Wednesday "is D-Day" for Football Federation Australia as the governing body "comes face-to-face" with its "biggest adversaries: A-League chairmen and active fans," according to Sebastian Hassett of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. In what rates "among the most important 24 hours in A-League's recent history," FFA will be "steeling itself for a brutal grilling from two of the sport's key stakeholders." Both "the men in suits and fans from the stands will come armed with a suite of complaints" and it promises be an "enormous test of will" for new FFA Chair Steven Lowy and CEO David Gallop. The meeting between FFA and the A-League chairmen is a "scheduled part of their ongoing dialogue but the roundtable with the active fan leaders is an unlikely, extraordinary development." It is the first time active fans have "collectively met with the FFA on such a large scale, with representatives from all 10 A-League clubs." The presence of the fans is being funded by an unspecified "third party." What originally began as a response to the naming of 198 banned fans in a Sunday Telegraph article a fortnight ago "has evolved into a league-wide movement, led by those who are lobbying for the better treatment of active supporters" (SMH, 12/8).
STRENGTH TO SURVIVE: In Melbourne, Michael Lynch opined stadia around Australia "were odd places last weekend without active fans generating their usual cacophony of sound and fury." The noise, color, atmosphere and chanting at football matches in this country "is the code's unique selling point and what makes it such a different sensory, and often emotional, sport to the other longer-established football codes." Doubtless the fans will "use this rare chance to make a series of ambit claims." They will ask for "the introduction of an open and transparent appeals process -- something hitherto not in existence or unknown to most." They will "probably ask" FFA to end the contract of security company Hatamoto. FFA "would be mad not to formally agree to the first of those demands." It has "already said" it will. That said, "my guess is that very few of the 198 already banned -- maybe 5 or 10 per cent -- would have genuine cause for appeal." Football is a "robust" ecosystem, with "each of its constituents interdependent." That ecosystem has "just been flattened in parts by a hurricane, but it can re-shoot and thrive again if all parties listen to each other and make mutually beneficial decisions" (THE AGE, 12/8).
