A-League: The Inside Story of the Tumultuous First Decade

Published by Nero,

an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

37–39 Langridge Street

Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia

enquiries@blackincbooks.com

www.nerobooks.com

Copyright © John Stensholt & Shaun Mooney 2015

John Stensholt and Shaun Mooney assert their right to be known as the authors of this work.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Stensholt, John, author.

A-league: the inside story of the tumultuous first decade / John Stensholt, Shaun Mooney.

9781863957595 (paperback)

9781925203462 (ebook)

Football Federation Australia—History. Hyundai A-League (Competition)—History. Soccer teams—Australia—History. Soccer players—Australia—History. Soccer—Australia—History.

Mooney, Shaun, author.

796.3340994

Cover design by Luke Causby/Blue Cork

Cover photograph by Jono Searle/Newspix

Text design and typesetting by Tristan Main

CONTENTS

Foreword by Mark Rudan

1. The Saviour Returns

2. The Birth of New Football

3. Bling FC and ‘All Night Dwight’

4. Archie Bags Five as a Phoenix Rises

Picture Section

5. The Expansion Years

6. The World Cup Bid

7. Growing Pains, Failed Expansion and a Rebel League

8. Football Comes Home, and a Superstar Arrives

9. The Gallop Years Commence

10. Asian Cup Glory, but Can the A-League Thrive?

Acknowledgements

Sources

FOREWORD

In 2003–04, the final season of the National Soccer League (NSL), I was playing for my childhood club, Sydney United. It was a period tinged with sadness: we could see the writing on the wall for a club that is the heart of the Sydney Croatian community, and one that my parents loved and supported.

Undoubtedly, the model for football needed to change. Should the migrant clubs have been a part of the new future? I’m not sure. Could the new establishment, Football Federation Australia (FFA), have treated them better? Absolutely.

As the NSL came to a close, we were all curious about what the future held, but also apprehensive about what the outcome might be. At the time, my career was at a crossroads. I had a young family, and I contemplated going into a gyprock business with a friend. But as luck would have it, I was asked to go to Malaysia to play for Public Bank FC.

A few other Australian players were there, and we started to hear whispers about the new franchises being formed in Australia. What we heard excited us. We didn’t know if the league would exist in one year or three – all we knew was that we wanted to be part of it.

Being a Sydney boy, born and bred, there was only one club that I wanted to play for – Sydney FC – and I was thrilled to return home to join the franchise. Excitement built among the players when we learnt Pierre Littbarski would be coach. It peaked again when Dwight Yorke signed as a marquee player. To this day, I believe that Yorke has been the greatest A-League recruit. Other marquees may have produced on the pitch, but Yorke was also able to bring much-needed publicity.

I remember our first game against Melbourne Victory. We former NSL players were used to playing before three or four thousand people, but as both teams walked down the tunnel we could hear the crowd start to roar. I looked over at Victory captain Kevin Muscat and we both had a bit of a laugh as we thought, ‘How good is this?’ The official crowd figure for the game was 25,000, but there were definitely a lot more people there.

Winning the Grand Final in the first season – my first championship as a player – was definitely the highlight of my playing career. The build-up to our Grand Final against Central Coast Mariners was intense. You could not open the newspaper or turn on the television without someone talking about the game. Football was entering the mainstream of Australian sport.

There has been much progress over the years. The biggest period of coaching transformation occurred at Ange Postecoglou’s Brisbane Roar. In terms of style and philosophy, he really made an imprint not just on his then club but also on the A-League as a whole.

A lot of people have questioned FFA chairman Frank Lowy’s leadership. I believe he’s probably been the most important person for football in Australia in the last decade: he’s driven the growth of the A-League, taken Australia into the Asian Football Confederation, and enabled our World Cup qualifications.

While there is much to celebrate, the sport is not without problems, as a number of clubs still struggle to make ends meet. When the FFA improves the ownership model, our game will truly thrive. I believe that, ideally, the league should expand to 12 teams. After the success of the inaugural FFA Cup in 2014, can we have a second tier, and a model of promotion and relegation? That may yet be a way off.

