A-Leagues executives Ant Hearne and Greg O’Rourke review the opening weekend of the Isuzu UTE A-League Men’s season
AFTER almost six months of designing a football season, not to mention designing a whole new identity for the A-Leagues, it’s the best feeling in the world to finally have football to talk about.
Most exciting of all was seeing a clutch of young players take their chance to shine in the Isuzu UTE A-League / Men opening round, with the promise of far more to come.
Everything we have done over the past few months has been to try to lift the A-Leagues into a new spotlight, to delight the loyal fans but also to be seen by a whole new audience, and those young players showed why we believe there is so much potential to unlock.
The A-Leagues are treading new ground this season, and we will learn lessons as we go. Overall the opening round was, we believe, a success, but as always there is plenty we can, and will, do better.
More than half the goals scored in the opening round came from exciting young Australian players, including strikes from Josh Nisbet, Jacob Farrell and Kusini Yengi – all homegrown, and proving that the next-gen of Australian football talent is ready to fire.
The fans voted with their feet too, producing a sell-out at Perth’s HBF Park for Daniel Sturridge’s A-League debut, while more than 23,000 supporters braved Sydney’s filthy weather on Saturday night for the opening derby of the season.
The active fans at both ends of CommBank Stadium turbocharged the atmosphere, while The Shed at Perth Glory saw a cameo from Daniel Sturridge but another brilliant goal from Bruno Fornaroli.
The derby’s broadcast on 10 produced a metro audience of 102,000, the highest opening round FTA broadcast for five years, while the national figure including regional areas climbed to 144,000.
The first free-to-air broadcast on 10 and 10 Play of the A-Leagues’ five-year deal with 10/ViacomCBS was underpinned by the world premiere of our new A-Leagues anthem, Real Nice (HCTF), while the broadcast itself – featuring Simon Hill and Andy Harper calling the action – showed the depth of football coverage 10 viewers will see this season every Saturday night.
The crucial difference this year is the fact that production of the broadcast of all A-Leagues games is being undertaken by us as the A-Leagues, in partnership with 10 – a major departure for the coverage of Australian sport. This has the advantage of us, as football people, taking on more responsibility for the delivery of our football product. But it does come with some risk especially in this first year as we put together new partnerships and build new skills.
Five games went off without a hitch but the sheer scale of the enterprise meant there were some technical issues on one game, the Western United vs Melbourne Victory at GHMBA Stadium. Despite having 12 cameras on the ground only one could be accessed for the live stream. The team worked well to secure the one camera and to bring in the additional cameras for the non-live replays but it was clearly not the level of coverage that we planned or will deliver week in and week out.
The technical issues behind that have already been addressed, and the quality of the broadcast on all other games has been really pleasing.
Similarly the Video Assistant Referee system wasn’t working perfectly on Friday night, in part because of a Telstra network outage earlier in the day. But it was in full swing by Saturday, as was shown by the VAR correctly advising the referee to give Wellington Phoenix a penalty on Sunday. We are actively reviewing the approach to VAR and will have announcements on some changes in coming weeks.
There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to make sure we can stage a national competition in the middle of a pandemic, so we are very happy the team managed to get all games away in round one. We should acknowledge both the Brisbane Roar players and our staff for the smooth way they were able to fly into Victoria on Friday, play against City and then return home the same night, to avoid quarantine restrictions.
The only frustrating note was having to move Macarthur’s game from Campbelltown Stadium at late notice due to the state of the pitch. That’s a situation that has to be addressed urgently and we’ll work with the club and the stadium to do so.
Overall, we know that lifting the A-Leagues up to the level they should be at is a long-term project, but we believe we have made a promising start.
In the last few weeks we launched a completely new brand for the leagues, and then on Saturday night we launched our new anthem and the video with it – featuring an amazing crossover of young Australian musical talent, and two of the leagues’ brightest young stars.
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The visibility of the men’s competition in the build up to kick off was significant, thanks to our partner Ten for their promotion and significant investment from the A-Leagues in ensuring that football fans know that the new Isuzu UTE A-Leagues season has started with new energy and excitement around both of our leagues. We anticipate a similar level of cut-through for the A-League / Women season next week – and weeks and months of great football to follow.
We look forward to keeping you updated through KEEPUP during the season. Should be a great season.
Greg O’Rourke, left, is A-Leagues Commissioner and Ant Hearne is Chief Commercial Officer of the A-Leagues
