Just under a fortnight ago, as a joyous blue-and-yellow tide poured onto the surface of Central Coast Stadium, celebrating the Central Coast Mariners' 3-1 victory over Melbourne Victory, there was a sense that this was the Grand Final that the A-League had desperately needed. A pervasive melancholy -- occasionally interrupted by stretches of existential dread -- has become the default for the Australian top flight in recent years, but here was a joyous counter-attack; a cathartic release where, for one night, things were pretty great.
For the second straight year, the Mariners had risen above their limited resources to become the kings of Australian football. But from the grandstand, watching on as the mass of humanity dispersed, there was also a feeling that this was one of those rare moments where one sees the most perfect unions of a club and community genuinely intertwined; the Mariners had won, but it was just as much Gosford's title. The 3,000-odd travelling Victory fans who had made the trip had done their bit, too, infusing the evening with a passion, noise, and, eventually, despair that makes football so reflective of the human condition.
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There's little wonder it was near-universally recognised as being an incredible evening for the league. Further, it was fitting that this was the first decider staged after the A-League's decision to sell the Grand Final hosting rights was scrapped, given this game was exactly the type of fixture that the bargain was going to stop. The 2023-24 Grand Final saw one of the league's smallest teams hosting its showpiece fixture in a stadium with a 20,000 capacity -- temporarily increased to 21,379 -- and lacking the corporate facilities of other, more grandiose venues. It was staged regionally rather than in a major metropolitan centre, in a different state to the various footballing festivals and All Star matches that were on that week. And yet, it was perfect. Not because it was engineered to be so, but because those in suits got out of the way. The Grand Final deal was worth millions. But the value of this decider was incalculable.
Thus, it was also a fitting precursor to the first offseason under the A-Leagues' new "Football Focus" strategy, the first time league administrators the Australian Professional Leagues (APL) will have had one, per its commissioner Nick Garcia. Undoubtedly, it's a pivot forced by the leagues' perilous financial circumstances, with various strategic gambles and the lingering effects of COVID -- nearly $60 million was spent propping up clubs throughout the pandemic, according to The Australian -- leaving it in a state where the A-League was given no choice but to contract and reassess its strategic aims. Both the league and its clubs, whether they want to or not, are set for a new, leaner area. Focus, by necessity, will turn to the basics, of living within means, developing and selling talent to supplement budgets, and strengthening ties with lapsed supporter bases and community.
Arguably, this focus on the simple things is long overdue, albeit it's a tragedy that so many good people were left in the lurch to get here. Because, as it turns out, quite a few leagues around the world operate on similar models. Not because they don't want to grow but because they've found it's the best way to ensure stability and manageable maturation. It was also at the core of models that have since gone on to become global behemoths for decades, the horse that the cart was attached to. Just ask Richard Scudamore, a former Premier League executive whose acumen carried such weight the APL brought him to Australia to advise them during the unbundling process back in 2020.
"The first focus has to be on putting on the best possible football you can," Scudamore told a Victory function back then. "That's not just players; that's coaches, that's stadiums, it's quality of pitches, it's infrastructure, it's youth development.
"That's the most important focus because it's only when the product is attractive will other people want to engage themselves in it, sponsors will want to engage, viewers want to view, social media want to engage -- that's the absolute focus.
"And then once you've got that product in the right place, interest will follow, it's inevitable."
As far as a path forward for what is still a nascent professional football league, it all sounds so basic. Play good football, develop talent, in suitable stadiums, and bring the community along because television deals, media arms, songs, and so on only exist to magnify your actual core product: football. With the benefit of hindsight, one wonders why it took so long to get here. Yet when examined through this prism of these core principles, the A-League does, for all its struggles, possess strengths to build on, especially when one looks beyond the AFL and NRL and instead at those on a similar rung on the global footballing food chain.
An average A-League Men crowd size of 8,558 in 2023-24 has room for improvement, for instance, but it's a figure still higher than the Greek Super League -- which just produced a European trophy winner -- the Austrian Bundesliga, and the current Norwegian Eliteserien season. It's in the same ballpark as the Danish Superliga, Turkish Super Lig, and Swedish Allsvenskan, too.
