Someone once asked me what I thought Frank Lowy would bring to our game once he agreed to become involved again in 2003. With some thought I told them that there were two important but not necessarily related things that would see the man take football in Australia to a new level. First that he seemed to possess a strength that some might undersestimate. He had been a member of the Golani Brigade in Israel. This was an army group whose main purpose was to physically train to one day run with equipment up the Golan Heights and then overpower entrenched Syrian forces. For anyone struggling to gain a mental picture of this task think running up from Emu Plains to the top of overarching Blue Mountains. Needless to say Lowy was used to fughting battles others thought might be hopeless.....In this case turning Australias significant but minority based 'soccer culture' to a more general appeal 'football league' resembling those similar leagues throughout the world....now we would be thinking MLS, J League and K league.
The second point I made about Lowy was one that that made him perculiarly different to most of the 'faces' involved in the NSL in decades before. Frank Lowy, as a billionairre, had no need or driving desire to make money out of the A League, despite being elected to the prime position in 2003. To me this was a key factor that made him different, stewardship of Australian football was seen by Lowy as a role where his plan was for the good of all stakeholders in the sport. The three pronged approach of setting up the A League, getting Australian qualification for the 2006 World Cup and a bid for a future hosting of that competition.
Looking back on his efforts I would rate them as an eight and half out of ten. True to his word he seems to have avoided taking personal gain from the sport. As a matter of fact he has helped in the past five years with the continued funding for some of the franchises in the A League....how much I don't know. There I said it, I used the F word. Franchise. To me if anywhere, it is in the establishment, choice of location and basis chosen for franchises that Lowy's A League has underperformed.
Two points I would make on this topic. First, the change undertaken to bring Australia the A League, involved marketing people rebranding the sport. They listened to ordinary Aussies and reported back that to become a main-stream sport Soccer needed to move away from ethnic based clubs and in the process reclaim the name 'Football' from the various nationwide pretenders to the title, AFL, League and Union. Recent history shows that this path was embraced with a non-ethnic....territory based model emerging. The one team per city / region idea was one of the base elements of the new eight side A League competition. Unfortunately, taking such a path meant that the old NSL was dead and few, if any of it's good aspects preserved. The old sides of the competition did not go away completely but played on in the various state league competions across Australia. Sydney Olympic, Sydney United and Marconi three of those in NSW. By abandoning these clubs completely our national competion is probably the poorer because we now have a 'disconnect' between the A League and the State competions where these clubs still play.
This takes me onto my second point on the A League and the way forward. Any second Sydney side should be in the Western Suburbs. Unfortunately, the FFA ignored reality and not only failed to foster relations with existing Western Sydney clubs but planned to base any expansion side out of Homebush! What could they be thinking? The NRL proves every year that this stadium / venue is not a week to week proposition for a club side. Why would a new football team want to play in a massive 3/4 empty stadium? This view can be backed up by a story from the old NSL days. Marconi and Sydney United both had sides in the NSL. So what you may say. Well the west not only provided these two National Soccer clubs but they are almost in the same suburb! You can see one stadium from the other! Absurd but even more incredibly no one seemed to acknowledge this...was it because few Sydney, NSW or Australia based people ever went out there to disover this fact? To me expansion of the A League will require talks with these old school participants of the game. Italians and Croatians and others in Bossley Park could put together a strong club using one of their existing stadiums. Nearly a decade has passed since the schism left the old NSL people disconeected from the national game. Here is an opportunity that could bring these elements back to the mainstram and in the process strengthen our National competion, the A League. Frank Lowy probably realises that some welcoming back into the fold is necessary. An A League side based in Bossley Park or Blacktown would deliver a very strong football area back into the fold....time to revisit a few hasty decisions for FFA?
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&cp=21&gs_id=k&xhr=t&q=sydney+united+stadium&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4SKPB_enAU386AU386&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&ion=1&biw=1280&bih=673&wrapid=tljp1322972785912037&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
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