More than a bit of waffle on idiosyncratic forms of Australian soccer chauvinism

This week, in posting nothing even particularly inflammatory, which I'm more than capable of doing - some of it was just quoting choice elements of news articles on social media about Western United's ongoing issues with its creditors - I was accused of being bitter. Me! Bitter! Well, yes, I am. Of course I am. But I would like to think that there's more nuance to my bitterness than a simple slur like "bitter" can allow.

Right from the start, I should note that it is self-evidently both stupid and pointless (a winning combination if I've ever seen one) to engage with arguments and commentary that appear to be made in obvious bad faith, or at least based upon only skimming through the compulsory texts set for the course. If I were being reasonable about the whole thing, and I like to think I'm usually quite reasonable, I wouldn't expect any of my social media or actual social interlocutors, occasional or otherwise, to have read South of the Border from start to finish (please don't ever do that); that includes not even at the very least the good bits that people used to once share to their friends and enemies with the phrase "Mav nails it again".

So, I understand why I might get lumped in with people who are genuinely more aggro and aggrieved about the state of Australian soccer and especially South Melbourne's place in it than I am. Being lumped in with the more obnoxious online South fans used to frustrate me more when I was more engaged with the work of writing about Australian soccer, but back then there was also the reassurance that someone might chirp up with a "well, Paul's not like the others". How smug did I feel after those moments! But time and passivity can erode even the most hard won reputation. That makes it sound like I'm crying for my "nice bitter guy" reputation even more than I cry for South's reputation, and I suppose there's some truth to that. 

My reputation, limited as it was to being the "thinking Australian soccer fan's bitter" - sort of like the Lloyd Braun of bitters - went to great lengths to differentiate itself from the boastfulness seemingly inherent to South Melbourne Hellas and its supporters. But time moves on, and my reputation is no longer of concern, because I pretty much don't write anymore. So if I'm not worth engaging with, as some of my recent deriders seem to believe, then my message to them is: don't engage! It seems so obvious, and yet that is the social media nicotine impulse, isn't it? Someone of no consequence has said something stupid or disagreeable (about Australian soccer! of all the things to get upset about!) on the internet, and they must be corrected and chastised, for the betterment of all humanity.

So the bad faith arguments persist. It's even more frustrating when both sides of the argument clearly don't think that their opponents are arguing in good faith. Of course, calling it an argument is giving such discourse far too much dignity and credit; there really isn't much meaningful discourse about the topic. Getting involved with the sickly remnants of this new dawn/bitter divide is stupid and pointless in part because the new dawn has won, and quite comprehensively. Some South fans - the ones I've recently been lumped in with - would disagree, but it's so clear that, the novelty of a short Australian Championship fling aside (I should write something about that, maybe), Australian soccer has for the most part been drawn in the new dawn image. Yet so much of the engagement on these topics (at least within my social media vicinity) remains based around winding other people up, or trying to score brownie points with your own side by making yet another histrionic comment on social media. 

Meanwhile, I thought that my trademark casual flippancy was positively urbane by comparison; perhaps such nuances aren't as appreciated as they used to be.

Now on to a much more serious allegation. In addition to being accused of being bitter (fair), I was also accused of hating the A-League (mostly fair), and yet also with being obsessed with that competition despite my seeming/apparent/feigned (take your pick) interest in it. Well, yes and no. It depends on the day of the week and how well the competition is doing. Being slightly less flippant about the topic, I admit that the worse that the A-League does, the more interesting it is to me. Right now, the Western United situation aside, the A-League is not particularly interesting to me. The A-League is generally doing fine, and has been for a long time. Sometimes it does better, sometimes it does worse. It's not perfect, sure: it loses money hand over fist, crowds go up and then down very suddenly, and the TV deal ain't worth much. But that's no different to most minor and secondary soccer leagues around the world, especially those dependant on corporate philanthropy to keep them afloat.

Holding this general opinion of the A-League's mostly adequate health, as an otherwise bitter South fan, doesn't always go over well with other bitter South fans, especially those who are of a similar age to myself. For some reason, it especially doesn't go over well with Ian Syson, who likely thinks it to be mere contrarianism on my part; some last vestigial limb of the much, much younger me's penchant of arguing for the sake of arguing.

But regardless of how healthy the A-League actually is, the A-League has been around for twenty years now. The National Soccer League was around for 27. How long until those of our people actually death-riding the A-League finally get the hint that the A-League isn't going anywhere? Again, I suppose the answer lies in the question of how close South is to getting into the comp at any given point in time - the closer (in our imaginations at least) that we are, say during a semi-bona fide bidding process, then the more viable the A-League magically becomes; the further away we are (most of the rest of the time), the less viable the A-League seems to be unless it dramatically reforms itself to such an extent that, conveniently, the involvement or inclusion of South Melbourne is able to solve some or even many of the competition's problems.