John Stensholt and Shaun Mooney have told the story of the A-League with truth and accuracy. They’ve been football fans since the NSL days of the 1980s, and you can feel their passion for the game in their words. They have told of both the good times and the low moments, without fear or favour. For football to move forward, we need to be honest about our past so that we can collectively make better decisions in the future.

In the meantime, enjoy reading about the last ten years. It’s been a great ride.

Mark Rudan

Fox Sports football analyst,

and former captain of Sydney FC

August 2015

1

THE SAVIOUR RETURNS

It was the phone call Frank Lowy had been waiting for. And, secretly, one he had been wishing for the best part of 15 years.

There was no mistaking the person on the other end of the line. Prime Minister John Howard spoke eloquently and firmly, and was clear in his intent. Football needed Lowy back in the fold, and a sequence of events had resulted in the path being cleared for the shopping centre billionaire to return to the game he had loved for almost his entire life.

In 2003 football in Australia was on its knees. The National Soccer League (NSL), a league so familiar to Lowy, was teetering on the brink of survival as club after club collapsed. The sport, although booming in terms of junior participation, seemed to have been hamstrung forever by inept administration and warring factions that held football back, preventing it from fulfilling its potential. It might have been the world game, but in Australia football was in danger of becoming a joke, with governing body Soccer Australia virtually insolvent.

By the time the prime minister placed his call to Lowy, following an official letter asking him to lead the repairing of football, events had conspired to ensure Lowy would have the full backing of the sport and the highest office in the land. He would receive a mandate to overhaul the moribund federation in charge of the sport, and $15 million in government grants and loans so he could fulfil his vision.

‘I resisted all the way until I realised I could tear up the rulebook and start with a new one,’ says Lowy. ‘When the prime minister asks you to do something, you don’t like to refuse.’

So it was that Lowy was appointed chairman of Soccer Australia on Saturday, 19 July 2003, at an extraordinary general meeting in Sydney. He would have full control of the organisation, from the choice of board members down. Investing such power in one man was unprecedented. But in truth football had no Plan B. Lowy had to be the saviour, the messiah who would deliver salvation to a football code desperately in need of leadership and vision, and support from the biggest names in politics, business and sport.

Lowy stressed that his job was tough but not impossible, and spoke about what he saw as the game’s true strength. ‘The basis of success in Australia and internationally is a strong national league,’ he said. And it was an eclectic mix of politicians, corporate governance experts, football heroes, NSL players, club owners, administrators and plenty more who would work tirelessly – first to bring Lowy back into the fold, and then to support him in making his vision for a new national competition come true.

Frank Lowy fell in love with football as a child growing up in Czechoslovakia and later Hungary, although he admits he was never really much good at playing the sport. It was in administration that the Holocaust survivor would make the greatest impact on the game.

In 1969 he took the helm of eastern Sydney Jewish club Hakoah as president. His vision was to build a social club that would provide funds for the football team and for the Jewish community. Lowy, who was already on his way to building a considerable fortune from shopping centres, even temporarily put his Point Piper mansion up as collateral when the club hit hard times. He learnt an important lesson about not personally investing in his passions in the future.

At the time he became Hakoah president, the concept of a national league had already been discussed by football administrators and the media. When Australia qualified for the World Cup in 1974 – its first appearance on football’s biggest stage – the idea grew stronger, despite resistance from some state federations and concerns about travel costs around what is a vast country.

Lowy believed the idea to be the right one, especially for a club like Hakoah. Given the cost of running the club and paying top players, either a national league needed to be formed or he would propose that Hakoah revert to amateur status. Together with another successful club boss, St George Budapest’s Alex Pongrass, Lowy began talking to the leaders of other clubs around the country about setting up a national competition.

The political muscle of Australian Soccer Federation (ASF) president Sir Arthur George also helped, and in April 1977 the 14-team National Soccer League was born. A major sponsorship deal was signed with the Philips Electrical Company, and the television broadcasting rights were sold to Channel Ten.

In truth, the league was ahead of its time. Football in Australia had emerged from the social clubs of the many ethnic communities that had settled in large numbers from the 1950s onwards: Greeks, Italians, Croatians and others. However, the NSL attempted to appeal to ‘mainstream Australia’ by stripping the new clubs of their ethnic identities: Hakoah, for example, became the Sydney City Slickers.

