An A-League game - an Asian perspective!

Coming to an A League game for the first time in over two years had something of the tourist about it and if newcomers and visitors felt the way I did when Sydney FC met Central Coast Mariners at the Sydney Football Stadium early in January 2012 I dare say they may well have felt under-whelmed.

The fans from both clubs rubbed shoulders and even shared drinks on the same footpath outside the many pubs - friendly or otherwise - on the long march, or slow climb, up Foveaux Street to the Moore Park stadium. They may have worn club shirts of a different hue, but as real fans rather than occasional ‘football fashionistas’ they showed little sign of hostility to one another despite the derby nature of the game.

‘Provincials v City Slickers’ the match could have been labelled, but at this stage of the season Sydney FC fans probably thought they had few bragging rights, even before the game, and certainly after the table-topping Mariners had secured a pretty easy three points, albeit with a slender 1-0 win.

As Mariners’ coach Graham Arnold mentioned post-match to the media, ‘derbies are for the fans not the players’ well from a football culture like Australia, maybe, but even players are normally affected by this rivalry in most parts of the world and the fans’ strong emotions are usually conveyed to them pretty convincingly.

Maybe many of the Mariners’ players were from Sydney anyway or other parts of the world and Sydney FC may not have had too many ‘provincials’ in their ranks, but they were clearly not all Sydneysiders.

That lack of desire or derby-awareness may have contributed to their insipid performance. A lack of self- belief, any true innate understanding of their fellow-players’ positional sense or runs off the ball made Sydney FC look far more a team of individuals, highly remunerated ones at that, than the true team that Central Coast always looked throughout a match they had under their control for virtually the full ninety.

But as a spectator and getting back to the opening theme, the sight of the two teams trooping onto the pitch in a stadium which holds up to 46,000 people, with a thousand or so Mariners’ fans behind one goal and a few more than that at the other end hardly made it a cauldron of even North Sydney Oval proportions, let alone Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge levels.

The clock said 4pm which was the scheduled kick-off time and one wondered if the clock was an hour fast, so subdued was the feeling of this visitor at least.

While crowds in Singapore for S.League games rarely top a few thousand and seats are often only on one side of he stadium, occasionally two, there was little difference in the feeling on this occasion, despite the reported 11,886 being on hand for this encounter.

It was often the cry that Parramatta Stadium looked ‘empty’ whenever Parramatta Power played there in the old NSL in a 20,000 capacity stadium, with a few thousand fans, but this much bigger arena needs at least 25,000 to make it buzz and the kind of football being served up by Sydney FC was not nearly good enough to draw THAT many fans, especially without a more charismatic marquee player than Brett Emerton.

Emerton looked competent without being at any time convincing, There were no stand-out players at all for the home team, other than perhaps goalkeeper Liam Reddy and even that may have owed as much to his colourful clothing. than his heroics Central Coast may have a far smaller budget, few major stars, even fewer now that Matt Simon has gone overseas, but they at least had fluidity and self-belief and that was more than enough to get them home.

Their only (and winning) goal came quite early on and with little sign of Sydney testing them with some imaginative or well-worked raids the Mariners could simply starve their opponents of the ball and restrict themselves to occupying the spaces, which they did to perfection.

And even if coach Arnold was unhappy that his men did not turn the screws and score a second goal for safety’s sake, it hardly ever looked like they’d need to, or, if so, that they would have had plenty up their sleeves to get back In front again quite soon.

On this evidence Sydney FC needs to ‘gel’ an awful lot better, take a far greater number of risks and be far less fearful or respectful of their opponents.

Even if both sets of fans almost seem to share the same respect for one another these days.

More rivalry both on and off the pitch would have made this a far greater spectacle one would think.

Maybe Newcastle will provide more of the required ingredient next weekend when they face the Mariners, this time on the Central Coast.

Home grounds should provide a one goal start usually on the strength of the crowd an the players’ passion to feed on that support. There was little evidence of that here.

By Paul Green 10 January, 2012

(Linked from FFA web site)