Almanac Soccer: Love in the time of COVID – an A-League tale

 

 

 

 

 

Just as asking couples “how did you two meet?”, the question “why do you barrack for your team?/how did you start supporting your team?” is a favourite question of mine, often eliciting interesting history. I‘ve always especially wondered how people choose to follow new clubs and what the experience of supporting a fledgling club is like.  In the past twelve months I’ve taken the plunge and found out myself.

 

Passionately following two football clubs – Collingwood and Tottenham Hotspur – takes a lot of my time (on top of work and family commitments!), especially when Spurs play the vast majority of their games at ridiculous times if you live in Australia.  The recent and very welcome expansion of both clubs to include women’s teams has made it an even more demanding commitment of time and passion. This at least partly explains why I’ve never supported an A-League club.  At least I hadn’t supported a club until 2019/20, when Western United were “born”, confounding the pundits’ expectations by being selected as the FFA’s new franchise holder.

 

Despite having lived in the western suburbs of Melbourne for 23 years, I confess I didn’t really know they existed until a few days before the A-League season started.  I was curious – about the new club and about an opportunity to experience being part of a new club, my existing sporting passions being large clubs steeped in  tradition and history, albeit having had little ultimate success in my lifetime. I was especially curious about how Western would try to build an identity while competing in a city and state with two well established A League franchises – Melbourne Victory, boasting the biggest membership in the league, and Melbourne City being part of the Manchester City stable of clubs worldwide and its apparently bottomless petrodollars.

 

I wanted to be part of it and on the day of the first game, bought a membership – the cheapest one on offer, as I wasn’t really planning on attending games, with Western sharing its home games between Ballarat and Geelong ahead of building its own stadium in Tarneit in a few years’ time.  Watching that first game on TV, it was apparent that Western were well-organised on the field, having acquired the highly rated coach Mark Rudan from Wellington Phoenix. The other thing that stood out like a beacon was the brilliance and charisma of their marquee player, Alessandro Diamanti, who had represented Italy 17 times and was now 36 years old and the captain of the outfit.  There were some other familiar faces including former Victory talisman Besart Berisha, former Socceroos and Celtic striker Scott McDonald and last season’s A League Goalkeeper of the Year Filip Kurto.  Western won that first game and my interest was piqued.

 

Early results continued to be promising, in particular the win over Victory after trailing by 2 goals within ten minutes.  I watched as many games as I could, followed scores when I couldn’t and would classify myself as interested and following at this stage. The home games at Geelong and Ballarat appeared on TV to have very limited atmosphere, particularly at Kardinia Park, with the 5,000 or so attending creating limited noise and presence in the comparatively cavernous stadium.

 

As the weather got hotter the team’s form deteriorated, with a spate of injuries suggesting limited list depth, and some mid-season departures, including McDonald, suggesting some weren’t loving life at the new club. There were also some new additions, particularly in the defence. I was still interested and following.

 

January saw me attend my first games – the clash against Melbourne City at AAMI Park and the Whitten Oval home game against Adelaide United. Western scored a combined 5 goals in these two games – and lost them both.  The Adelaide game was a cracker, with four goals in the first 20 minutes and Western clawing back from 1-3 to draw level before a late Adelaide winner meant no points. The atmosphere was terrific, with the pitch located on the grandstand side of the oval, and plenty of noise being made, including by the very lively Western Service Crew.

 

Attending these games definitely transformed me from interested and following to an active supporter, looking forward to games and making an effort to clear time to watch the games. I was particularly entranced by seeing Diamanti play live – he starred in the Whitten Oval clash, scoring and setting up multiple opportunities for Berisha, and looked both a class above most others on the pitch and an inspiration to his teammates with his class and charisma.

 

Despite my boosted enthusiasm, pickings were lean, with the Adelaide match being the start of a period of one draw and three losses for Western.  It looked like they might have run their race for the season after an initial bold showing. But extraordinary things happen in sport and in early March they resuscitated their hopes, both scoring heavily and winning.  More incredibly, attacking midfielder Max Burgess, who had by this stage played 40-odd A-League games for three different clubs without scoring, started scoring, and didn’t stop, with a hat-trick in the 6-2, followed by another goal in the 5-1 win the next week. Things were looking up and not only were Western winning again, they were playing the most attractive football in the league. Even stranger things happen in life than in sport and in March the COVID pandemic meant the suspension of the A League, with Western perched sixth on the table (with six making the finals).

 

When the season restarted in the Sydney hub in July, I don’t think anyone knew how teams would come back, with most teams having lost overseas players who were either unable or unwilling to leave their home countries. Having played two games fewer than most of their rivals, Western faced a packed schedule, their last 6 games in 26 days. Their rich vein of form from before the break continued, winning 4 of the first 5 games to clinch a finals berth before resting some key players and losing the final match.  They have been fortunate with few injuries during this period and media reports suggest that they have benefited more than most from the huge amounts of time spent together in hub life.

 

And so it comes to an elimination final this Sunday after another short (4 day) break, with the side brimming with confidence and Diamanti this week announced as the winner of the Alex Tobin Medal (awarded by Professional Footballers Australia for leadership and achievement over the season). The club had several weeks ago asked members for expressions of interest in attending an online member forum – last week they announced the time and date, Friday evening, two days before their first final. The club showed that this was much more than lip service by providing members with access to key club personnel – the coach, senior player Andrew Durante, the CEO and the General Manager of Football. It was a terrific evening and an incredible opportunity to pose questions to these club leaders.  I think that many others ended that forum feeling like I did, more connected and committed to Western and jumping out of our skins for the game Sunday evening.

 

Western’s future has many challenges ahead – raising capital to build a stadium in a COVID and eventual post-COVID world will not be easy, and there are big decisions to be made about the venue(s) for home games in the 2020/21 season as the club tries to capitalise on their very promising start and build a community of supporters, as well as women’s and junior teams.

 

It feels like they are in good hands, and I’m really looking forward to putting on my green and black striped shirt to watch the game tonight. It’s been a very enjoyable ride so far and long may that continue.

 

 

Read more from Steve Fahey HERE

 

 

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