Adelaide City’s victory over Western Sydney Wanderers in the FFA cup was just what the competition needed. It emphasised what cup competitions are all about, which team is best on the day, and sometimes which team rides its luck.
The one thing it also made clear is that the draw for the FFA Cup should not be “Fixed” as it was this year with six A-League teams playing each other to ensure that a non-A-League club is guaranteed to make the semi finals.
As the coach of Adelaide City, Damien Mori, said on Not The Footy Show last night, “People want to see NPL or State league sides playing A-League sides.” It gives them a chance to gauge where they are as a team and as individuals. It also tests the coaches, to see if they can adjust tactics against stronger and fitter players and still come out on top.
The FFA have said they have opted for midweek games as they want this to become the tradition time for FFA Cup games. The truth as everyone knows is more to do with television.
Sadly as the game in Adelaide showed the crowds in Australia are not yet used to midweek football. It struggled in the regular A-League season so what is going to make that change unless it the FFA Cup games are backed by extensive marketing campaigns. Even with many NPL sides moving their training sessions from the regular tuesday night to allow players to go and watch Adelaide City take on Western Sydney Wanderers the gate was only around 3000.
This is disappointing for the NPL sides and also unfair. These games need to be promoted and the clubs given the best opportunity to make money from such fixtures, especially as there is next to no money filtering down to the clubs from the FFA.
The win will be a big fillip to the competition, and if Adelaide City are drawn against Adelaide United in the next round then the FFA have a dream tie. It will be a dream tie as there will be next to no costs flying a team interstate and there will automatically be great interest in the game, so less need to market and promote it.
As we have stated previously the FFA Cup is a great concept, it will take time to take root in the consciousness of sports fans in Australia, but it will get there quicker with results such as this, and even quicker if next year the draw is who comes out of the hat first, and clubs are allowed to play big games such as this on the weekend.
As Damien Mori stated last night Adelaide had requested moving the fixture to a weekend and their NPL game to midweek but were told that this was not possible by the FFA.
That is not honestly in the best interests of the game. So are the powers that be really serious about making this competition work, or is it purely and simply to make good on a promise made to the Asian Football Confederation when Australia was accepted into the fold? Only time will tell, but let us hope the competition sees plenty of revisions in 2015.