While attendances in the first NSL season were higher than those of the state-based leagues, crowds soon started to slide and many clubs struggled financially. Several new initiatives were tried or recommended, including a switch to summer – in order to avoid competing with rugby league and Australian rules football – and even splitting the NSL away from ASF control. Administrators kept changing the format of the league in an effort to attract wider audiences: they introduced a final series, northern and southern conferences, and penalty shootouts after drawn matches. The league saw more name changes when clubs were granted permission to return to their ethnic badges.

By 1987 Lowy had had enough. After one round he made the shock decision to withdraw Sydney City from the league, throwing the competition into disarray. It was a cold-blooded decision to cut his and the club’s losses in a venture for which Lowy simply could not see a viable future, even though the club had been successful on the field, winning three NSL titles between 1980 and 1982.

The cost for Hakoah to fund Sydney City was increasing; the club’s good results failed to attract an increase in spectators. As early as 1983 Lowy had proposed removing Sydney City from the NSL, stunning club members at a time the club was winning trophies. However, by 1987 the football side was a considerable drain on the social club’s finances, and Lowy moved to take the club out of the league to save the social club.

‘I don’t think it diminished Frank’s aura,’ recalls journalist Michael Cockerill. ‘Nobody ultimately held it against him. In fact, in some ways it just demonstrated his power, because everyone knew this was a man who could make very hard decisions for football, and while he was away, the other guys couldn’t make hard decisions about changing the league.’

The only way Lowy could see the game improving was if changes were made at the top. He ran for president of the ASF against Sir Arthur, but lost. Lowy walked away from the game and focused on building his Westfield shopping centre business empire.

As football lurched from one crisis to the next, Lowy fielded constant approaches from many involved in the game. They appealed to him to return and fix the sport once and for all. NSL general manager Stefan Kamasz went so far as to resign when Lowy rejected his overtures, believing that, without Lowy, the game simply could not be viable.

Football would try other saviours. In 1995 the former ABC boss David Hill became chairman of Soccer Australia (as the ASF had been rebadged), having a built a reputation for transforming bureaucracies rapidly. Hill was active in his efforts: he cut what he thought were the weakest NSL teams, he appointed the high-profile English manager Terry Venables as manager of the Socceroos, and he again rid the clubs of their ethnic names. But Hill met resistance at just about every turn, as football’s capacity to fight itself came to the fore.

Hill’s theory was sound in some ways, particularly his idea of adding what he termed ‘glamour clubs’ and removing weaker sides with dwindling numbers of supporters and little money. The hope was that these new teams would make the game more attractive and therefore increase revenue though increased attendances, sponsorship and, ultimately, television income. While experiments such as the Collingwood Warriors and Carlton FC in Melbourne would eventually fail, along with Northern Spirit in Sydney, the crowds did flock for a time. Popular migrant-founded clubs such as Sydney Croatia (later Sydney United) and Marconi also attracted big crowds at times, as did the Melbourne Knights and South Melbourne, the latter of which was named the Oceania team of the century. The wider public wanted football to succeed, but only if it was done right.

The standout glamour club was Perth Glory, owned by the entrepreneur Nick Tana. He had made his fortune through a chain of fast-food restaurants and saw the NSL as an opportunity. Its weak administrative structures allowed him to build a club in the way he wanted, with few restrictions imposed by head office. ‘We didn’t have those constraints so we said, What is the best way to attract people’s interest, media’s interest, corporate interest and government interest,’ says Tana. ‘Because without them, it ain’t going to work.’

A marketing agency was employed to find a concept that would be new and exciting and a total break from where football was at the time. The result was the club’s purple strip and the nickname Glory. About $1 million annually was poured into marketing and the match-day experience. ‘We had a philosophy [that] if the game has impressed [the fans], they go away and get all hyped up,’ says Tana. ‘Hype them up so they leave with something,’

The move was a stunning success; the NSL had never seen anything like it. Crowds, peaking at an NSL record of almost 15,000 per match in 1997–98, flocked to Perth Oval, enjoying its intimate atmosphere, and Tana paid his players well, which ensured that a steady stream of the NSL’s best talent moved west. The Glory even managed to sell out Subiaco Oval, home of the AFL’s West Coast Eagles and later Fremantle Dockers, for NSL grand finals. It was proof that football clubs run in the right way could attract a huge following in Australia.