It's the rather absurd and persistent and hardly unnoticed irony that the A-League's biggest haters (at least from those outside the A-League tent) so desperately want to be a part of it. People pointing this out sometimes do so thinking they've found the winning bit of well-observed satire that will once and for all take down the whole "South Melbourne supporter who's obsessed with hating the A-League" faction. But it's not a new observation, and it's not going to do the trick, just like counting A-League crowds off a TV screen isn't going to be the thing that kills off an A-League team. 

But back to me and my particular position on the whole thing. I don't much care for the A-League both as it is now, and as it has been since its inception. To understand my position on the matter though, one must separate the on-field aspect from the off. I could not give a stuff about what happens on the field. It does not concern me. I wish no one involved with it either well or ill. I really, seriously do not care, except on the rare occasions I am in the vicinity of A-League programming or in-person discussion, and I mostly try to ignore it, with often poorly disguised petulance.

But I don't care for the on-field aspect for much the same reason that I don't care for most soccer leagues outside Victoria, whether here or overseas. I don't care for the A-League in the same way that I, as a Victorian fan of Australian rules football, don't care about the SANFL or the WAFL. There's no hook for me, no connection. I tried connecting with Victory way back when, but it just didn't take. It didn't resonate with me on emotional, aesthetic, political, moral, or on whatever other grounds you can think of. That experience of not-resonating helped me understand the point of view of those who could not (and not just would not) connect to South or any ethnic club, even though it really shouldn't have taken that first season A-League sojourn to make that empathetic realisation. All sorts of reasoning (some fair, some absolute rubbish) can be attached to trying to make sense of why one couldn't attach themselves to it, but really, you either feel it, or you don't. Trying to convince yourself that you care or that you should care is not a good sign.

Would I change my view on the A-League if South Melbourne was allowed to participate in it, as South Melbourne, with no gimmicks? I probably would, even with having to deal with VAR; after all, pretty much everyone has a price. But that change of view wouldn't be only, or even mostly because I am a South Melbourne supporter, though of course it'd be a large part of it: it'd be because including South Melbourne in the A-League would fundamentally alter what the A-League is about, even if South Melbourne was a small club within the competition rather than the medium-sized fish that it was in the small sludgy pond that was the NSL. The A-League would fundamentally change if any of the major old ethnic clubs somehow made the jump. If it was Sydney Olympic or Marconi or Preston who somehow got in instead of us, I still probably wouldn't watch the A-League. But I could acknowledge that there was a pathway, and a significant cultural shift within the code at that level because of the addition. If I were to remain resentful about South's ongoing absence or ongoing exclusion, then the resentment, too, would have to take a different form. 

But there's no sign of that ever being anything other than a vague hypothetical. So, if I don't care about the on-field aspects of the A-League, and if South has basically Buckley's of getting into it, then why do I (or any bitter for that matter) pay any attention to the A-League as an organisation at all? The answer to that question is so obvious, that it's insulting to have to point it out; but since the people who bring this point up are either being deliberately obtuse about the issue, or are actually that ignorant, here's the answer:

Because I, and we, have to.

It's very much like living in Victoria as an AFL-hating soccer fan, and pretending that the AFL does not exist. Or even worse, being an AFL-hating soccer fan from outside of Victoria, who has no clue not just about how powerful the AFL is economically in this state. but especially how pervasive Australian rules is to this city on a cultural level. The game of Australian rules has grown up symbiotically with the city of Melbourne; to understand one is to understand the other. I bring this point up only because one of my interlocutors made a point of me being an AFL fan, as if that was not entirely normal for someone from Melbourne - even a soccer fan - to be.

But back to the A-League. While the A-League in Melbourne is not even close to reaching the heights of cultural relevance that the AFL has, unless you are being completely intellectually dishonest as an Australian soccer fan of certain "exiled" clubs, you can't pretend that the A-League and its current ownership and management do not exist. They exist, and they wield significant influence on the game as a whole, at both national and local levels. Outside of the Socceroos, and much more recently the Matildas, the A-League is the main (and most regular) showpiece of Australian soccer. It gets the bulk of the private investment dollars put into Australian club soccer. It gets access to the best available stadiums. It gets the most fans. It gets, however small it is compared to equivalent competitions from other Australian sports, more media attention than soccer leagues below it. The A-League teams and their owners wield, to varying degrees, greater influence with soccer's administrators at a national level, and with politicians more generally. 

Football federations have funded W-League teams, and promote the efforts of A-League teams - all private businesses, which are not members of their federations - on their social media channels. At a local level, clubs like South compete against the youth set-ups of Victory, City, and Western United for access to junior talent. At times we are forced to play against the youth teams of the A-League sides, which in the case of matches against Victory's NPL team, includes expending not insignificant amounts of time and money dealing with security concerns, because of the violence a minority of Victory's fanbase bring to this level. Western United, looking to temporarily solve its home ground issue, tried to play out of Lakeside apparently without even thinking to ask the already existing soccer tenant whether that would be OK. Second tier clubs lose players on the eve of finals series or right before a grand final to A-League teams, and who knows what the financial compensation for that is, if any. Weekly fixtures have to be worked around local A-League games, or at least the derbies and bigger matches.

