Football in Crisis?........Ben Buckley fires a missle of his own

[Jolly_Roger]

Hi Everyone. I just recieved this email through Football Australia. Its nice to see Ben stand up and fire a missle of his own back at ms wilson.....read on,

Dear "XXXX"

You may have noticed an article in some of Saturdays papers which said that the Hyundai A-League and football in general is in crisis.

The writer (Rebecca Wilson) said the alleged crisis was the reason for the result between Adelaide United and Gamba Osaka in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League and that Adelaide was humiliated.

I thought it might be helpful to write to let you know just how wrong this view is.

For a start, I've always thought that a team which makes it to a final of a competition has actually performed very well.

Whether it be the NRL or AFL Grand Finals, the finals of the cricket One Day Internationals or finals of the Super 14s, it is generally accepted that the two teams competing have excelled to get that far.

Let's put Adelaide United's achievement in making it to the final of the Asian Football Confederation's (AFC) Champions League against Gamba Osaka into perspective.

To get to the final, Adelaide had to:

(a)  finish as either minor premiers or champions of the Hyundai A-League to earn the right to represent Australia in the first place

(b)  come through a group stage playing six home and away matches against teams from Korea, China and Vietnam

(c)  navigate through the quarter finals and semi finals, playing a further four home and away matches, against one of the most successful teams in J-League history, Kashima Antlers, and Bunyodkor from Uzbekistan, and

(d)  meet another top team from the Japanese league which is widely considered the top national league in the Asian confederation.

Since 2006, we have been actively addressing the shortcomings of the sport with a long term plan for Australia to improve its technical skills and to achieve sustained success internationally.

Last year, Football Federation Australia (FFA) released the first ever national strategic framework for the development of the sport in this country.

It is a long term plan for Australia to achieve sustained success at international level within the historical context of a lack of investment in the critical area of football development over many decades.

The national football development plan sets out a comprehensive program for improving and upgrading the game at every level and for all participants, whether they be players, coaches, referees, volunteers or other administrators.  The plan addresses development at two distinct levels:

'game development' which focuses on the grassroots that underpins the sport's popular base as well as the development of talented players who may well become the next Brett Emerton, Heather Garriock or Lucas Neill, and
'talented player development' which is focussed on a nationally coordinated talent identification system involving the Australian Institute of Sport, the State Institutes, the member federations and the Hyundai A-League clubs.
Since then, we have delivered a number of the initiatives outlined in the national football development plan all of which have the aim of improving the skill levels and technical proficiency of players.  These include:

introduction of Small Sided Football which aims to improve the skill levels and technical proficiency of young players
establishment of a National Youth League
establishment of the Westfield W-League
improved integration of pathways for talented players, and
a customised development program for the top 50 talented players.
Small sided football is critical to our strategy as it gives children more touches of the ball, leading to improved skill levels.  After just one year, 70,000 children are playing small sided football and this number will increase further over the next two years.

It's one thing to produce good players, but we also need to produce good coaches.

While it's terrific to see the 'mums and dads' at weekend games helping out their childrens teams, we also want to ensure those mums and dads have the skills they need also to help children appropriately as they guide them in the early years.

To date, we have:

introduced a national coach accreditation scheme from grassroots upwards
held our first ever national coaching conference with leading experts from around the world, for coaches from grassroots to elite
set out minimum coaching qualifications for elite level coaches, and
awarded the first four scholarships under our new Elite Coach Development Program to two former Socceroo captains, Alex Tobin and Paul Okon; to another former Socceroo, Alistair Edwards; and to Nicola Williams.
In time for the 2009 winter football season, we will have a new online course available for accredited coaches to supplement and complement certificate courses.

The article also suggested that the best players go overseas.

This is a reality which has been ever-present in football for 25 years and reflects the fact that football is the truly global game.

It is almost a rite of passage for talented young Australian players to try their luck in the bigger and richer leagues around the world, just as it is for young footballers from elsewhere such as South America.

It is a reality which other sports are only now just starting to experience as the epicentre of some of the other sports shifts.

But with our large participant base, our nine national teams for men and women, and regular competitive opportunities through the Asian Football Confederation, the Hyundai A-League (along with the National Youth League and the Westfield W-League) will grow into a more and more significant competition and source of playing talent for national teams as the competition matures and evolves.

