In September 2023, the Australian Professional Leagues formed a Fan Representative Group (FRG) program to provide a voice for fans around the A-Leagues.
One year on from the FRG program’s inception, aleagues.com.au speaks to FRG members and A-Leagues Commissioner Nick Garcia to find out what’s happened since, the changes enacted via the open dialogue between the leagues and its fans, and what’s expected to come from the FRG in the future.
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According to Matt Mann, foundation member at Melbourne Heart and co-Chair of Melbourne City’s Fan Representative Group, long strides have been made through the program’s first year.
“I came into the FRG feeling the fans were being treated more like customers and less like fans,” Mann told aleagues.com.au.
“One year in, I’m feeling like a fan again.”
But how does the FRG program work?
- Club meetings: Each A-Leagues club has its own FRG, comprising 10 or more members, who meet a minimum of three times per year. One member of each of these clubs is elected ‘Chair’ and takes on the responsibility of joining the league-wide FRG.
- League-wide meetings: These occur a minimum of three times per year. This is when FRG Chairs from each club come together, armed with inputs from the club-specific meetings to speak with A-Leagues representatives
The league-wide meetings, led by A-Leagues Commissioner Nick Garcia, have opened a channel between the fans and the leagues; issues are raised, solutions are discussed and answers are provided to important questions from the fans that, in the past, may have never reached the people that need to hear them.
Click here to find out more about the A-Leagues Fan Representative Group!
The FRG program has also provided the A-Leagues the chance to discuss new ideas with the club Chairs, to seek fan feedback and, perhaps most importantly, keep fans in the loop regarding future plans and strategy.
City FRG co-Chair Mann has become the voice of the club’s fans and the link between City’s supporter base and the APL.
“What I expected was lip service,” Mann said. “What I expected was a tick-the-box exercise and move on. What I’ve discovered is not that. What I’ve discovered (at the club meetings) is genuine, from the club level, wanting to get our opinions, wanting to use us as a sounding board, wanting to listen to what we have to say and run things past us, and find ways to grow the club and membership, and do things better.”
Mann has contributed to City’s club-specific meetings and each of the five APL FRG meetings to date, and has been impressed with the earnest nature of the program; over the first year of its existence, the meetings have become what he describes as ‘a free-flowing, very much open expression of ideas in both directions’.
“We’re comfortable to be open and honest with what we’re seeing and what we think is happening, and the league being open and honest back with us to give us genuine insight into the reason things are happening.
“The last year has been figuring out how we can best support each other, and how we can do the right things. That’s been the exciting thing I’ve found, from both the City and APL meetings, the fact that the fans involved are here to grow the game.
“With Unite Round, the APL sought our feedback on the first Unite Round and much of that has been adopted in the second iteration of it. You can see some things have come directly from the individual clubs, FRG and also from the national FRG. The whole thing will be a bigger success based on the feedback that’s come from there.
“I am very proud to be involved. It’s exciting to see that it feels like there’s been a shift in the way the league establishment looks at fans in the last 12 months.”
Key focuses of the first year of the FRG program have included the improvement of Unite Round as a concept, gathering feedback on the matchday experience from the men’s and women’s Grand Finals, and the delivery of the Dolan Warren Awards in 2023-24.
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Central Coast Mariners FRG Chair Erin Morrow watched his side win the Isuzu UTE A-League Men Championship last season, in a Grand Final staged in Gosford for the first time in club history.
In the time leading up to the event, Morrow felt the benefits of the FRG program in full effect.
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“During the week before the Grand Final, you could imagine there are hundreds of organisational things that need to happen for the event, and in that is stuff like that the fans want – and the fans don’t really usually have any kind of way to be at the table,” Morrow said.
“For the Grand Final, we felt that there was genuine engagement there. We were able to break down barriers around things like the positioning of capo stands, we felt we had a little bit of insight into what was going on around the extra (stands for) crowds.
“There was a genuine engagement that I felt really was an example of working together – the fans, the club and the APL – and delivering on something that was pretty special for us. I feel pretty proud that I had a role, and that the FRG had a role in at least providing that sort of engagement mostly with the club, but not entirely with the club.
“It means that every time there’s cynicism in our message groups and things, then I’m saying: ‘Well hey, there are runs on the board’.”
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One year ago, former Mariners CEO Shaun Mielekamp approached Morrow to join and Chair the club’s FRG and his self-admitted cynicism has subsided as he’s realised how effective the program can be when both sides are willing to listen to one another.
“One of the issues that came up early for us was the fact that there had been a disappearance of the chase lighting that we have in our stadium that allows us to do funny light tricks when the players score,” Morrow explained. “We didn’t understand why, nobody mentioned it, so the question was raised at our FRG.
“We were told by the club that it wasn’t their doing. So I took it to the APL, and we got an explanation as to why, and we had a conversation about what we could do to get around that and make it happen in a different way that suited both purposes.
“The issue was that we were dimming the lights in the moments that photographers needed to take images, and that didn’t work. Nobody explained that, it was just taken away from us.