Yet Tana would end up at loggerheads with the establishment: he felt as though he was doing all the heavy lifting for the competition, and not getting much in return. But he could see that it was the start of an awakening, an opening of the public’s mind about what football in Australia could be.

The Glory’s success also struck a chord with the players and their trade union, the Professional Footballers’ Association (now Professional Footballers Australia). Under the leadership of its chief executive, Melbourne lawyer Brendan Schwab, the PFA had long battled for player rights, taking up the fight against Soccer Australia and various NSL clubs whenever players went unpaid or working conditions were poor. Both were happening far too often.

The collapse of Carlton in the NSL had made a particular impression on Schwab, who could see no clear future for the league as it then was. Clubs were losing money, crowds were falling, mainstream television had virtually no interest in covering it and the good players were leaving for overseas in droves. ‘We learnt the lesson that you cannot reform the NSL,’ Schwab says. ‘Because it really got to a situation of a consistent cycle of which club would next be going through these insolvency procedures.’

The PFA decided to take matters into its own hands. If no one else was prepared to come up with a clear vision for the game’s future, particularly its administrators, the players would. Schwab registered the name ‘Australian Premier League’ and approached Perth Glory’s Nick Tana.

‘What Perth had shown was that the game would be very attractive if it created a great atmosphere and it was very presentable,’ says Schwab. ‘It was very professionally administered on and off the field. Tana was working very hard to reform the league. In fairness, he went through every process, every committee, every reform structure that was put up. That was nothing more than a bureaucratic talkfest.’

Dipping into their own pockets, the players – with some financial support from Tana – paid $500,000 for a study that would propose a model for a sustainable national league, and make a series of recommendations about how such a league might work.

‘The plan was to see if Tana’s Perth Glory model could be replicated on a national basis,’ says Schwab. ‘The product he was delivering every week was fantastic. He sold out his grand finals. He had this amazing atmosphere, and the players really enjoyed it.’

Schwab ultimately stepped down from his role as chief executive of the PFA so he could focus on the APL model. Research on key markets was conducted, economic modelling was commissioned, and advice was provided by media and corporate governance experts. ‘The main feedback we got was, Hey, you guys have really thought about this. However, the game lacks credibility, and if you can’t break the mindset that exists in corporate and media Australia about the game, you’re going to struggle.’

In December 2002 Schwab presented the APL to the public. Soccer Australia was incensed but Schwab remained steadfast, saying: ‘We will either dedicate ourselves to developing and supporting players so that they successfully pursue careers overseas in the absence of an elite national competition, or secondly we will fight, and this is our preferred position for the establishment of that competition.’

The central premise of the APL model was to flip the economics of football in Australia so that the sport would be driven by the club competition, not by national team success. The APL format would start with a ten-team competition: three teams in Sydney, two in Melbourne, and one each in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane, while the final two locations would be selected on the basis of business cases submitted.

Research outlined in the plan found that 6 million Australians were interested in football, or 44 per cent of the population between 16 and 65 years of age; of that number, 1.99 million people watched the sport. So for a football club to be successful under the APL model, it needed a supporter base of around 250,000 people. The club model would be based on a five-pillar strategy: quality content, good atmosphere at games (by the use of boutique stadiums), community engagement, the development of local brands, and a centralised marketing plan.

Unlike the NSL, the APL was to be independent of Soccer Australia, and all licensees would invest capital to fund the administration of the competition. They would also receive revenue from television rights. Unlike the NSL model, in which clubs spent years bankrolling the league to keep it afloat, revenues would trickle down from the central body to the clubs.

While the plan did make some noise within the football community, many in and outside the game were unsure. ‘It failed to connect with government and the soccer fraternity, and that’s where it lacked,’ said Tana, who fully supported the plan. What the APL needed was a champion, someone the business, government and football community felt had the ability to realise this grand new vision.

