A-League, what A-League?

The A-League kicks off in just over a month. But oddly, as Phill Chadwick asks, why haven't we heard anything about it?

The other day, lying on my driveway next to my copy of The Advertiser, was a free sample copy of the new News Ltd sports magazine, "Alpha", Issue 1, August 2005.

"Brilliant," I thought, "perfect timing for the launch of the brand spanking new A-League". The magazine, with three strapping footballers on the cover, looked very good. Heavy weight, glossy paper, 154 pages of sport and lifestyle.

Alarm bells rang when I noticed that the three young footballers were representing Rugby League, AFL, and Rugby Union. "Fair enough, though," I thought again, those three competitions are arguably the world's highest quality domestic competitions in their respective codes. Our form of football could not supply a world's best early 20's star playing in our domestic league, at least not yet.

With hope in my heart, I went through the mag, skimming at first, and then systematically. Looking for the big A-League launch story. What better way to get our game into thousands of homes than in a free sample distributed to all News Ltd newspaper subscribers.

I was disappointed, to say the least.

There were five mentions of Association Football. That's right, five pieces in the 154 pages. This is a magazine specializing in sport.

And what were those pieces?

• Maradonna's stomach-stapled weight loss.
  
• Cantona's Kung-Fu spectator kick.
  
• Uday Hussein's abuse of Iraq's footballers.
  
• The fact that the late Pope John-Paul II used to play in goal somewhere.
  
• Anthony La Paglia's $800,000 investment (or gamble) in Sydney FC.

The La Paglia article was the closest they got to the A-League, but even that was mainly about the man, and not the football. Don't forget, this is in a high quality magazine being sent out as a free sample just a week before the first pre-season games in the new A-League.

What are the FFA marketing people doing? What better opportunity to get the message out to thousands of households. Did they not know about this magazine? If not, why not? If they did know, and ignored it altogether, that would be worse.

How about a few pages on the evolution of the new competition, the names, the personalities, the new teams, the star players, the promising youngsters, the supporters, the hopes and fears of all involved. What about an in-depth interview with Dwight Yorke, bad boy, playboy, arguably the only legitimate "marquee" player in the league.

How about a survey of the home grounds, ticket prices, coaches profiles, club ownership. Some glamorous photos of the new teams. The progress of Sydney United into the Club World Championships. Anything at all would have been better than what we did get. Even a paid advert. We got nothing.

I have to say that the journalists at Alpha should take some of the blame. If the impending launch of a new national professional football competition is not worth covering, I don't know what is!

Whether this new magazine takes off or not, this was a unique opportunity that should not have been missed. The timing was right. The FFA publicity people should be ashamed.

If this is an example of FFA's PR and Marketing of the new competition, God help us!

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