The A-League: spread too thin

The furore surrounding Clive Palmer and Gold Coast United has cast more unwanted focus on soccer's position in the Australian sporting hierarchy. The club failing is bad enough, but for component on-field parts to auction themselves to prospective employers is like your soon-to-be ex auditioning potential replacements in front of your eyes.

Most galling of all is for this failure to occur in particularly high-growth area in the fastest-growing state in the nation. If football couldn't survive – demented patriarch or not – on the Gold Coast, there are few options left for A-League expansion. The league looks destined to stay in the same locations. And this may be for the best.

Realistically, there are only two more locations into which the A-League can try and expand naturally into a city with a population large enough to support the game. The league has already failed in both locations, Auckland and the Gold Coast. Despite it's size, Auckland also drags with it the baggage of New Zealand clubs playing in the domestic league of an Asian confederation member when the country competes in the Oceania confederation. Other possible expansion locations are also fraught with problems – the AFL's Cats countenance no rivals in Geelong, while Canberra boasts an enormous fly-in, fly-out population and lots of roundabouts.

Ben Buckley and the FFA, the sport's governing body in Australia and administers of the A-League, let the phenomenally successful second A-League season (2006-07) go to their collective bonces. The league attracted an average of nearly 13,000 fans per game that year, while collecting additional fuel from rivalries which solidified between the league's marquee clubs Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC and Adelaide United.

However, the Victory's remarkable crowd numbers masked the true situation. The now-defunct New Zealand Knights averaged a pitiful 3000 fans. More telling should have been that Melbourne's attendance comprised nearly 30% of the entire league gate. With renewed interest in roundball left over from the Socceroos' 2006 World Cup run and FFA decided to capitalise on soccer's newfound popularity and expand.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Since that year, four new teams have been created. Half of those have failed and now lie in ruin. A third, the Melbourne Heart is haemorrhaging cash, while the fourth, the Wellington Phoenix was born from the rubble of the Knights. With a population of slightly more than 22 million people The World Game's status as a distant fourth favourite football code, Australia simply can't support a national football competition which has more than ten teams. Thus, any expectation of healthy crowds or shirt sales at every venue is optimism verging on insanity.

While it is understandable the FFA wanted to expand while the game was at it's antipodean zenith, the league was a success in 2006-07 as a result of those nine teams, not despite the shortage of numbers. The game is healthier now than before the A-League's commencement, but to expect public interest to grow from all-time highs – especially when the tail end of the Golden Generation returned to pasture at home after a magical tour of Germany – was fallacy of the highest order. The league should have consolidated, rather than chosen to grow at a remarkably ambitious rate (including next season's likley West Sydney franchise, growing by five clubs in five seasons).

The argument against expansion is easy and tired, yet sport administrators fail to learn. No matter what the sport, clubs in a national competition need one of two things to succeed (and preferably both) – grassroots support for the sport, or a large enough populace to support a “minority” sport. By expanding into Far North Queensland,

When the league embarked on this Mr. Creosote-style inflation, not expecting local talent to be poached by higher-paying leagues, thus thinning the ranks of top players, was naïve. Add to that the established fact that expansion dilutes the talent-pool and suddenly the A-League doesn't provide the product it once did. That the young talent isn't coming through is just as damning – the simple fact is we can't supply the league with enough money, support or home-grown talent.

Because of this, the A-League should remain an nine-team league for the foreseeable future. Even the quick-cloned Western Sydney would be fallacy.

Part of the problem seems to be the FFA's complete misunderstanding of how many people it takes to fuel a football club. A vast majority of Australians couldn't tell you the left-back for their local A-League club, which explains why the sport struggles for recognition as a serious national competition, especially at a local level. It's time for the A-League to accept, for the time being, their place in the Australian sporting landscape. Give the people what they want – quality football. Clive Palmer seems to have forgotten, but this isn't accomplished with teenagers and faded stars, but with well-coached professional athletes.

To quote The Rock, it's time for the A-League to shut their mouth and know their role. It is possible – foreseeable, even, given junior participation – that in the longest of terms, football overtakes Rugby Union and even cricket in the national consciousness. However, that is also unlikely, especially when the FFA damages the A-League brand with repeated failed franchises.

Greater Western Sydney Giants should aim to be big, old(ish) and strong

As footy baptisms go, they don't get much harder than the one experienced by the Gold Coast this year. A first-up twenty goal loss to a Carlton side looking strictly mid-table, followed by a thirteen goal defeat to Footscray, sorry, the Western Bulldogs. On both occasions they managed only just above fifty points and, although their list management has been highly praised for their foresight and talent, yet the kids haven't been able to physically compete with the established clubs they've come up against.

This must sound alarm bells for the Greater Western Sydney project due to kick off next year. Their biggest money signing, Rugby League expat Israel Folau, has struggled to adapt to the speed of AFL so far, as has the Gold Coast's big poaching, Karmichael Hunt. "K" has a better Aussie Rules pedigree than "Izzy", having represented Queensland as a schoolboy, but questions now should be asked as to whether youth, and total youth, is the way forward for a GWS franchise which probably won't have the same luxury of time - former Swans coach Paul Roos is convinced that team success is the only way for the league thrive in Sin City.

