A season in Queensland

Football is, as Mrs Zen will testify with a grimace, one of Dr Zen's passions. There is no tradition of it in my family: my father despises the game and I didn't, as a consequence, stand on the terraces with him as a boy. Not that that would have been a straightforward proposition, even had he loved the game as I do now. We lived at the far western end of Cornwall, seventy plus miles from Plymouth, home of the nearest league football team. And, as anyone familiar with Corns knows, there's nowhere more despised in Cornwall than Plymouth, where England begins. There's no way I could have supported Plymouth.

So my team is Leeds United, whose recent history is a splendid concoction of tragedy and comedy, hopes raised and destroyed, dreams of triumph kindled and shattered. They are a more modest proposition than the talented outfit of a few years back that came close to challenging at the top. Astonishing debts -- the product of the work of "businessmen" who could not be trusted with a school tuckshop -- almost overwhelmed the club. The fine young players who we had hoped would lead us to glory at home and in Europe were sold off, not so much to raise money but because we could not afford to keep paying the incredible wages our chairman had thrown at them like scraps to hogs. (Actually, not scraps. They would have been happy with scraps but he threw them roast dinners, feasts, banquets!)

In Kevin Blackwell, Leeds have a manager who seems to have the right idea. He has recruited mostly English players from the lower divisions, for low or no fees, and is paying them sensible wages. Leeds have not signed too many players on the verge of retirement looking for a payday, which is often the route poor managers take to try to lift clubs out of the second division but saddles them with useless nontriers who think their lack of effort and success is everyone else's fault. Whether Blackwell would have done if it was a possibility at Leeds, I don't know, but it wasn't, and he hasn't (Steve Stone notwithstanding). Players such as Harding and Derry are potentially very useful, Blake is of proven quality at the second level and his other signings look astute (Hulse and Healy are probably not good enough for the Premiership but both have scored plenty in the Championship). However (there is always a "however" with Leeds), their form is already unconvincing. They look to lack spark (they certainly lack goals) and the midfield is probably more workmanlike than creative. I have high hopes though. If Eirik Bakke stays fit, and forges a good partnership with Derry (which looks on the cards), once we have a fixed forward line that is firing, I think Leeds will be competitive. You win in football by getting the defence right, and Blackwell has constructed a back four that will not often be mugged by Championship strikers, aided by a couple of useful goalkeepers in Sullivan and Bennett. Hope rises once again! That is why I love football. You cannot despair for long. There is always hope.

In the Premiership, the big story remains Chelsea -- hated rivals of Leeds but, unless Abramovich is assassinated or jailed, out of our league these days. Mourinho continues to spend large on quality players. I'm not sure Essien and Wright-Phillips will improve their squad a great deal but they aren't bad to have around. With Crespo back from Italy and keen to prove himself, it would be a brave man who tipped anyone else. There are question marks about Mourinho's tactics: in key games he ran out of ideas when under the pump, particularly against Liverpool in the Big Cup. But to be fair the strengths of Chelsea -- their immaculate defence, their running in midfield and the sheer quality of their players -- far outweigh the small weaknesses Mourinho has shown.

This is particularly true when one looks at the main opposition. Arsenal are probably going to have one of those seasons. Vieira may have been a fading power, but a midfield of Fabregas and Gilberto Silva is going to have to work hard not to make it seem that there's a huge gap. Hleb is interesting but I fear he will be a sideshow. It's rare for a player who runs with the ball to succeed in England. What seemed easy in France or Germany, say, suddenly becomes difficult in the Premiership. This is partly because the player has moved from being the star of the show at his French or German club to being just one of many talents at the Premiership team (or, even if he ought to have star treatment in England, he doesn't get it). There's a long list of players of astonishing talent who didn't make it in England but went on to be worldbeaters elsewhere. (How can Jon Dahl Tomasson, for instance, have been so dismal for Newcastle? And Darko Kovacevic! He must have sent his brother to Sheffield.) I wonder whether Reyes will be another like that. He is clearly enormously talented but he has moved from being the local hero at Sevilla to being just another player at Arsenal.

Manchester United -- our hated rivals -- don't look strong enough either. Keane is a fading force in midfield and they don't have another strong central player. Scholes is overrated and English teams have learned what continental sides worked out on one viewing: don't give him space and he's useless. European sides mark him out of the game. Smith is a keen runner but he isn't creative enough to make a top-flight midfielder. ManUre have talent wide so we could see a return to the tactics that first won titles for Ferguson when he used Kanchelskis and Giggs to terrorise defences: bang it out wide at every opportunity. He was happy enough to sell Beckham because Beckham won't take a player on. With Ronaldo, Rooney and Park, he has tricky players who are more than willing to do that. Still, I feel a determined side that presses and doesn't sit back and let ManUre attack will get a result against them.

