WARRIORS MUST TAKE LONG ROAD

ALMOST every subject is a touchy subject when it comes to Australian football, but promotion and relegation is particularly special case.

The concept provides a unique meritocratic and developmental counterpoint to other elite Australian sports, now seemingly conditioned to a closed, Americanised franchise structure.

Financially and culturally, reconciling the game’s migrant history with the A-League’s forcefully homogenised initial state could prove the biggest hurdle to achieving that aim.

Another potential problem for Australian observers and aspiring football clubs, though, is wholly national representation.

When promotion and relegation still existed in the former National Soccer League, Graham Bradley’s report to the Australian Soccer Federation in 1990 lamented the lack of a truly national spread, with a glut of teams from Sydney and Melbourne.

At the time, 11 of the 14 competing teams were from the country’s two largest cities.

On the flip side, however, that geographic bias can be seen as merely reflective of promotion and relegation’s open-market principles. It is most evident with players.

In team sports, athletes naturally gravitate to places that can offer them more, both inside and outside the sporting arena.

It could explain why the English Premier League, with the highest quotient of foreign players in any European football league at 69.2 per cent, has more than a quarter of its teams from the Greater London area alone.

In the NBA, despite their comedic levels of mediocrity in recent times, big-market teams in the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks are regularly touted as potential destinations for premier free agents.

Notwithstanding the much, much smaller scale, the same theory of athlete seeking the most ideal situation plays out in Lara.

Looking back, North Geelong’s 50th year was a disastrous one on the pitch and zooming out, the numbers are spectacularly bad.

The Warriors were not only relegated from NPL1, but were the only side not to record multiple wins, finishing five points off second-last Saint Albans.

Micky Colina’s side conceded the most goals of any side in the league with a gargantuan 67, for an average of 2.58 goals per game.

Along with only one clean sheeth f for the year, in 15 of 26 games this season, North Geelong conceded in the opening 20 minutes.

Naturally, it finished with NPL1’s worst goal difference this season at -46 and, granted, there are a multitude of factors here.

One is tactical and positional indolence. On numerous occasions, Marko Stevanja and Daniel Zilic were left isolated in the North Geelong goal because of the collective’s inability to pressure the ball at the right moments.

The team would regularly step up not when the opposition passeded the ball backwards, but when n it had already recycled possessionsession and was facing goal.

Any consequent pressure can be rendered endered meaningless against smarterrter opposition, because a mere e quick ball over the defensive line can leave the goalkeeper exposed.osed.

The fact this happened on a weekly kly basis also speaks volumes on problems regarding selection and the inability to make tough decisionssions at critical times, as well as the he team’s debilitating morale.

As 21 goals conceded in the final l six games can suggest, Colina’sna’s side was merely waitingting for the end of the season on to come around.

Football is a fluid game, however, wever, and the capacity to pressureressure the opposition osition in attack can also be an effectivective defensive mechanism.hanism.

Simply, imply, the Warriors rriors didn’t have e the sufficient class s to put the ball in the back of thehe net on a consistentsistent basis.s.

Colina regularly ularly pointednted out that fact this year, r, semi-professional footballer in NPL1 is not going to travel to Lara a minimum of three times a week, when clubs closer to Melbourne can offer higher wages and higher chance of success.

After five consecutive seasons of promotion and relegation, North Geelong is now effectively a yoyo club.

However, the problem isn’t geography or promotion and relegation as a concept.

On the contrary, amid a raging debate on the Australian game’s structure and future, this latest relegation can be a blessing and an example of sporting meritocracy’s benefits.

With its current resources, there is a disparity between the potential quality of players North Geelong can produce and the potential quality of players North Geelong can recruit.

Like any business that suffers in market share, this presents an opportun- ity for the club to adapt. In this instance, it means prioritising development and coaching at youth levels for a long-term goal.

On the other hand, if the Warriors continue without clear strategic thinking, they will only ever make up the numbers in Victoria’s top tier.

In promotion and relegation, it should not be any other way.