6 days Ago By Mike Tuckerman
It should come as no surprise that Melbourne Victory will host the annual pre-Christmas derby next Saturday given the fact Melbourne City fans have abandoned their club in droves. In the 14-year history of the Melbourne Derby, Victory have never once hosted the annual pre-Christmas fixture. That all changes next week when the Australian Professional Leagues will pray Victory fans fill the stands at AAMI Park as the designated home team.
They outnumbered their local rivals in the first derby of the season in October, and with only a few thousand City fans rattling around AAMI Park to watch their entertaining 2-2 draw with Auckland on Sunday, it feels like the City Football Group have abandoned any pretence of trying to attract fans to games in Melbourne. Why do we keep talking about attendances? Why not just focus on what happens on the pitch? More Football Because in a market where not only Test cricket, but the Big Bash League, the National Basketball League and the deceptively popular summer of tennis are competing for ticket sales, the A-League Men is missing out on the one point of difference that used to set it apart. Let’s face it, it’s only us diehards who are tuning in for the action on the pitch.
Anyone else who wants to watch top-quality football simply fires up their Optus Sport and beIN Sports accounts every weekend to watch the Premier League and Serie A. Which makes the City Football Group’s stubborn refusal to open the purse strings and sign a genuine marquee player a strange dereliction of duty. Having once played second fiddle to Manchester United, it seems the multi-club owners are now more than happy to call themselves Melbourne’s second-best team.
City played some entertaining football on Sunday and might have claimed all three points when Nando Pijnaker hammered a back pass towards Alex Paulsen that bounced over the hapless Auckland keeper’s foot. Yonatan Cohen (Photo by Graham Denholm/Getty Images) Yet a foul in stoppage time saw Auckland handed an opportunity on the edge of the box, and Colombian import Neyder Moreno clearly caught City goalkeeper Patrick Beach by surprise when he smashed the resultant free-kick straight through his gloves. Beach has usurped veteran Jamie Young as City’s first-choice goalkeeper this season but he won’t want to watch that goal back in a hurry.
Aurelio Vidmar was magnanimous in defeat on a day in which 17-year-old attacker Medin Memeti turned in an impressive goal-scoring display. Vidmar pointed to the lingering heat of the 5pm kick-off as one reason his side might have trailed off in the second half, which begs the question – why does the APL persist with this sort of scheduling? We had one game on Friday night when Adelaide United crushed the Central Coast Mariners 4-0 in Gosford, another four on Saturday, and only one again on Sunday. Part of the reason for the haphazard fixture list is because we’ve now got two teams in a New Zealand time zone whose fan bases deserve some consideration when it comes to TV times.
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But it’s also partly because the APL touted combining the A-League Men and Women competition under one umbrella as a way of essentially doubling interest in football. In reality, it’s probably halved it – at least in some markets – and while A-League clubs battle valiantly to service both men’s and women’s departments, club resources are stretched increasingly thin. We see it in cities like Brisbane, where Ruben Zadkovich copped plenty of stick for encouraging his players to waste time in their 2-2 draw away at Western Sydney Wanderers on Saturday.
At least part of that fan base would have been at Perry Park around the same time, only for the women’s game to be postponed due to a waterlogged pitch – although the Roar eventually prevailed 2-1 win over the Mariners in that women’s clash 24 hours later. Sports opinion delivered daily A better-run competition wouldn’t force fans to choose between watching their men’s and women’s teams. But we are the A-Leagues.
Here’s hoping next week’s Melbourne Derby generates a bit of much-needed Christmas cheer..
