A-League players’ pay cuts show true level of sacrifice needed to save football in Australia
For all the grand and welcome ideas about football’s long-term future I’ve heard from some former Socceroos, the game’s ecosystem here has proved to be so fragile, all focus should be on the immediate term.
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I keep hearing about road maps to take Australian football into a brighter future, but a road map isn’t much use when you’re stuck at the bottom of a very deep hole.
It's great that groups of former Socceroos now want to contribute ideas for the future of the game. But in a week where current players are taking big pay cuts to finish the season and plenty of admin staff are still stood down, the priority now is the very survival of the game.
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The ecosystem of football here is fragile, and everybody’s focus should be on the immediate term.
That’s why I shook my head when I read about dissent among the players, or at least some of them, over the pay deal agreed this week. Of course it’s not ideal that a player on the average salary will – for three months only – take a 50% pay cut.
But it’s not ideal that a nasty virus has swept across the world and killed hundreds of thousands of people, causing many more to lose their jobs. It’s not ideal that A-League clubs – who are far more dependent on matchday revenue than the other codes – are staring at months without income. It’s not ideal that the coronavirus has exposed how hand-to-mouth we are living as a sport.
At the end of the day the players were paid in full for 10 months of this year, whereas AFL players for instance are taking a 50% cut all season. I’m always an advocate for the players, but in these unprecedented circumstances, the most important thing is that they stay together, and do what’s required to get the season finished.
As I said, we’re in a hole, and somehow we have to find a way to climb out. There’s been a lot of talk about ending the relationship with Fox Sports that has been there since the start, but – speaking as a football lover, not someone employed by Fox – I’d be very, very cautious about moving quickly for that option.
It will take a lot of very clever people, a lot of money and a lot of sacrifice to create an alternative whereby we produce the games ourselves and broadcast them on an app. And it’s not something that could happen in time for the 36 games we need to play in July and August to get this season done.
The fact is that all sports and their broadcast partners are having to rethink their relationships, and that will be just as true of the one between Football Federation Australia and Fox Sports.
This is a time for creativity in terms of who shows the game and for how much, and taking ideas from all sources. Everyone is making short-term sacrifices in order to weather this current storm, but they are only palatable when there is a sense that we will emerge from it stronger and having addressed the issues that have festered for years.
That’s the point at which road maps become appropriate. Until then, I’d be far more worried about building a ladder out of this hole.