Western United blocked from using Lakeside

So the news came in late on Friday afternoon: South had successfully blocked Western United from using Lakeside for the upcoming A-League season. Thus ended the week-long saga that saw much energy expended by a lot of people, with just about everyone involved ending up more or less where they started from. South doesn't get an A-League intrusion at Lakeside. Western United will end up playing those seven home games designated for Lakeside at AAMI Park. And the Trust which manages Lakeside Stadium will continue scratching its head trying to figure out how to make soccer work at Lakeside.

Despite all parties involved seemingly ending up back at square one, one tangible change in the dynamic is the realisation that South's veto rights over football at Lakeside are actually quite real. This is a lesson - perhaps the only genuine lesson learned from the entire situation - that's been learned by both the online anti-South brigade, but also by South fans themselves. Otherwise, pretty much everyone who contributed to the public discussion on United's attempt at play at Lakeside, and South's thwarting of it, hasn't budged from their starting position of what they think about South Melbourne Hellas as a valued (or otherwise) member of the Australian soccer body politic. 

I don't know what the anti-South brigade thought about the veto's legitimacy - as Mark Boric noted, maybe they thought that because the most "excitable" online South fans kept bringing it up, that the veto must be a figment of those South fans' imagination. Combine that with South not being the owner of Lakeside, and I can see how some people came to that conclusion; but even as other comparatively non-hysterical South fans noted the veto's existence, the blindness caused by the anti-South cohort's visceral hatred for South meant that only the successful application of the veto itself could make it real.

For South fans, who have been used to hearing about the existence of the veto, it was a relief for to see that not only is the veto real, but that invoking it has real-world consequences. Considering South has long allowed W-League and Y-League games at Lakeside - which is not something some staunch South fans are happy with - we have seldom if ever seen the veto used in practice. The exception to that is a now ancient and maybe even apocryphal refusal to allow Melbourne Heart to use Lakeside, before they became Melbourne City. In contrast, the deployment of the veto means that its existence is now public and verifiable, and a marker for all future discussions on the topic, even if most of the specifics remain confidential.

Further to the confirmation of the veto's power, is the surprise and delight among many South fans that the South board actually decided to use it. Thanks in part to the clumsiness of United's attempt to barge into Lakeside without even wiping their feet on the welcome mat, we will never know if the South board would have decided on a different course of action had United's request been made with more tact. The immediate and overwhelming opposition from South members might have it impossible for the South board to agree to United using Lakeside anyway, but the manner in which the situation unfolded gave the South board little choice but to say "no".

Moral grandstanding aside, for South the opportunity seemed to be there for some sort of financial gain, as well as improvements to Lakeside's amenities. On arguments about generating goodwill, I'm less convinced about that than I was last week. After all, what would be the long-term benefits of being good public soccer citizens to any member of a self-interested cartel? Key members of the A-League cartel - now almost completely a law unto itself in terms of its governance and operation - have made it clear they do not want South Melbourne in their clique. I mean, City and Victory didn't even want a third Melbourne team of any sort to be part of the A-League. Yet even as key parts of the national league cartel, whose goal should be the self-interest of the cartel as a whole, and not just the narrow self-interest of individual cartel members, City and Victory helped contribute to this mess by not allowing United to use AAMI Park for the upcoming season in the first place.

Sure they're rivals, but being part of the same cartel - and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, it's just facts - it was ridiculous there wasn't any evidence of cartel discipline or solidarity until someone in (I assume) Australian Professional Leagues (the A-League's governing body) forced the hand of City and Victory. It's the least they could do for the team whose licence fee, in at least some A-League fans' opinion, is helping keep several struggling teams afloat.

