Looks like Soccer Australia finally realised that the finals system they introduced to the NSL this year has been a debacle. Shame it took them five weeks into the ridiculously elongated playoff series to realise it. The solution to general national apathy towards the league was never going to be asking the clubs to play more games. If you want people to actually show up to a finals series you've got to make it more attractive than what they weren't bothering to show up to for the 26 weeks of the regular season.
Just a word of explanation for those who aren't clued up to the NSL (and let's face it, that's 99% of the population). Before this season started they ditched the traditional finals series format that is used in the AFL/NRL/NBL and replaced it with an idea they stole from the Swiss league. It's not exactly one of the powerhouse leagues of world football is it? They weren't even content with just pirating a mediocre concept from a mediocre league they actually tinkered with it so it would lead to a Grand Final between the two top sides.
When you have sides like the Northern Spirit who can barely scrape together a four-figure crowd (even with creative accounting that Charles Koppell would be proud of) scraping into the post-season with absolutely no hope of making the Grand Final it becomes farcical. Why would any of their remaining six fans bother paying for finals tickets (club members have to pay full price for the honor of watching this travesty) when they know even a couple of wins won't make their season amount to anything but a mid-table failure. In a real finals system they would stand every chance of lifting their game, causing a massive upset against one of the top sides and making it to the final.
In an article for the South Melbourne matchday magazine in November last year I declared a willingness to wait and see how the system worked before condeming it to the same scrapheap as first-past-the-post championships and North/South conferencing but as the season wore on it became painfully obvious that the finals were going to be a joke. They're being broadcast on Optus' Homeart channel, and that's a step up in prestige for the NSL for gods sake. By all rights Pete Smith should be doing the commentary.
Of course a fair percentage of soccer 'fans' would rather see 3600 strong crowds than 15000 as long as it means that 90% of the audience are of the same ethnic background as them, and while these people continue to treat the NSL as their personal foreign social clubs there's no way for the domestic game to go forward in Australia. And they'll be the first people to complain when their precious clubs go to the wall.
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