A-League Men’s latest new dawn hints at a brighter future … once again
Tuba Guy could not possibly have known. That he – and his prominently placed brass instrument – would be yanked from the privacy of his bedroom (we think) and onto the screens of all watching January’s A-League Women game between Adelaide United and Melbourne Victory.
He could not have known that his unwitting cameo would make the Australian senate, where Sarah Hanson-Young accused Fox Sports of doing “a half-arsed job” with women’s sport.
Mostly, though, the poor fellow could never have understood the significance of his hilariously unexpected on-air cameo, that he would become a symbol for everything off key about Australian football’s relationship with its now-former broadcaster.
For viewers, that 30 seconds of voyeurism doubled as a moment of devastating lucidity. As Tuba Guy – he was named as such by the Twitterverse – quietly worked, either as a television producer or Tetris enthusiast, the Fox Sports watermark in the top corner of the screen bore the motto “Every Moment Counts”. Incidentally, every moment really does count when staring for half a minute at a musical instrument not even being played instead of the football match for which you pay a monthly subscription.
When all this went down at the end of January, Football Australia and the now-in-charge Australian Professional Leagues’ partnership with Fox Sports had decayed miserably. They were no longer on the rocks; the relationship was over, and the broadcast quality had dropped off the cliff with it.
At that point the Network 10 deal was nowhere near done, and there was genuine concern the A-League Men and Women competitions may be left to languish even longer in the graveyard, with a reduced number of match-day cameras and complete disappearance of pre-match shows and advertising.
Now here we are, almost 10 months later, fashioning yet another season preview about Australian football’s “new dawn” and hoping it doesn’t all blow up in our faces like it did every other year in recent history.
The A-Leagues clubs, to use their own terminology, finally have the keys to the car. To enlighten those with less niche football-news-monitoring tendencies, the clubs have been saying this since the Great Congress War ended in late 2018. They were given the keys, but weren’t legally allowed to drive. Then they were, but bickered among themselves over who should take the wheel. Now those keys are in the proverbial ignition. And if you haven’t yet had enough of that analogy, “the handbrake is off”.
It all sounds mighty boring, mainly because it is. Football is about football, not keys and cars and new dawns. It is there to be watched and enjoyed. The caveat is that neither of these things can happen unless there is a platform on which to watch and enjoy it. More specifically, one with mainstream visibility and emotional investment and no Tuba Guy.
The clubs, notwithstanding the above lack of linguistic versatility, have shrewdly engineered a deal with ViacomCBS to broadcast A-League Men and Women games on Ten and its streaming platform Paramount+. Based on the evidence so far, it promises to end the journalists’ pre-season preview conundrum once and for all. Already Network 10 has demonstrated a willingness to bring the game on board in its totality, signing well-known talent and rolling out about as much advertising as Fox managed across its 16 years of coverage.
Cross-pollination with the network’s other programs has also worked a treat, with The Project last month interviewing Josh Cavallo after the Adelaide United utility came out as gay. In international football, the Matildas’ friendlies with Brazil and the Socceroos’ World Cup qualifier against Saudi Arabia all rated strongly, suggesting a broad appetite for the sport waiting to be transferred to the domestic competitions.
In terms of A-League Men, which starts this week, this is unsurprising. On the field, last season was a delight – round after round of unadulterated entertainment. Covid-enforced cost-cutting may have contributed to clubs’ tendency to field young players but the result was the breakthrough of a fresh generation who produced highscoring, free-flowing matches and more than a few screamers.
Whether 2021-22 heralds a post-pandemic rejuvenation on the terraces remains to be seen, but this season does feature additional drawcards for the casual fan such as former Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge, who has successfully concluded his Perth-wide search for an appropriate barber and will presumably also find some match fitness with the Glory.
“It’s about taking it day by day and not putting any timeframes or time limits on how long it’s going to take or how quickly I need to be right,” the 32-year-old said this week. “It’s about whenever the manager feels I’m ready to perform – that’s when I’ll be involved.”
Just like the current-day Sturridge, peripheral A-League Men viewers should not anticipate Premier League quality but, tune in without expectation, and they might find themselves pleasantly surprised.
The upshot is that if one was to take last season and insert it into the new broadcast infrastructure, the game in Australia would thrive. Combine both this season, and it just might.
Take last season and insert it into the new broadcast infrastructure, and the game in Australia would thrive