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“That, I thought, was a fantastic example of how a fan asked for change or information, we passed that on and there was a genuine engagement that happened there with APL. It was explained in detail how all that worked, and coming out the other end was that we have our chase lighting back, we just do it slightly differently in the delivery, so that we don’t interfere at inappropriate moments.”
Out in the west, Kim Hawkins Chairs Perth Glory’s FRG and has been blown away by the high esteem in which the group has been held by the club since its inception in 2023.
“They call us the Glory 10,” Hawkins said of the 10-strong Glory FRG.
“We’ve got shirts with ‘The Glory 10’ on them. One of the general managers is in our WhatsApp chat group so we get a lot of information, and we can ask anything.
“You can do lots of work and give as much time as you can contribute – but there’s always more to do. We’ve been very lucky and with the FRG, our big role has been connecting the fans and addressing any challenges other fan groups have as well.
“I can’t speak highly enough of Glory and their support for us.”
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Hawkins, like Morrow of the Mariners and Mann at City, has noted particular effectiveness in the FRG process when it came to delivering feedback on the cornerstone events on the A-Leagues calendar.
“With Unite Round and the whole Grand Final decision, there was very open communication across the board,” Hawkins said.
“We do feel like we’re being heard; we always feel comms can improve from the APL… I feel we’ve made headway but we do keep asking questions that we want answers to.
“I got a call from the APL the morning the club ownership was going to be announced, so you feel like they’re listening and understand the fan voice. I think we’ve been able to talk very effectively about improving communication.
“At first we thought this was just a box-ticking exercise around fan engagement, but as we got to know the people at the APL, and we had the meetings, we all feel comfortable putting our points across.
“The bulk of the work is really at the club level and what we do with our clubs… I think we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but it’s an exciting time to be involved.”
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As the FRG program enters its second year of existence, the Chairs at the 12 clubs currently involved (Canberra United and Auckland FC are not yet represented) have another 12 months in their roles before the Chair position at each club FRG rotates on a 12-month basis, based on the votes of their own club FRG members.
Reflecting on the first twelve months of the FRG, A-Leagues Commissioner Nick Garcia said: “The FRG was designed with one key goal in mind: to give our most important stakeholder – A-League Club fans – a voice.
“It took time, but over the last twelve months we have worked collaboratively and taken onboard feedback regarding a number of decisions we have made across the league. The open and honest interactions have allowed those at the A-Leagues, including myself, to build relationships with each of the club representatives and get their direct feedback on topics on and off the field.
“Through this process, we believe we have come to build trust with the FRG, and the work engaged by all has helped foster a number of changes, many of which have contributed to our growth over the last twelve months and I look forward to continuing to build on the work we’ve done together.”
Click here to find out more about the A-Leagues Fan Representative Group!
Having spent the first 12 months of the program developing trust, a rhythm to meetings and proof of discussions between fans and the leagues’ administrators leading to genuine change, the aim on both sides of the table moving into the next year and beyond is to evolve into a program that makes a substantial contribution to the league’s strategic planning, and identifying focus areas for growth.
“There’s definitely an element of responsibility to it,” said City co-Chair Mann. “It’s been a really exciting journey getting to know the rest of the City fans from that group, and talking to people who you wouldn’t talk to on gameday. You aren’t sitting close by, you aren’t in similar areas. Getting their opinion on different elements of the club. We’ve got a diversity across the FRG of different memberships and age profiles, and different people. That’s been really good.
“Seeing the feedback we get making a difference over the next 12 months is really the focus for me. It’s making sure those voices are heard, and everyone in the chain being held as accountable as they can be.
“I think that’s what the FRG really brings: a level of accountability for the APL on its decisions. And that’s one pillar of responsibility in our roles, to bring about that level of accountability.”
Like Mann at City and Hawkins at Glory, Morrow has been through it all with his club. A part of the Mariners since day one, he’s never felt as though the fans have had as much of a say as they do today.
“I’ve been around since the beginning. In that time, fan engagement has risen and fallen based on how good the staff at the club were at having it,” Morrow said.
“As for engagement with the league? What engagement? There was none ever that I’m aware of. There wasn’t really a seat for fans at the table in the past, but some of the most influential fans in the A-Leagues across all of the clubs, are becoming convinced that they have a seat at the moment.
“Considering we’ve never, ever had any kind of engagement with the league that has been material, in my opinion, we’ve gone from that to a situation where some of the best fan engagement out there is happening directly with the APL. And there’s a feeling among those sitting in the rooms that our input is wanted.
“The people in that room are some of the most influential fans around the country, and they would see through any kind of attempt at a mickey mouse box-tick. And it’s what the conversations were with me and Shaun (Mielekamp) like. I said: ‘I don’t have time to have my time wasted. If it’s a waste of time, Shaun, I won’t be in it’. But that hasn’t turned out to not be the case at all. It has always been genuine.
“I feel that we’ve been given opportunities, and have taken them at times, to really give the critique that’s been needed… that all comes from the having of an FRG, where people are doing their best to represent what our fans want and think.”
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