THE 2018/19 PFA A-LEAGUE REPORT Supporting the Players Building the Game Professional Footballers Australia Photographty Jaime Castaneda (Cover) 2/55 Walsh Street Aleksander Jason West Melbourne VIC 3003 Melbourne Victory, Newcastle Jets Cameron McIntosh - NZ Photomac 1300 650 497 Steve Christo Photography [email protected] Paul Smith Photography www.pfa.net.au A-LEAGUE FOREWORD In 1994, Major League Baseballer and MLB Players Association The club owners now have the control they have fought for. And Executive Member, Scott Sanderson, asked his fellow with that they now have the responsibility for building a legacy professionals: for the A-League that supports all stakeholders and realises the eclectic ambitions we all have for the sport. “The central question is very simple…which of you players here think we should give the players who come after us less than The owners have a responsibility to improve the career path we received from the players who came before us?” for Australian footballers – from youth development all the way through respecting a player’s rights to represent their country. Two themes intersect at the centre of this question, the same They have a responsibility to rationally reimagine the economic that now sit at the heart of the A-League’s future: legacy and model for the A-League to ensure that the broken salary cap ambition. is scrapped and clubs are given the opportunity to build value in their players and build value in their clubs. That Thailand With the end of the 2018/19 A-League season came the end of recouped more transfer revenue than Australia last year is FFA’s autonomy as the league’s operator. Management of the testament to our outdated model. competition will now transition to the professional clubs. Through the PFA, the players supported the club owners in And the question for the owners is effectively the same as seeking the structural change the game needed. In so doing, posed by Sanderson; in inheriting the most influential piece of it is relying on the club owners being incentivised to invest, the Australian footballing puzzle, are they committed to building accountable to one another and committed to building clubs a legacy so that future generations of players, fans, coaches (and a competition) that can compete at the highest level with and support staff can realise the aspirational ambitions each all sports and all nations. have for our wonderful sport? The players, as always, have a fundamental role within this. The evidence of recent seasons, as documented in the past three PFA A-League Reports, suggests not. It is their performances that amplify the sport. Their deeds that go viral. Their smiles that win the hearts of fans. Their genius From a player perspective, most key performance indicators that wins their minds. Their journeys – perhaps from Wellington have trended negatively, with 61.5% of players coming off to Munich – fill our lives. contract, 40% of players starting the season at a new club, an average life span at a club of 2.4 years and more than half of all As we enter a critical new phase in football, we must focus on players not confident about the direction of their career. the legacy we collectively wish to build and the ambitions for the game we want to realise. Anything short of that, and a once Hardly the sort of career that rational parents would be pushing in a generation opportunity is lost. their children toward. Equally, support continues to trend downwards with decreasing viewership and attendances. This was matched by the players’ perception that match atmosphere and pitch quality dropped – two fundamental pre-conditions to an authentic football experience. This stagnation has been wholly attributed to the independence impasse; the awakening within the club owners of the futility JOHN DIDULICA of investing in an asset that wasn’t theirs and one they felt that Chief Executive were precluded from controlling. 3 CONTENTS STRATEGIC EMPLOYMENT LEAGUE TECHNICAL INJURY CONTEXT FRAMEWORK ASSESSMENT REPORT REPORT A NEW DAWN SNAPSHOT SNAPSHOT SNAPSHOT SNAPSHOT 6 BREAKS 11 19 27 35 AGE ANALYSIS COLLECTIVE COMPETITIVE GOALS METHODOLOGY 8 12 BARGAINING 20 BALANCE 28 36 PLAYER ATTENDANCE CREATION SEASON 13 CHURN 22 29 37 OVERVIEW SQUAD PITCH PASSING INJURY 14 STABILITY 24 RATINGS 30 39 LOCATION MATCH ATMOSPHERE POSSESSION 15 MINUTES 25 31 PLAYER FOREIGN DEFENDING DEVELOPMENT 17 PLAYERS 32 REFEREEING PROGRAM 33 41 ENGAGEMENT 42 IDENTITY 43 TRANSITION 4 A-LEAGUE SURVEY METHODOLOGY Where this symbol appears you will see data and quotes from The survey covered a broad range of areas impacting a player’s the PFA’s major annual survey of A-League players. Every career, from their contract, to work and study outside of A-League player was sent a link to the online survey in the football, to transition-readiness, to assessments of their club, weeks leading up to and following the 2018/19 A-League Grand the A-League, collective bargaining, and the PFA. Final. 