Gold Coast overstays its welcome

After yet another unsavoury brush with authorities, the question again must be asked if Clive Palmer's little-loved club that still can't draw more than a few hundred paying fans to its home games and that often makes news for the wrong reasons should be allowed to stay in the competition beyond this season.

Its latest stoush involves German player Peter Perchtold, who has won $340,000 in damages after his contract with Gold Coast was torn up.

Perchtold effectively won his case because Gold Coast did not even bother to show up at the hearing and to add insult to injury the club so far has failed to pay up.

It does not take rocket science to put two and two together and realise what collateral damage Gold Coast's action – or inaction – is causing the image of the A-League at home and abroad.

This is the sort of problem some Aussie players have had to face over the years when they plied their trade in some remote, developing nation with dodgy clubs and even dodgier officials.

Not one you would associate with such an advanced country as Australia where labour laws and conditions are among the best and fairest in the world.

How could any Australian player who yearns for a career abroad be persuaded to delay his departure as long as possible when he hears about these shenanigans?

How would any foreign player who might be interested in coming here react to the news that contracts can be freely ripped up by clubs, seemingly with the acquiescence of Football Federation Australia, which to date has done nothing to protect Perchtold?

Disturbingly, an Australian player who joined the A-League is believed to have rued his decision to come home, although it is unclear if the Perchtold case was the reason for his regret.

This unsavoury episode involving Perchtold comes after it was revealed late last year that Gold Coast had failed to insure returning Australia star Jason Culina when he traded the Eredivisie for the A-League in 2009.

Culina and his current club Newcastle Jets are suing FFA for compensation after the midfielder suffered a serious injury during the AFC Asian Cup in Qatar in 2011 and has not played since.

Many fans who love the game and who must cringe at the depressing sight of a quasi-empty Skilled Park whenever Gold Coast's matches are shown live would be entitled to ask if enough is enough from the A-League's bete noir.

In three seasons it has brought precious little positive to the league except for a few eye-catching performances in its first season when it played arguably the finest football in the competition and a few memorable press conferences from its colourful coach Miron Bleiberg.

The overriding theme of its participation in the competition has been one of embarrassment, frustration and possibly even anger at the way the club has been allowed to drag down the image of the league.

It raises the strong suspicion that no proper due diligence was ever made on Gold Coast's application in 2008 to join the competition and that it was approved largely because of a misguided policy that, hey, you don't knock back a mining billionaire who is willing to put money in the game, even if the club was to be based in such a football backwater as Robina.

Gold Coast United was an interesting experiment but it also was a bold gamble that never really paid off and it has become an unequivocal fiasco.

FFA chief executive Ben Buckley and A-League chief Lyall Gorman are among those who are understood to feel uneasy with the hardly edifying spectacle provided by Gold Coast's home crowds.

And they can't be too comfortable with their relationship with the eccentric Palmer.

The club's erratic behaviour of late has given Buckley and Gorman a glorious opportunity to cut their losses and put themselves and the rest of the football family out of their misery.

This would be a crying shame because Bleiberg and his players, to their eternal credit, have always done their best under difficult circumstances and presently with limited resources to portray the game in the best light and their positive attitude since day one has been beyond reproach.

Captain Michael Thwaite's boys certainly do not deserve to become the innocent victims of their club's ineptitude and intransigence.

But there is also the bigger picture to consider.

The future of the A-League is at stake here and there is no point in prolonging the agony by delaying the inevitable.