Rising tides and cross-purposes

"NPL on planes" is a magnificent phrase. In just three words, it captures the problem of the Australian Championship perfectly. Of course its origins are pejorative; but those three words also set out the challenge to be overcome. Certainly some clubs view the tournament, and any potential future expansion of it as part of a promotion-relegation system, as primarily being one based on sporting merit. But participation in the nominal national second tier should not be business as usual. Practices need to improve, and attitudes need to change, and audiences need to be given reason to attend, and to attend again. It's frustrating as, if not necessarily a regular Hellas fan, but at least the Hellas fan that happens to be me, that some South fans seem so obsessed with the old NSL (read: ethnic) stalwarts, while dismissing the success of clubs outside that cohort. The Championship also needs to be more than a vehicle for realising Hellas' own (perhaps fanciful) ambitions; it needs to be a rising tide, able to lift all boats who want something better than what they're accustomed to. Not every club can make the ideological transition, let alone achieve the practical element of it. For every Sutherland Sharks, who have done a remarkable job even outside the bounds of the Championship to present something genuinely exciting on and off the field, there are too many clubs who just cannot make the grade, no matter how good their intentions. Worse, as we saw on Friday night, one of the clubs that's a member of founding eight, along with some supporters of its sister clubs, seemingly wouldn't know good intentions from a hole in the ground, as they throw beer cans and flares at opposition fans and members of the general public, and then complain about onerous policing and security arrangements being imposed on them. But I digress. On field results, and increased playing and coaching professionalism are wonderful goals in their own right, as are improved facilities - but you also need your target public to care, and to come and support you. So a crowd of 4100 odd at Lakeside on Friday night is considered disappointing, understandably so given the hype of the record Australia Cup final crowd merely two weeks ago - but 4100 is significantly better than what Oakleigh has provided so far, or Avondale, or Marconi, or Heidelberg last year. 4100 is also a lot better than what we've been getting across the majority of the past twenty years in the VPL and NPL, so even if it's not enough for some, it's a start. More importantly, the experience was not flat; it was buzzing. It felt, at least from our end, like a modern experience, creating a bridge between our state league selves to where we'd like to be in the future. It also reminds us that an NPL grand final win, or Australian Championship final win, or even an Australia Cup final win is not a panacea for all our ills; if we have not learned that by now, I fear that we will never learn it.