61 players responded to the survey, although not every player completed every question. 5 STRATEGIC CONTEXT A NEW DAWN BREAKS The 2018/19 season represented the end of an era in two clubs to players, to the resources afforded to their football important ways. Firstly, this was the last season the A-League departments. In turn, these impacts will flow through to the will be governed and managed by Football Federation Australia, data contained in this report, such as player churn, age analysis with the clubs set to run the league independently from the and on-field performance metrics. 2019/20 season, bringing it in line with most professional leagues around the world. Secondly, this was the final season We will never be able to accurately measure these impacts before the next round of A-League expansion, marking the end on the league’s progress because there is no control version of the A-League’s most stable period of membership, having of history against which to compare what we’ve witnessed featured ten clubs for the past eight seasons and the current and captured in these pages. This makes it difficult for those roster of clubs for the past seven. seeking to take an evidence-based approach to strategic decision-making in this industry. Some subjectivity is required. These milestones are noteworthy in their own right, but they Some changes which occur as a result of independence may also provide essential context for the interpretation of all the begin to show in next year’s report, while others may take years other information in this report. The report’s main purpose is to reveal themselves. to track key performance indicators across all aspects of the A-League, and those outcomes are obviously impacted by the The change in the number of teams and matches from next way the league is run and the number of teams in it. season will provide another challenge for year-on-year analysis of key metrics. The steady state of ten clubs for the past eight For example, one of the main thrusts of the club owners’ seasons has provided a fertile ground for identifying trends in push for independence is that they had little incentive to player movements, competitive balance, injuries, team success invest in their clubs when they were not guaranteed to receive and technical quality, to name just a few. Because ‘all else’ proportional benefit from a more successful league. Specifically, was held equal season to season for a useful stretch of time, as the prospect of independence drew nearer, clubs could have any changes in these kinds of focus areas would be of interest been forgiven for adopting a wait-and-see approach to short- of decision-makers. Policies could be reviewed, or structural to-medium-term planning. At the same time, FFA has been issues pinpointed. running the league knowing that the years-long governance saga would likely lead to independence, disincentivising it to For the foreseeable future, changes to the number of teams redirect its limited resources away from other programs and and length of the season will add noise to the signal. Will new into the A-League. teams increase or decrease competitive balance? If there are more or fewer injuries, to what extent do we attribute the These dynamics help explain the generally accepted view that change to the addition of a bye, or the change in average the league and its clubs have suffered from undercapitalisation age, or the extra local derbies (meaning fewer flights)? Some in recent years. change is not noise, but an intended feature of expansion. For instance, expansion is supposed to create more opportunities It is obvious that the recent declines in attendance and for younger players. Future reports will assess whether this has broadcast figures are at least in part affected by a lack of been successful. Either way, it’s clear that conclusions drawn investment in the product. But the impact goes beyond from data in the next few years will come with a caveat. This fan interest. The uncertainty of recent years will likely have adds value to the current, pre-expansion data. impacted everything from the length of contracts offered by 6 A key outcome of the one-year extension of the A-League Collective Bargaining Agreement was the establishment of the Professional Men’s Football Committee. The Committee will feature members from the PFA, FFA and A-League clubs and be tasked with reviewing structural and policy issues affecting the A-League, including the salary cap and transfer system. This committee should take an evidence-based approach to answering the questions facing the competition, and the richest, most useful evidence is from the stable period 2012/13 to 2018/19: after Western Sydney Wanderers but before Western United.