Financial crunch looms for Phoenix
The Wellington Phoenix are still paying their players and staff, which is more than can be said for most of their fellow A-League clubs, but a financial crunch is coming.
New Zealand employment law doesn’t allow them to unilaterally stand their employees down, as is the case across the Tasman, but it’s nevertheless a welcome sign in these uncertain times.
As things stand, the 2019-20 A-League season is on hold until April 22, just under three weeks from now, when the situation will be assessed, but it is hard to see that assessment clearing the way for an immediate resumption.
Any effort to finish the season in the short-to-medium term would almost certainly require the Phoenix to base themselves in Sydney, as they were doing before Australia and New Zealand ramped up their response to the pandemic and continuing to play became unfeasible.
That six-night stay ended in ignominy when defender Tim Payne was charged with a drink-driving offence after taking a golf cart for a joyride along with team-mate Oli Sail, at a time when they were supposed to be quarantined.
A further sting in the tail was revealed four days later, when the club confirmed a report that a staff member had tested positive for Covid-19 after returning home.
Those developments are sure to make a repeat difficult – if not impossible – and the more likely scenario is that everyone bunkers down, waits for the crisis to pass, then decides how to move forward.
Ideally, they would do that together, but developments across the Tasman this week suggest the A-League is divided more than it is united right now.
Adelaide United, Brisbane Roar, Central Coast Mariners, Newcastle Jets, Perth Glory, and Western Sydney Wanderers have moved to stand players and staff down without pay, while Western United are reportedly close to doing so.
The league’s three richest clubs – Melbourne City, Melbourne Victory, and Sydney FC – are standing strong, for now at least, joined by the Phoenix, who operate in a different legal context.
At the heart of these decisions is uncertainty over whether money from the A$57 million-a-year (NZ$58.5m) broadcast deal between Football Federation Australia and Fox Sports will continue to be received, amid reports that the next A$900,000 payment to clubs might not be made.
The Phoenix have been mostly silent since the team returned from Sydney last Tuesday – only Payne has been heard from, giving a pair of apologetic interviews once his misadventures were made public.
Requests to speak to chairman Rob Morrison or general manager David Dome have been declined – but something Dome said in February, when coronavirus was just a thing happening in China, feels portentous now.
He was speaking to about the club’s ambitions to run a women’s team and about how they were in need of commercial partners to ease the burden on the Welnix ownership group, which Morrison heads.
‘‘You can never have enough money,’’ Dome said. ‘‘The owners are still putting in quite a lot of money to keep this thing going from week to week, which as a general manager is not what I want to say.
‘‘We’re trying our best to close that gap so we don’t have to continue paying to keep this thing going.’’
It was a nice sentiment, but seven weeks later, it feels like a relic of the distant past. There will be sacrifices and tough decisions made, but there will also have to be money put in.
Morrison and the other investors in Welnix have kept professional football in New Zealand alive since they dug deep into their pockets to take over from Terry Serepisos in 2011.
This crisis has struck just as they were beginning to be rewarded for their time and money, with the Phoenix genuine title contenders for the first time in five years, and playing as well as they had at any stage of their existence. The club might receive support from elsewhere, including potentially from the Government, but the club’s owners might have to dig deeper still.