“Be very careful what you wish for.” These were the parting words of Steven Lowy four years ago, when he was ousted as Football Federation Australia chairman by an uprising of A-League club owners determined to seize control of the domestic competition from the governing body, on the premise that they could do a much better job of running it.
The junior Lowy got a fair bit wrong in his time in Australian soccer’s top chair, but on this he has been totally vindicated – although nobody could have foreseen the violent way in which his dire warning would eventually come true.
Two years after the A-League club owners finally won legal and administrative independence from FFA (since renamed Football Australia), and just two weeks after the Socceroos dazzled at the World Cup in Qatar to give them the best possible platform to build from, the sport here is now in complete and utter crisis, wholly consumed by a disaster of its own making.
The A-League, which not so long ago was the dominant summer sporting competition in Australia, is now on life support after Saturday night’s abandoned derby in Melbourne, which was called off after fans invaded the pitch and struck goalkeeper Tom Glover in the head with a metal bucket, hospitalising him.
Bloodied players and officials running for dear life, terrified parents, children in tears, Socceroos on social media openly admitting “our game is in tatters” – this is damage that will take years to reverse, mud that may take a generation to scrub off.
The blame can be divided in a few different ways. Specifically for this incident at AAMI Park, it goes to the individuals involved, the broader fan group which harboured them, and the club they were supposedly there to support.
Steven Lowy’s warning about the future of Australian soccer has come true.Credit:Christopher Pearce
None of those who entered the field of play should be welcome at a sporting event in Australia ever again. A couple of them should probably be in jail. But some of them were well-known figures on the local scene who were already banned for life, according to many Melbourne Victory fans, which brings into question the very purpose of stadium bans and whether they can even be enforced.
Matildas goalkeeper Teagan Micah, who plays for Melbourne City, pointed this out on Twitter, referring to an incident last year in an A-League Women’s derby against Victory where she was pelted with glass bottles by hooligans who shouldn’t have been allowed in.
Original Style Melbourne, Victory’s main ‘active support’ group, have long refused to weed out the problem elements in their midst – probably because they are the ones in charge. This is the same mob that directed homophobic abuse at Adelaide United’s Josh Cavallo and didn’t condemn it because, according to a leaflet that was passed around at their next match, the terrace is “not the place to push any political or social opinions”.
Their actions have validated every negative stereotype of soccer fans in this country. They have provided free fuel for not only the never-ending code wars, but the internal divide within the sport, between those who endorsed the A-League model when it was launched in 2004 and have supported it since, and those involved with former National Soccer League clubs, who now see the same sort of violence unfolding which was once used as the reason for their exclusion. They will be livid, and perhaps a little smug, and have every right to be.
Fans storm the pitch during the match between Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park.Credit:Darrian Traynor/Getty Images
Victory have turned a blind eye to OSM’s worst behaviour for too long, or done too little about it. Again, the clubs and the Australian Professional Leagues – the body which runs the A-League on behalf of the owners – have been found wanting.
Where was the security? The police? The foresight? The APL’s controversial grand final deal with Destination NSW was the catalyst for the incendiary atmosphere at AAMI Park, and while OSM and rivals City Terrace had vowed to walk out in protest after 20 minutes, there was always a chance it could turn ugly, quickly – and so it proved, largely because there was nobody on hand to protect Tom Glover and referee Alex King. Indeed, fan sources have indicated OSM had told other active support leaders earlier in the week that they’d planned to invade the pitch no matter what. Glover just gave them the excuse they needed.
By no means were they culpable for what happened in any way, but how on earth were City, Victory and the APL not better prepared?
As for Glover himself, those close to him say he had no intention of throwing the flare – which had initially been thrown on the field, his workplace – back into the stands. He meant to throw it towards the security guards, who have buckets of sand next to them ready to put flares out, and towards whom he’d already thrown one. Minutes later, one of these buckets was used to split Glover’s face open.
Glover would probably do things differently if he had his time over, but then who actually thought one of the OSM lunatics would react to a dispute over the location of the A-League’s grand finals by physically assaulting a player?
Melbourne City goalkeeper Tommy Glover picks up a flare to remove it from the field.Credit:Getty
Zooming out, the bigger picture is a mess; a mélange of despair, disappointment and depression. It’s often said Australian soccer shoots itself in the foot. Here, the sport has dropped a nuclear weapon on its big toe. It’s heartbreaking.
When James Johnson took the job as Football Australia’s chief executive in early 2020, he was warned by one of the game’s most prominent player agents that within two years, despite the governance wars that played out before his arrival, squeezing out the Lowys, he would be responsible for the A-League again. The clubs, he was told, were incapable of running it, and would run it into the ground soon enough.
There are many good people at the APL, including Danny Townsend, the executive who has had to be the face of a collective decision made by a seven-person board above him, and copped all the fury. Not all their ideas are this bad. Some, we dare say, are actually quite good.
But the $12 million sale of the next three grand finals to Sydney was poorly advised, and catastrophically handled. Long-suffering fans saw it as a middle finger pointed straight at them; the last insult they could put up with after many years of mismanagement and unkept promises. The outcome of the past week is that the A-League is completely broken, and all trust in the APL is gone. The repair job is now certainly beyond them.
Where to, now, for the A-League? Nowhere good. The APL may as well trudge to Football Australia’s offices and return the shattered, jagged pieces of domestic football in this country to them – or at least have the good grace to admit they need help gluing them back together.
