Foreword
On a bleak, windswept Tuesday evening in May 2015, I sat shivering alongside a handful of fellow football diehards from the Waikato-Bay of Plenty in the cavernous Epsom Lounge of the Matamata Racing Club on SH27.
We were attending a specially convened meeting to consider the future of the national league. It was the last of a number of New Zealand Football-run Competitions Review Consultation Workshops being staged nationwide.
The meeting heard how one of the main drivers for re-examining the league was the fact that its “closed” (no promotion or relegation) nature meant it was out of alignment with FIFA principles (along with Australian and US leagues) for such competitions.
Coming 24 hours ahead of the mass arrest of FIFA executives in Zurich, there was still a semblance of deference to the wishes of the world governing body. Though where, I wondered, had these supposedly important principles been hiding when our code had brooded over such matters repeatedly in the 1990s and 2000s?
But that question was academic. The real news was we were obviously on the cusp of another revamp. It was happening again. For 45 years the national league had somehow survived being a plaything of football politicians - and now, after a significant static interlude, it was due for yet another big tweak.
The very same issues us long-serving football followers had agonised over so many times before, were up on offer once again. Should the national league be in winter, or in summer? Should it be contested by franchises, or clubs? Should it run on a conference system or be strictly national?
The meeting revisited a list of 13 worthy objectives which were set when the national league had its last major revamp in 2004, and we were invited to consider the principles which would guide further development. As always, we would want our league to be sustainable, aspirational, and part of a best-practice football system - but reserved the right to bicker over what that might actually mean in practice.
I was initially cynical. Had it really come to this for the national league? Convening a pathetically attended evening meeting in a town which has never hosted a league match, at a venue which was a relic of an industry seemingly in terminal decline, facilitated by a woman with no background in the game (though New Zealand Football Community Director Cam Mitchell sat in and offered comment when called upon.)
And yet, on reflection, the process was a sound one. A discussion run by an independent facilitator is infinitely preferable to an agenda-driven football politician or employee steering meetings to pre-determined positions. And New Zealand Football desperately needs to be encouraged to engage more in grassroots consultation ahead of making big decisions.
Whatever the outcome, it would be no worse for the consultative process than some of the dire undemocratic political manoeuvres we’d endured over the national league’s history.
But what the meeting most impressed upon me was the need to bloody well complete a project I’d been toying with for well over a decade. The National League Debates: A potted chronology of the twists, turns and conflicting ideas that have swirled around in New Zealand football over the past 25 years.
So whatever else evolves out of the competition review workshops, it was at least the catalyst to finally complete this chronology.
Bruce Holloway
9.6.2015