Liverpool are shit and are likely to stay that way. I still don't know how on earth they won the Big Cup. More often than not played off the pitch in Europe, somehow they hung in there and won games they should have lost. (The games against Chelsea in the Big Cup are good examples. They defended throughout, showed no ambition and no sign of aggressive intent. They "scored" from a hopeful punt up the pitch. Chelsea's frailty on the night gave them the win, I think -- particularly shown in Chelsea's lack of threat towards the end of the season as their wide players were injured or lost form.)

The rest can be discounted. Wigan, Sunderland and West Ham are so poor I'd be surprised if they didn't all return to the second division. Their best hope is West Brom, who were dire last season and with Bryan Robson in charge are not likely to be any better this. Pompey and Fulham might give them a challenge for the bottom three. Blackburn might also struggle. Villa, Spurs, Charlton, Everton, Newcastle (the current providers of most of the division's comedy), Bolton, Man City, Birmingham and Middlesbrough will finish in a ruck most likely: they are almost indistinguishable in terms of quality and prospects.

Meanwhile, I will be watching football at Suncorp Stadium. My team in the newly formed A-League is the Queensland Roar, who hope to confound the critics, who think they will be cellar dwellers. They probably will at that. The team is mostly young and inexperienced and more canny sides will likely do them. The A-League may or may not be successful. I don't have high hopes. There are only eight teams, so the ties will suffer from being over familiar, as they do in Scotland. Unlike Scotland though, there is a salary cap, so the teams will be much of a muchness. They are regionally based, so there won't be all that much rivalry (and I won't be watching too many away games!). The worst of it is that the standard of football in the old league was dire. The players were not fit enough to do themselves justice and played mostly at walking pace. They attempted technical football that they were not skilled enough to bring off, and showed far too little energy or commitment. (I often felt that a decent trainer could win the league simply by having his players ultra fit and playing a long ball game. A bit of urgency would have gone a long way, I think. It would probably win you games in the A-League too.) The games looked a lot like training games in England and they didn't attract the fans. The Aussie football federation hopes a bit of hoopla will have us streaming in. They don't have a clue. Franchises don't really work in football. It's hard to love a brand new team, especially when you know that a couple of years down the track it might disappear. The Roar (*kof*) are built on the former Queensland Lions (they can't use the Lions name because of the clash with the AFL team, the Brisbane Lions). They won the franchise over the Brisbane Strikers, who deserved their fate, not being any good, not bothering to try to gain fans, and not playing at a decent stadium. The Suncorp Stadium -- Lang Park as was -- is made for football. If filled, it would be an intimidating place to visit. With the small crowds that the A-League is likely to bring in, I would have thought it will be rather less so. No amount of razzle dazzle on FoxSports will hide the truth that the players on display are very ordinary and the football uninspiring. It doesn't help that the players are as unfamiliar as some of the clubs -- I have no idea who any of the Roar side are outside of Chad Gibson, the club captain -- nor does it help that clubs talk about "outreach", that is, playing games in other parts of Queensland. Guys, to succeed as a club, you must serve first and foremost your core fans, the people who will turn up to every game. For the A-League to succeed, teams such as the Roar must build a core.

There will also be a final series. I know that some leagues around the world do this but for my money, it's not the way to settle a sporting title, especially when the league is so small. The bulk of the season seems almost pointless when the action only really starts in the finals. (Look at the NRL, where eight of the sides make it to the finals! More than half the teams are in with a chance of winning after the main season is done. That's just wrong. A team can be fantastic all season, carry all before them and yet, come September, a bad game can finish them while some other bunch, rubbish for much of the year, who scraped into the eight, can win it if they have a good run of form.) Still, Aussies like finals, and they make good TV. A grand final in any code of football is like combining a championship decider and a cup final in one game.

Still, I'm going to support it. I miss football as an integral part of my life. Watching the English footy on Fox is not the same as feeling part of it, having it in the day-to-day. I will take my seat at Lang Park, scream at the useless cunts who are disgracing the orange (!) of the Roar and be part of what's on offer here, paltry though it may be. I might even post match reviews if I can be arsed. Go the Roar innit.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:14 pm