Departure of O'Neill and Yorke a Warning Sign

With two key planks of the A-League's inaugural season going or gone, the national competition needs to be treated with kid gloves despite its early success says Phill Chadwick.

To borrow Eddie McGuire's catch phrase, this has been a big week in football.

The second season of the A-League is now well and truly underway and almost 40,000 people turned up at Telstra Dome to see Melbourne and Sydney, quite literally, battle it out.

Apart from that crowd, the attendances were a little disappointing. Let's hope that New Zealand's win over reigning Premier, Adelaide United, will be the catalyst that brings in more punters across the Tasman. They really need attract many more paying customers if they are to survive.

This week also saw the departure from the A-League of two of the most significant figures in the inaugural season.

Whatever your opinion of the overall quality of Dwight Yorke's play, there is no doubt that he was a significant draw card to bring interest to Sydney FC and to the A-League as a whole. His departure for the greener pastures of England's second-tier Championship will put Sydney's marketing to the test.

Yorke will be missed, but there are many footballers internationally of his calibre. Sydney now has to replace him with an equally well-known name. And it is the name and reputation, more than the playing ability that matters.

John O'Neill is the other big name to have announced his departure. He will be harder to replace than Yorke, but no doubt the world wide resources and contacts of Frank Lowy will be brought to bear on the problem. Let's hope that the right man (or woman) is available. The last thing we can afford is a repeat of the Australian National coaching fiasco, where the man Lowy wanted for the job turned out to be unavailable and a second-best temporary solution was found.

At least O'Neill has given six months notice.

What these two departures indicate to me is that this A-League is still in a precarious position and its success is by no means guaranteed.

The fact is that both men believed that their long term future lay elsewhere.

That is fine, and I understand their point of view. But only when men of O'Neill's calibre look upon a job as head of the A-League as the pinnacle of their profession, only when players of Yorke's status see A-League clubs as desirable destinations rather than a convenient stepping stones, will we have a mature, sustainable competition.

Let Lowy recruit the best available for the CEO job. Let Sydney replace Dwight with a better marquee. Let the other clubs follow Melbourne's lead and import exciting players to stir their public's imagination. Whatever you may think of some of the controversial incidents during that Telstra Dome match, I would wager that a significant proportion of that crowd turned up primarily to see the Brazilians.

Let's hope they keep coming back.

One day, when 40,000-strong crowds are not unusual, when the standard of the football and the standard of the administration are both world-class, we will look back nostalgically on these early seasons.

Until then, it would be wise to remember that this infant still needs careful nurturing.

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