Blog

One of the problems that the FFA is experiencing at the moment is one whose existence they haven’t yet acknowledged. In the Victory v Adelaide match on Friday night, it was made even more abundantly clear that this problem is not getting better, and that if anything it’s getting substantially worse week-by-week. And if it’s an issue that is frustrating for the fans, those that pay to go and watch their A-League team each week, then it must be so much more frustrating for the players themselves who are victim to a lack of it during each game, and in fact a lack of it over each season.

That’s right, it’s refereeing consistency. Or more to the point, a severe lack of it.

The Victory v Adelaide game on Friday night was, as I already stated, a clear signpost as to the existence of this issue. Ben Williams, who has proved himself in the past as a … Continue Reading

It’s no secret that Sydney FC are having a bad year. In fact, they’re having a shocker, and it’s currently the worst title defence in the A-League since Newcastle’s disastrous start to the 2008-09 season. Nothing epitomises this lack of form more than Scott Jamieson’s entry for Australia’s Funniest Home Videos towards the end of the Big Blue game at Etihad Stadium on Saturday, where he went to cross the ball, completely missed it and ended up flat on his back.

But the question is, can they turn their poor form around? Yes they can. Have they left it too late to salvage a finals place from this season? Maybe not, or at least that’s what opposing managers Ernie Merrick and Rini Coolen seem to suggest. But, to be fair, they need to make some changes now in order to avoid what is becoming more and more inevitable.

The problem seems to be that Sydney have rested on … Continue Reading

Well, one derby down, two to play. So, from the perspective of the A-League in general, what can be taken away from last night’s first Melbourne derby?

Whilst it was quoted as a sellout, the non-attendance of some ticket holders and Melbourne Heart members, most likely due to the change of date for the much anticipated fixture, meant that the attendance fell about 5,000 short of the 31,000 that AAMI Park can cram in. Regardless of the smaller than expected crowd, the atmosphere of a large crowd in a stadium with carefully engineered acoustics was nothing less than deafening at times. So in terms of the crowd and atmosphere at the game, you can put a big tick in the ‘plus’ column.

But what about the game itself? It’s all well and good to have a near-capacity crowd making lots of noise, but if the standard of football doesn’t match the enthusiasm in the stands, or if you end … Continue Reading

“Monday morning feels so bad,
Ev’rybody seems to nag me
Coming tuesday I feel better,
Even my old man looks good,
Wednesday just don’t go,
Thursday goes too slow,
I’ve got Friday on my mind”.

Even when the song “Friday on my mind” by The Easybeats was written in 1966, Wednesday “just don’t go”. Nothing is truer of the results of the midweek fixture experiment that the FFA have undertaken with the A-League so far this season.

As you can see below, the attendance figures for the three midweek games that have been played so far don’t tell a great story. A total of 20,642 across three games with an average attendance of just 6,881 is a particularly poor return. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that figures from three games isn’t exactly a glut of data, and it would be particularly presumptuous to draw conclusions from such a small sample size. However, two of those … Continue Reading