Roos' recruitment policy reflected this for the majority of his time harbourside. Over his eight-plus year tenure, he brought in several re-treads and mature-bodied players who were able to keep his side in finals contention. Recently, names such as Josh Kennedy, Ben McGlynn, Mike Pyke, Shane Mumford, Martin Mattner and Rhyce Shaw have made themselves a home in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge alongside youngsters Dan Hanneberry, Craig Bird and local boy Kieren Jack. Success for GWS is paramount for the AFL and should they risk a totally-youth oriented recruitment program as the Suns have, then they risk losing fans and, eventually, losing credibility when public opinion suggested - with good, but not perfect reasoning - that a Tasmanian team was the better option for the AFL's eighteenth licence.

This recruitment of more mature players has thrived once again with expanded rookie lists and the success that Fremantle and Geelong have had with the likes of Michael Barlow, Alex Silvagni and James Podsiadly. This season as the top level talent went north (voluntarily or involuntarily) to join the Suns, clubs were forced to face the fact they were more likely to get a better quality recycled player than young prospect and drafted accordingly, allowing Andrew Krakouer a route back into the AFL and securing lifelines for players like Brad Miller, Mitch Hahn, Ed Barlow, Nick Lower and Robert Campbell.

In order to secure a reasonable first-season showing - and with much of this year's talent plumbed already by the Suns - the Giants will have to recruit accordingly, and mix their poached players and prospects with more hardened, experienced bodies. A quick glance around the next tier down suggests there is the quality at that level: Troy Selwood and Jaxson Barham at Geelong, Jarryd Allen at Sandringham, Bens Davies and Jolley at Williamstown, Adam Pattison at Box Hill and most notably, Brendan Fevola at Casey. Each of these players - though not superstars - is serviceable at AFL level and should serve to ensure defeats aren't as demoralising. Each also would be motivated by their last chance at AFL level, and each could be replaced by a developing youngster within three years.

By expanding to Greater Western Sydney, the AFL willingly acknowledged they were biting off a piece of the sporting pie which they weren't sure they could digest, let alone chew. To make the transition easier, it may be best to simply acknowledge that youth at all costs is a flawed strategy for starting a club. They should, because if the Giants are creamed week in, week out next season, the notoriously fickle Sydney crowds will flock to the exits and the AFL's greatest experiment since Brisbane will go down as a sure-fire failure.

Fevola's issues will haunt his future

Even though he's been cleared of wrongdoing in his most recent infraction, Brendan Fevola had tried to walk too fine a line for too long without falling off. And unsurprisingly, for someone so regularly affected by intoxicants, he didn't fall but reel from the straight and narrow to find himself now without a club for 2011 and perhaps approaching the AFL scrapheap for good.

As we said in January, he's far too talented to be thrown for good to the wolves of fortune, but at present he's so fractured that there remains too few recognisable pieces to allow his management to being the process of rebuilding. So often one cannot make lasting change until they hit rock bottom. For a man with as apparently little to his life as Fevola, he probably can't get any lower. There's little coincidence that his longest trouble-free period was during the time he abstained from alcohol during his then-wife's pregnancy and a similar decision would seem to be the first step in rehabilitating both his career and his life. Former NBA star and Original Dream Team member Chris Mullin forswore drinking after his second year in the leage after running into problems once too often and turned an potential also-ran career into a one possibly destined for the Hall of Fame. The troubled forward should take heed.

Where next, though? The VFL would melt down should one of the second-tier clubs manage to land Fev; the chances of his succeeding in the WAFL or SANFL is unlikely - a bagful of goals perhaps not worth the headache. The NFL, perhaps? Australia's greatest-ever NFL player, Darren Bennett recently said that the North American league would have no interest in such a wild chile as Fevola - it only bears imagining what Fevola would do in a party city like New York or San Francisco if his celebratory style was too much for Brisbane to handle. As is always the case with him, it's not his talent questioned but his application. Unable to cope with the solitary lifestyle in Queensland, fears exist that he would self-destruct, supernova-style, if allowed free reign and a salary in excess of seven figures. With a lockout looming in the NFL as well, any chances of him securing a career as a punter are unlikely.

A few years ago there was the much-publicised case of Carlton's Lawrence Angwin and Karl Norman turning up to training still affected by disco biscuits from the night before. Popular opinion had one, the other or both suffering from either ADD or ADHD. All the signs point to Fevola suffering the same condition - be it very difficult to diagnose from such a great distance and without personal interaction. His lifestyle will no doubt change - it will have to - as match payments turn from five-figure to low four-figure sums at best. With his alleged gambling debts, Fev his not backed himself into a corner but walked either willingly or been unable to control his direction of travel.

We can only hope for Brendan Fevola's sake that his AFL career is not over - there's every chance that Kevin Sheedy will be his saviour at Greater Western Sydney - but his tale is ending as Carlton expected. His days of clowning now won't be met with resignation but with sadness.