Financially, Soccer Australia was on it knees. The NSL clubs lost a combined total of $18 million in 2001, and Soccer Australia was staring at an $850,000 shortfall. The Socceroos’ failure to qualify for the 2002 World Cup impacted on the federation’s ability to attract corporate dollars, and Soccer Australia chairman Ian Knop came up with the solution of placing a national levy on all registration fees. The parents of Australia would finance the governing body’s mismanagement.

Football legend Johnny Warren was incensed, and publicly attacked the federation: ‘Mum and Dad, who run the canteen, who donate their time to train the kids, these are the ones being penalised for maladministration, for, in some cases, corruption.’

Many politicians had ignored Soccer Australia’s problems, so long had the governing body seemed in turmoil. But they started to take an interest in the game when they sensed an opportunity to build their own popularity. The 2002 FIFA World Cup was co-hosted in Japan and South Korea, and so for the first time was televised into Australia at peak viewing times, rather than in the early hours of the morning. The broadcasts across Channel Nine and SBS reached an audience of 14.8 million, or about three-quarters of the country’s population. ‘In a cricket country, with Australia not taking part in a World Cup, it was massive and it woke up the politicians,’ says SBS broadcaster Les Murray.

One of Australia’s savviest politicians, the Labor premier of New South Wales Bob Carr, saw an opportunity. Known more for his interests in the arts and American history than in any of the football codes, Carr enlisted the services of Murray to launch what he termed the Premier’s Soccer Taskforce Report.

‘He went on this spiel about the state government is going to set up a task force, make an inquiry into football and how we’re going to improve it,’ says Murray. ‘He flagged there for the first time the need for Australia to try to host the World Cup.’

Carr’s taskforce enlisted the services of Johnny Warren, Frank Lowy and former Soccer Australia chief executive Alan Vessey. The trio were asked to find an answer to a pertinent question: why was a star-studded Socceroos team, which was ‘staffed ostensibly by players who play professionally in the United Kingdom’, not involved in ‘the world’s largest sporting festival’? It was a question many had asked since 1974. The report’s outcomes amounted to little, but Lowy’s involvement signalled his interest in the future of the game.

Soccer Australia’s financial position was so precarious that it had elected to field a team filled with NSL players to compete in the 2002 Oceania Nations Cup in New Zealand, which began a week after Brazil had won the World Cup. There would be no overseas-based stars such as Harry Kewell or Mark Viduka, as Soccer Australia had no money to pay them. Only Scott Chipperfield, paying his own way, would return from overseas. A spot in the lucrative FIFA Confederations Cup was at stake, and the weakened national side lost to the Kiwis 1–0 in the final, missing out on $1.8 million in prize money.

Murray was publicly scathing of the administration in a column on The World Game website: ‘Soccer Australia’s top brass … presides over quite simply the worst run sport in the country … A sport run by a clubby network of political appointees, in positions attained not through talent or merit but via clever electioneering, alliances, favours, counter favours and coups d’etat. A top brass with a mandate for leadership but which has not the capacity to provide it. The fish, gentlemen, stinks from the head. It is time you all faced it and did the noble thing.’

Soccer Australia’s board did not resign after the New Zealand debacle, but Ian Knop would set the entire organisation on the path towards its eventual demise. Knop rang Max Moore-Wilton, the secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office, requesting a meeting. He told Moore-Wilton the sport was in trouble and asked if the government would bail it out – to the tune of $3 million. The secretary took the request to Prime Minister John Howard, who agreed to help, but only on the condition that there would be a full inquiry into the governance and administration of the sport. Knop agreed.

Thus, on 19 July 2002 the chief executive of the Australian Sports Commission (ASC), Mark Peters, arrived at a Soccer Australia board meeting at the Airport Hilton in Sydney and announced that the federal government had ordered a review into football. After he presented the board with the draft terms of reference, the board asked him to leave the room so they could proceed in removing chief executive Greg Bates. The board members agreed to the inquiry’s terms, although Peters walked away unsure about whether they fully understood what the inquiry would be investigating.

The government knew the best man to chair the inquiry. David Crawford, a highly respected lawyer and corporate governance expert, was the national