These are mostly the inevitable logistical challenges of soccer in Australia, or any sport really. The big(ger) dog gets catered to better than those further down the pecking (or biting) order. Some of this stuff could be handled better, but being frank, if you're second tier, you're pretty much never going to be treated preferentially compared to those in the first tier. I doubt that it was much better in the past, and if it was, it probably wasn't because soccer's administrators and powerbrokers were more accommodating to their poorer cousins; it was probably just more down to being inept at exploiting that advantage or simply lacking enough leverage to better exploit the situation.

So there's logistics, but there's also culture. The A-League's varying degrees of success (at least during its early peak) have meant that soccer administrators at a state level have tried at various times to import and force changes upon lower tier clubs and structures in an attempt to emulate the success of the A-League. You can't use this or that name. We should introduce franchise systems of regional/suburban representation at the top of the state system, supplanting the existing club system. But there's also other, less official cultural elements which get less remarked upon. For example, when the A-League does good, it's obviously in spite of Australian soccer's ethnic past; when it does bad, it's just another example of how Australian soccer cannot get away from its dysfunctional (read: ethnic) past.

Examples of maladministration and bad ownership aside (which people don't really engage with too much), it's the hooligan aspect (which is much more visceral, and thus a lot more tangible to the ordinary punter) that generally gets the emotional juices flowing. It's been over twenty years since South and Knights were in the top-flight, and thirty years since Preston and Heidelberg were in the top flight; yet when Victory fans (for example) fuck up - most of whom would never have been to an NSL game, and would have almost no connection to those clubs - it's still our clubs who get dragged into the fray. "It's just like the bad old days", even though it isn't exactly like the old days.

(which is not to say that fans of "our" clubs haven't fucked up in the intervening periods; only to suggest that maybe there should be more nuance in the ongoing discourse of the Australian soccer violence problem)

Even when used as a positive comparative framing device, say for marketing purposes, the existence of the A-League as a touchstone is unavoidable. The FFA/Australia Cup was built on the twin stories of reconnecting two disparate parts of the Australian club soccer ecosystem (with some going as far as to suggest it's part of a "healing" process), and the thrill of a lower league upsetting an A-League one. When local and A-League clubs meet, it's at the lower club's home (except in cases where the local ground doesn't meet A-League standards), and the local club gets to show off a bit of its "authenticity", which apart from the tiresome Soccer Food Safari discourse, also inevitably paints the A-League clubs as somewhat "inauthentic" by comparison. And how can we not run the Australian Championship without any reference whatsoever to the A-League? Both those running it and those watching cannot but help but comment about the good, the bad, and of course the gap between the two competitions (and, crucially, ideas!) at every comparative level. 

Closer to home, the young supporters of our club, as well as the junior players and most of their parents, just do not have the same chip on their collective shoulder about the NSL, the A-League, and all the guff that those who grew up with a more glorious South Melbourne Hellas have. For them, it's an entirely different world, and approached that way. That goes for the majority of sponsors we have to woo, too, and the politicians. And those of us who do have that chip on our shoulder have to acknowledge that experience. We'll have fun among ourselves hating on the A-League, but at the same time, it's not the reason we exist, and I sometimes think some people outside the club want to push that idea, that our support of our club is secondary to our varying degrees of hostility to the A-League. For the most part, that's utter nonsense. If anything, those who prioritise hating the A-League over supporting South, aren't really coming to many South games.

Going back to the what kicked this whole thing off. Almost seven years ago to the day, the consortium behind Western United beat South and several other bidders for an A-League licence. They did this by bidding more money for the licence fee than most of their opponents, and by promising to build a privately owned, soccer specific stadium, alongside an urban development project in Melbourne's outer western growth suburbs. The group behind Western United claimed they would be ready to start that stadium as soon as they were awarded their licence. 

Seven years later, apart from a local council owned training venue posing as a national league stadium, the "shovel ready" stadium project is yet to commence. Large amounts of land remains undeveloped in the vicinity of the mooted stadium. The entire senior wing of the club - men's and women's - has been put into hibernation. Their men's VPL side was removed from competition a week before it was due to participate in playoff matches which had the potential of seeing them enter the top tier of soccer in Victoria. Western United's main backers - including a former Socceroo - have been taken to court by various parties for failing to meet their dues. The creditors and complainants have included staff members of other businesses of Western United investors, as well as various suppliers, and the tax office. Famous athletes of a variety of sports have been revealed to have been investors of the team.

Maybe Western United survive, maybe they won't. But put aside my self-interest in this matter by virtue of being a South fan, and a bitter one at that. Put aside the fact that I as an almost lifelong resident of Melbourne's western suburbs and an Australian soccer fan, am at least nominally part of the cohort that Western United would have wanted to convince to support them. Put aside for a moment that United's most recent hearing in the Federal Court was just three doors down from a courtroom I was working in. Put aside even this nonsense. If you're at all interested in Australian soccer, and you don't think that the current travails of Western United are absolutely fascinating, regardless of the motivation for finding them fascinating, then there's something wrong with you.