Come on England
Photo courtesy of perthnow.com.au
The next two summers in Australian sport could be the biggest for our domestic football league. Football has taken some giant leaps since the redeveloped A-League became a summer league. This summer we are going up against a sporting contest steeped in history, The Ashes. This is cricket’s Holy Grail.
Australian sports fans are purest at heart, the novelty of T20 cricket cannot hold an audience like the version of the five day game. Australia v England is the pinnacle of test cricket, the recent first test was a stern reminder that test cricket holds court around the water coolers around the offices country wide.
Last season the league stood up well against the Mickey Mouse version of cricket, the big bash. On a domestic level football has now proved we belong, numbers were down to big bash attendances last season, and I believe this trend will continue. Attendance figures continue to rise for the A-League and the continued success of teams such as Western Sydney will only add to this.
The summer of 2013/14 brings England to our shores and 2015 sees the World’s best cricketers competing in the World Cup during the months of February and March. The Asian Cup (football) will also be held in Australia during the January of 2015, with the key matches predominately in Sydney. The two tournaments will run directly after one another, but the back end of the A-League will run during the cricket World cup. Although impossible to predict what will happen 18 months from now, if football can hold its own during this period we will be one step closer to becoming Australia’s summer sport of choice.
During the Ashes series this summer there are four A-League match date clashes. There are no kick off times that directly clash with the cricket, but after sitting at the cricket for seven hours one hardly expects patrons to be backing up seeing 90 minutes of A-League football. The major clash is the battle on 28th December between the leagues two biggest clubs Melbourne Victory and Western Sydney. This clashes with day three of the test but will I still expect this clash to draw a big crowd. The matches I see the Ashes tour affect mostly are Brisbane v Western Wanderers 22 November, Adelaide v Brisbane 6 December, and Heart v Wellington 27 December. Attendances will be down on these matches, but the importance is we don’t lose the momentum that has started with the Liverpool and Manchester United coverage and the continuation of improvement of the league.
Over the past few years we have opened people’s eyes to our game, people who were football fans, but not necessarily fans of our domestic product. We don’t need two successful summers of cricket closing the door again. This season sees the return of free to air coverage and the biggest names our league has seen. Momentum is an important thing in Australian sport; one only has to see the reaction Holger Osieck has recently received after very poor results in a meaningless tournament. Imagine if Australia lost this current Ashes series 5-0; would football be the major beneficiaries from this result? Maybe, just maybe it’s ok to say C’mon England.
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I’m not sure wishing ill-fortune on a national sporting team of Australia is the best thing to do even if it could benefit our code. Let’s not forget that this was what the AFL were doing when our Socceroos were falling at the last hurdle and it almost certainly wasn’t appreciated. Let’s not be hypocrites.
In 2006/07, Australia won the Ashes 5-0 but A-League crowds still grew considerably. We need not rely on other sports falling over to be successful.