Australian Professional Leagues chief executive Danny Townsend concedes the league still needs to repair the relationship with fans damaged by the drastically unpopular decision to sell the A-Leagues’ grand finals to Sydney.
But he is adamant the 2022-23 ALM decider, and the week in NSW surrounding it, was a success.
Saturday night’s match at Sydney’s CommBank Stadium attracted a crowd of 26,523 – greatly helped by Central Coast reaching the main event.
But amid ill will towards the APL, a ‘festival of football’, headlined by Friday evening’s grand final party at Moore Park, which included legends’ five-a-side matches and the presentation of both grand final teams, fizzled.
“I think we couldn’t have done much more during the course of the week,” Townsend told AAP.
“The APL staff worked really hard over the last three-to-six months to prepare for all that. That stuff doesn’t happen without meticulous planning and all the hard work. So I’m really proud of the effort they’ve put in to execute this week.
“If you go back to the announcement, that’s still something that is hanging over our heads that we’re trying to work through with engagement and the things we’re putting in place with our fans to rebuild that relationship.
“I think we’re on the path with our fan representative groups. We’ve been meeting regularly with different stakeholders to continue to refine those.
“If you go back, what could you change, it was certainly the way I executed on that announcement but we can’t (change) that now.
“What we can do is work hard to repair it and that’s what we’re doing.”
That clearly won’t include deviating from the three-year deal with Destination NSW.
City and ALW grand finalists Western United both would have earned the right to host a decider but instead lost to NSW clubs on “neutral” territory.
“People need to move beyond that, right,” Townsend said.
“That was the old structure. We have a new structure. The hosting rights is a thing of the past. We have an event. It’s a one-off match. A fixed venue. As time passes it’s at least over the next three years.
“Everyone needs to come to terms with that.”
But the leagues will review the decision to have a two-week lead-in to the decider, which was originally a COVID-19 contingency move.
The APL will hope to revisit the All Stars concept going forward after Bayern Munich last month pulled out of a planned game, striking a hammer blow to the planned lead-in.
“To be clear, the All Stars was always going to be a bonus,” Townsend said.
“We didn’t make the decision on the back of the the All Stars, the NSW government support for football week was never contingent on the All Stars.
“We had the four events that we felt we executed really well.
“The government are really excited about our first year – we had nine months to prepare for it and I think we executed really well.”
Australian Associated Press