At the end of season 3 of the Hyundai A-League, average crowds were 15,350, club memberships increased by almost 100% on season 1 and FOX Sports continued to report increasing viewer numbers.

Even though there has been a small reduction in crowds to date in this season, we are light years ahead of the old national soccer league.

Expansion will not only give us the best geographical footprint of any national sporting competition in the country, but more teams will help make the competition even more vibrant and attractive.

We are expanding to ten teams next season, with the addition of the Gold Coast and North Queensland Fury, and to twelve the season after.

Even further growth of the Hyundai A-League will come from creating local heroes that young players can touch and see week-in, week-out and we are taking positive steps to ensure that we have enough quality players available.

Importantly, an expanded Hyundai A-League will also give clubs an extended season with more games which as every coach and armchair expert knows leads to improved skill levels, technical proficiency and match preparedness.

So, far from being "in crisis" we are rebuilding from the grassroots up.

We are expanding the Hyundai A-League
We are involved in regular quality competition in Asia
1 million Australians enjoy playing the sport
We have launched a national plan to address technical failings
The sport is back in the black financially (which we will be announcing later this month), and
We are bidding for the right to host the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Thank you for your commitment to football.

We hope to see you at a Hyundai A-League, National Youth League, Westfield W-League and Qantas Socceroos match in the very near future.



Cheers

Ben Buckley

Chief Executive Officer

 

[Bex]

Nice work Ben

 

[northernspirit]

shame it wasnt in the papers as the damage is done - stupid bitch that mole is!

 

[Jorome Alexander Bennett]

This was done as a statement.
So if the paper had any journalistic integrity would publish a story on this point of view.
The fact that BB is part of FFA does weaken it because he would say that.
But anyone looking at the game without a Super League agenda would see that football is well poised for serious positive development to go along with growth that the game always seems to enjoy.

R.Wilson just got it so wrong.
The problem is that she meant to.
Propaganda.

 

[clarence]

BB forgot to mention the e) to Adelaide's great effort this year...

e) They had to prepare for another A-League season and compete while at the same time, plan, prepare and play in this ACL competition during its latter stages.

 

[Gopher of Pern]

There is also the fact that, an Australian team, in the second year of representation in Asia's top club competition, was beaten by 1 team to the top spot in Asian club football. For a sport in crisis, that's a pretty big achievement.

Compare it to the RL club challenge..... 1 game against 1 opponent half the world away.... No wonder no cares for it!

 

[marinermick]

shame it wasnt in the papers as the damage is done - stupid bitch that mole is!

the edited version was in today's terrorgraph

had bits of the above article

 

[clarence]

R.Wilson just got it so wrong.
The problem is that she meant to.
Propaganda.

Yes, you are probably right.
Propaganda to make the RL folks feel somehow good about that RL-WC and it's poor crowds for what it is - a World Cup.

Look, our game isn't perfect but Wilson and the others who just look for the opportunities to stick the knife in don't realise how far out of whack they are being so biased. The average Australian who follows some sort of sport, has an idea what is the go in other codes or sports. They are not dummies. Some who maybe a little wiser could even sense the bias when they read her article, and most followers of other codes really don't mind Football getting some decent media once in a while either.

Even RL loving folks at work have noticed the great effort Adelaide put in to get to where they got and how well they did once they started this year's ACL campaign. When I have explained to them what that meant, by having to also compete in the current domestic comp with only 23 players to start with, they were pretty impressed.

Folks in Australia just underestimate the value of exposure for Football within Asia. They tend to parallel the popularity of Football in Asia with the popularity of Football at home and think there's some other sport that grabs these Asian nations attention.

Adelaide played before a massive TV audience that would have probably outnumbered the total number that would watch the RL-WC - possibly even the sum total of all of its matches!

 

[northernspirit]

shame it wasnt in the papers as the damage is done - stupid bitch that mole is!

the edited version was in today's terrorgraph

had bits of the above article

i stand corrected, but where in the paper? somewhere noone will find it no doubt!

 

[Bex]

Folks in Australia just underestimate the value of exposure for Football within Asia. They tend to parallel the popularity of Football in Asia with the popularity of Football at home and think there's some other sport that grabs these Asian nations attention.