Of course most of the anti-South squawkers seemed to miss all of that. Asking why South copped so much grief for the situation United has found itself, and why more of the blame wasn't being directed not just at United, but also at Victory and City, is really a very rhetorical question. Those people will squawk about South "showing its true colours" with regards to helping Australian soccer (as well as itself in the short and long term), but the reality is a likely more cynical affair: that most of that squawking was done by people who have no time for South anyway; are in no position from which to turn any goodwill gesture from South into something which will tangibly benefit South; and even if they were, they would be just as likely to move the goalposts should South get even close to achieving its aim of a return to national league soccer.

Speaking for myself, as probably one of the few South fans who was nonplussed about United using Lakeside, I'm a little disappointed that South won't be able to cash in materially on the opportunity. Still, I understand the general elation from our supporters at the board's conduct and the overall outcome. Whether it was the right decision by the South board or not, the way things panned out they had little option other than to invoke the veto. 

United had been scratching around for months for a suitable venue, had come up short for a variety of reasons, and ended up falling onto Plan Z: Lakeside. 

The problems with this plan were myriad, but also contained elements specific to United's reason for existing. One of Victorian soccer's oldest problems has been a lack of suitable infrastructure; United promised to ameliorate that infrastructure deficit by building a new soccer only stadium, and an associated soccer precinct. A few years down the track, and next to no visible progress has been made on their promised solution. Thus we end up in the situation where United apparently trawled Australian Rules venues, tried to get government funding to improve a private soccer venue (not even their own) in the form of Knights Stadium, and then tried to stowaway on the good ship Lakeside.

And perhaps more than most venues they considered, Lakeside has its particular quirk as a moral choice for Western United: United didn't just win its A-League licence (at the expense of several other bids, including South's) by promising a new soccer specific stadium. During the bidding process for that licence it was also made very clear by a variety of people, including people affiliated with United's bid, that Lakeside was not a suitable venue for national league soccer. Somehow all of a sudden Lakeside, with the addition of some very simple improvements - better lighting and wifi - became a more than suitable venue.

Even those who saw this as a good opportunity for South to cash in financially, infrastructure-wise, and in building goodwill, could not ignore the moral heart of the matter. United and a whole bunch of people in high and low places had said that Lakeside Stadium was not good enough for national league football. The implication which followed on from that belief is that because Lakeside was not good enough for national league football, that South Melbourne was also not good enough for national league football. And yet there were a lot of people who got very mad that the club they said wasn't good enough for national league football, wasn't going to allow Western United to use a stadium that they themselves, as well as Western United, said was not good enough for national league football. That United tried to get into Lakeside by not even giving South a courtesy call until very, very late in the matter turned this strictly into a moral matter instead of one that also had a commercial element (though the South board was at pains to emphasise the commercial aspect). 

I'm happy to acknowledge that United may have genuinely been blissfully ignorant of the existence of South's Lakeside veto. I'm even willing to acknowledge that United took the right path officially by calling up the Trust first, the Trust being the venue manager after all, to start the process of trying to sort out their fixture problem. But having known that they were going to embark on this process, United could surely have contacted South much earlier than they did; and even with the pressure of a fixture deadline needing to be announced, not gone public with their announcement until the South board had had time to consider the situation.

(One also has to wonder who at the Trust who met with United - meetings which reportedly included senior figures and not just low level bureaucrats - forgot to mention to United that South has a football veto.)

The end result, so far as I'm concerned, shows South merely exercising its hard-fought for legal rights. United meanwhile continue to flounder about not just in terms of sorting out its ongoing stadium problem, but also in the basics of local soccer diplomacy and courtesy. For an organisation which has boasted about the bona fides of its core staff being football people - and which went on Greek radio no less to talk about their respect for South as a club and institution - their approach to making friends in the local soccer scenes came across as graceless at best, and arrogant at worst.

Some punters spun United now being allowed to play this set of matches at AAMI Park, as what United wanted all along. That's possibly true; but if it is, what an awful, circuitous way of getting to this point. For South, the end result is a moral victory in the short term. How that short-term victory plays in financial terms, and in the relationship with the Trust, remains to be seen. 

Still, at least it was something which helped pass the time.