A sold out stadium. A top-of-the-table clash. A cross-town rivalry. Players back against their old clubs. The league’s most vibrant supporters re-marking their territory with a wending march through the commercial heart of Western Sydney’s satellite CBD – a clear display of noise, colour, and passion.
Two talented sides, a blend of local youth and experience, peppered with high-quality foreign recruits. A world class referee, stadium policing that works with not against fans. And on-field drama in spades.
As a demonstrative statement, the Sydney derby was the very best of the A-League.
For a footballing community too often riddled with insecurity, quick to play the victim card, and constantly anxiously looking over its shoulder, Saturday night’s match was the perfect demonstration that Australian football has the goods – if only it dared to place trust in itself.
In recent years the game has been its own worst enemy. Head office encouraged a fixation with metrics – with crowd figures, with customer spend, with membership tallies. But those numbers quickly came to be an albatross around the neck. Instead of fretting and sweating over whether a 6,000 crowd should have been 7,000, clubs and adminstrators stopped asking the most crucial questions of all: did those that did turn up have a good time? And if not, why not?
For 28,519 fans on Saturday, the answer to the question would undoubtedly have been a resounding “yes”.
The calibre of the football was high. The narratives abundant. For brothers Dylan and Ryan McGowan, having largely forged careers abroad, from Scotland to Korea, Denmark to UAE, imagine returning for a first Sydney derby, as players on opposite sides. For 18-year-old Daniel Wilmering his first ever Sydney derby was a memorable experience, guarding a line as a ball boy. His latest? As a playing protagonist, right in the thick of it.
There was the goal that never was, the mild-mannered Steve Corica descending to 2006-level referee-related red mist. As headed goals in the A-League go, there have been few as emphatic as Wanderers’ captain Mitch Duke’s thumping effort. It was a winning goal worthy of the contest.
Wanderers rode their luck. The mercurial Milos Ninkovic hit the crossbar. Adam Le Fondre tried the spectacular overhead. Kosta Barbarouses looked as wasteful as a Melbourne Victory-wrapped Trojan horse.
For those despairing a lack of advertising ahead of the A-League season, this was it. A sold out stadium – one purpose-build for football – does something no million-dollar agency-created campaign can do. It creates exclusivity. You couldn’t get tickets to the Sydney derby? You won’t make that mistake again. Already diaries are shuffling: 21 March, 2020. Better ask the boss to get that weekend off.
Just as their entry into the A-League in 2012 did, a thriving team in football’s historic heartland gives the entire competition impetus. Rival active supporter groups will draw inspiration from the noise and pageantry of the RBB. Other A-League clubs will draw energy from the Sydney derby’s example. It’s a virtuous cycle, if Australian football can have the courage and resilience to believe in its product.
And nor was the Sydney derby the only positive example across the weekend.
Melbourne City fans, long inured to fickle collapses and insipid performances, will take heart from their side’s inspired comeback in Geelong. The newest Melbourne derby may still have a work-in-progress feel, but for those that travelled in sky blue replica kits, and returned with the points, this was the building blocks of a clash that could one day rival Wanderers v FC. The ready narrative was there – the harsh dismissal of Harrison Delbridge gave City the perfect pretext for a late collapse. But Mombaert’s ten men chased all three points and found their reward late on as a Socceroo striker at the peak of his powers almost willed the winner.
On Friday night, three former A-League stars turned pundits all failed to tip a Melbourne Victory win away to Brisbane. And yet win was precisely what Marco Kurz’s chargers did. In Newcastle, the Jets almost toppled the recent FFA Cup winners. But the hitherto winless Adelaide prevailed. In Wellington a league favourite returned to the scoring books, 352 days since his last goal, with a superb deft flick.
Three rounds into the A-League season we’re yet to see a game divided by greater than one goal. It’s a competitive tension of which many leagues around the world can only dream.
Which is not to absolve the A-League of an ongoing myriad of challenges. But if players, administrators or fans needed the surety that the game is in fine fettle, then Saturday’s derby gave that in spades. So bottle it, keep a locket of it close to your chests, and keep it in mind during the invariable winters ahead.
