A-League needs to banish a winter of discontent

Football has the chance to do all its talking on the field of play when the A-League kicks off amid a maelstrom of controversy, suspicion and doubt.

Melbourne Victory will be the team to beat in the A-League Source: Getty Images

I would like to think that football is still the game of and for the people and there is no better way to cure its ills than by giving the fans what they want most ... and that is top-class entertainment.

Western Sydney Wanderers and Brisbane Roar open the 11th campaign on Thursday at the end of an off-season that created a considerable amount of negative publicity.

Football Federation Australia came under heavy fire for incumbent chairman Frank Lowy's apparent successful attempt to pass on the reins of power to his son Steven.

The ugly pay war involving Professional Footballers Australia and FFA led to the cancellation of the Matildas' tour of the United States and the unedifying spectacle of Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou being forced to publicly retract his statement of neutrality about the dispute.

The Brisbane club had to deal with the ongoing uncertainty arising from the financial problems of its Indonesian owner the Bakrie Group.

Newcastle Jets are still without an owner and run by FFA after Nathan Tinkler was stripped of his licence.

And to top off football's winter of discontent the Wanderers club spent the off-season negotiating with police and relevant bodies over the behaviour of a miniscule element of its supporter base.

On Thursday night, however, the real football will kick off and hopefully restore the faith and goodwill in the game we all love.

Our game definitely has a spring in its step a decade into the creation of a professional league.

Australian football is in a much better shape now than it was in the years leading up to the establishment of the competition, as the excellent book A-League, The Inside Story Of The Tumultuous First Decade clearly illustrates.

Every football fan in the country should feel proud of the general progress made but the cringeworthy chest-beating by some people who should know better is rather uncalled for.

FFA chief executive David Gallop set the tone when he declared that our game was about to seriously challenge the other football codes for national supremacy.

Others have followed suit by extolling the virtues of our game as if it were the trend-setter of Australian sport.

It is all well and good to be passionate and talk up our product but we also have to come up with the goods to match our vitriol.

We can fool some people some of the time but we cannot fool all the people all the time. And this is directed mainly to us football lovers.

Putting it simply, the football has to be better, the crowds bigger, the television figures higher and sponsorships richer if most of our clubs are to stop losing money.

Only then will we be able to proclaim football's true power and sustainability.

If we keep beating our collective chests when aspects of our game still need to be fixed we will only set ourselves up for other sports to take potshots at us.

For example, we are happy for football's ability to snare a television deal worth $160 million wih Fox Sports and SBS for four years.

Yet NRL boss Dave Smith was criticised for securing a meagre $925 million deal with Channel 9 for four years (that could go up to $1.6 billion with a pay-TV element) because it was much less than what the AFL got: a whopping $2.508 billion for six years from Channel 7, Fox and Telstra.

It is with this backdrop that the new A-League gets the ball rolling this week.

The league, clubs, coaches, players and to a lesser degree the media have a responsibility to help the game grow.

But it is also important that we keep things in perspective and acknowledge that football is what it is and does not have to fight all the other sports and proclaim its greatness at every opportunity.

In a way this defensive attitude shows that our game is still in the grip of an inferiority complex that won't go away.

We have to remember that there are enough people in Australia with football in their blood who are capable of supporting the game and ensuring its long-term survival.

So let's not worry too much about how we are perceived or where we stand in the pecking order of Australia's sporting landscape and concentrate on delivering a better all-round product, every year, if possible.

To suit ourselves, mind you, and nobody else.

And we should be doing that on the field of play, where it matters most.

Follow @MicallefPhilip