imported players is large. To suggest that they fail because they simply ‘don’t fit in’ is often a cop-out and a case of denial.

We have some exciting recent imports, all crowd pleasers, running around in the A-League, like Adelaide’s Flores, Central Coast’s Perez, Roar’s Broich and Heart’s Sibon.

I hope their clubs are making sure they are happy little vegemites.