I think you're on the money with that comment. I know this because I was one of those people only a few years ago. I had no idea back then that the Asian countries had a football competition and an ACL Champions League that made the Thugby League World Cup look like a joke. I thought football revolved around the highly publicised EPL and World Cup and wrongly assumed that other competitions were probably quite substandard in a similar way to other Thugby League comps. I wouldn't mind betting a lot of die hard Thugby fans have a similar point of view or perhaps haven't even bothered to consider it.

 

[marinermick]

shame it wasnt in the papers as the damage is done - stupid bitch that mole is!

the edited version was in today's terrorgraph

had bits of the above article

i stand corrected, but where in the paper? somewhere noone will find it no doubt!

page 64, bottom of football section

 

[northernspirit]

unfortunately in many ways we still live in a very backward country, perhaps its our isolation from the rest of the world - the internet makes us more global but when local media people present stories like RW did unfortunately many are stupid enough to believe her... maybe its an agenda to try to stop us getting the WC here in 2018/2022... hopefully FIFA see it the other way and give the WC to Australia to help the game grow here because i think it would open alot of eyes to the reality of the power of football in the world

 

[Redline]

People like RW would be blown away and not  have any idea what is happening. They'd probably panic and warn about the riots that will happen because ZOMG greece and cyprus hate each other or some such thing.

 

[clarence]

Folks in Australia just underestimate the value of exposure for Football within Asia. They tend to parallel the popularity of Football in Asia with the popularity of Football at home and think there's some other sport that grabs these Asian nations attention.

I think you're on the money with that comment. I know this because I was one of those people only a few years ago. I had no idea back then that the Asian countries had a football competition and an ACL Champions League that made the Thugby League World Cup look like a joke. I thought football revolved around the highly publicised EPL and World Cup and wrongly assumed that other competitions were probably quite substandard in a similar way to other Thugby League comps. I wouldn't mind betting a lot of die hard Thugby fans have a similar point of view or perhaps haven't even bothered to consider it.

Thank you Bex.

unfortunately in many ways we still live in a very backward country, perhaps its our isolation from the rest of the world - the internet makes us more global but when local media people present stories like RW did unfortunately many are stupid enough to believe her... maybe its an agenda to try to stop us getting the WC here in 2018/2022... hopefully FIFA see it the other way and give the WC to Australia to help the game grow here because i think it would open alot of eyes to the reality of the power of football in the world

People like RW would be blown away and not  have any idea what is happening. They'd probably panic and warn about the riots that will happen because ZOMG greece and cyprus hate each other or some such thing.

That maybe so in respect to a good number of folks in Australia, who do not have the benefit of having travelled overseas and/ or actually stopped to realise the way the rest of the world thinks about sport.

BUT...Wilson cannot be lumped into that jingoistic mentality. My bet is she has travelled a lot over the years for her work, and she would have friends far and wide. So for her to present an article in that sort of insular vein is mischievous at best, lying and deceitful at worst.

The sad thing is that, yes, a number will be swayed by her propaganda and folks like you and me will spend lunch hours talking to work colleagues, or time in a pub with friends, trying to spell out why this article is so wrong when they now think otherwise.

 

[Wombat]

Rebecca Wilson is a very poor journalist and a shit house presenter. No wonder Fatty and his team wanted nothing to do with her on the footy show.

 

[clarence]

Rebecca Wilson is a very poor journalist and a shit house presenter. No wonder Fatty and his team wanted nothing to do with her on the footy show.

Is that supposed to be something derogatory towards Wilson,lol?  ;D

Probably the fact that Wilson was a senior person within the Super League camp when that all broke out in 97, might have more to do with people like Fatty not wanting to work with her (he was an ARL loyalist).

 

[FFC Mariner]

Rebecca Wilson is a very poor journalist and a shit house presenter. No wonder Fatty and his team wanted nothing to do with her on the footy show.

Is that supposed to be something derogatory towards Wilson,lol?  ;D

Probably the fact that Wilson was a senior person within the Super League camp when that all broke out in 97, might have more to do with people like Fatty not wanting to work with her (he was an ARL loyalist).

And I think that fact discredits her ability to write objectively about "sokka". This is an NRL propaganda piece pure and simple.

They must really be scared.

Proof indeed that they have at last seen the problem but still have no way of countering it. Why? Because the world game will eventually take its place as the main sport nationally alongside cricket.

May take 20 years but it will happen.