And then there's the talent pipeline. Just this week, both Sydney FC and Wellington Phoenix shattered their outgoing transfer records, with Jake Girdwood-Reich (20) heading to MLS expansion side St. Louis CITY, while Alex Paulsen (21) is Premier League-bound after a mooted £2 million move to AFC Bournemouth. Young Perth Glory products Daniel Bennie and James Overy have joined Queens Park Rangers and Manchester United, respectively, and Adelaide United starlet Nestory Irankunda begins his Bayern Munich career on July 1. Those outgoings join the likes of Joe Gauci (Aston Villa), Marco Tilio (Celtic), Garang Kuol (Newcastle United), and Jordy Bos (KVC Westerlo), amongst others, in netting A-League clubs substantial transfer fees over the past 18 months.
Australian talent is increasingly viewed overseas as being worth investing in, which is somewhat of a unique strength in Australia's sporting landscape. AFL side West Coast can't sell Harley Reid for megabucks if their books begin to look shaky, and the NRL's Roosters weren't able to cash-in on Joseph Sua'ali'i before he decided that he will jump ship for Rugby Union. But A-League clubs? They can tap into a market that saw US$7.36 billion spent in the last European winter transfer window alone. Recent changes to the English FA's Governing Body Endorsement regulations, upgrading the A-League to a Band 5 competition, represent a huge boost as well; making it far easier for players, especially non-senior or junior internationals, to move to England.
Admittedly, the inherent advantages of being in European football environments mean that simply declaring that the A-League Men should be as strong as their aforementioned counterparts is misplaced. The Australian sporting market is a brutal, crowded, and hostile space. But at the same time, a league with these underlying positives -- with the scope to grow -- shouldn't have to experience a near-constant state of existential dread. There's a power in that global mindset, recognising that as long as you're sustainable, access to a global ecosystem frees you from the shackles of acting through the prism of rival sporting codes.
Undoubtedly those in charge of A-League clubs are paying for the strategic missteps of the past here. And not just recent ones. What if the boom period of the 2010s had been spent securing infrastructure and better stadium arrangements rather than chasing a doomed men's World Cup bid? Or if Zeljko Kalac's move from Sydney United to Leicester City in 1995 wasn't Australia's outbound transfer record until 2023? Or if the then-FFA had come out and backed fans in 2015, rather than weakly acquiescing to mainstream institutions harbouring a historic mistrust of football?
Yet, even if they hadn't planned to get here this way, maybe this new "Football Focused" era is exactly what the A-League needs, not just has to accept, right now. The A-League Men is reliably described as entertaining, however there is plenty of entertainment -- and every other form of distraction -- available to potential fans at the click of a button. Simply being entertaining is not enough; there needs to be emotion. That's where building a connection to community and forming a strong identity -- just like the Mariners have -- comes in.
Maybe it's questionable if the A-League model in its current state -- a private, for-profit league -- has the will or means to sustain this approach. Club ownership is very rarely a profitable enterprise, let alone a highly profitable one, but squaring that circle is baked into the league's governance structure. Also truant in all this talk of a football focus is how the A-League can leverage not just the possibilities that come with a global presence but also the strengths of an interconnected, domestic pyramid. Missing, too, are the voices of those in charge of the league, and their baffling absence from the public eye that has done little to provide a counter to a constant barrage of stories detailing the A-League's doom.
But in the short term, maybe a football focus can also address another elephant in the room. Think, when was the last time the A-League went through a season where there wasn't some sort of major crisis? A season where there wasn't a governance civil war, active fans being targeted, bizarre expansion decisions, TV deal chaos, or something else? To be actively engaged in the A-League is exhausting, so maybe the league could focus on letting its fans experience the joys of that night in Gosford more often, without spending half their time moonlighting as corporate strategists or demographic experts.
A football league that is just about football? It's crazy enough to work.