At night, from the heights of Kings Park, the Perth cityscape is simply spectacular. Thousands of lights from its high rise CBD reflect in the water of the broad, shallow Swan River as it eases its way towards Fremantle and the sea, scene of one of Australia’s great sporting triumphs, victory in the America’s Cup.
And this week they weren’t the only lights in the night sky. A mile or so from downtown, the floodlights of the city’s trotting track burned bright as the world’s leading rally drivers competed the opening Special Stage of the Rally of Australia, the final leg of this year’s championships.
The presence of the rally has helped make it a big week for sport in Perth whose brand new and hugely impressive Convention Centre staged the biennial National Leaders In Sport convention.
Here some 750 heads of sports federations, city and state government spent two days thrashing out some of the key issues facing sport in Australia.
Because in Australia sport matters like it matters nowhere else on earth – or at least that’s the conventional wisdom.
But as Nick Farr-Jones, captain of the 1991 Rugby World Cup winning Wallabies told the conference, that is how it used to be. For sport in Australia, as elsewhere, is facing up to the challenge of a changing society, reduced opportunities to participate and a move towards an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
Sport matters hugely to Perth, a remote city that is closer to Jakarta than to the Adelaide, its nearest Aussie neighbour. It matters because sport helps keep the city and the state of Western Australia (population 2 million) on the international map. Sports events like the World rally Championship bring in big spending visitors and capture international attention through television coverage.
All of which explains the focus that the state government puts on attracting new events through its specialist arm, EventsCorp. And there’s been some good news for EventsCorp of late. The Johnnie Walker Classic golf tournament is due back in town after a break of a few years and the city is one of two contenders – Melbourne is the other – for the new Australian franchise in the extended rugby Super 14 competition which is, as they say, probably the best club rugby tournament in the world.
The competition to attract events is tough but then the Australian sports business in general simply has to be among the most competitive in the world. No other nation has four football codes vying for attention and affection among each other as well as against basketball, netball, tennis, swimming, track and field and, of course, cricket. In these sports, as in many others, Australia has continually punched above its weight for a nation of only 20 million or so.
For a second or third tier sport to make an impact in this marketplace takes a degree of skill, determination and probably a slice of luck as well. It also helps if you have an administrator like John O’Neill at the helm.
O’Neill, you may recall, spent eight years turning the Australian Rugby Union around and presiding over the most successful Rugby World Cup ever staged. In the process he drove the sport way up a pecking order where it has been behind the AFL (Aussie Rules) and Rugby League.
Today O’Neill has what some see as the most difficult job in sport. As CEO of the Australian Soccer Association, his job is to build on the foundations of massive youth participation and create a sound business structure to support a successful professional league and a national team that can qualify for and succeed in the World Cup.
To make matters more difficult, the country’s best players are based 12,000 miles away with European clubs that are increasingly reluctant to release them for international duty. The structure O’Neill inherited was more or less non-existent and the mismanagement of the previous national leagues has, it appears, been little less than scandalous.
So with a new backer and a new game plan, O’Neill is starting from scratch. A new league has been announced and, during an address to the Leaders in Sport conference, O’Neill spelled out his vision.
“This is the last roll of the dice. Soccer in Australia can’t afford another disaster,” said O’Neill.
To ensure there isn’t, he’s assembled a hand-picked team of experienced sports executives, most of whom have worked with him in Rugby. He knows them, respects them and trusts them. With federal funding for three years he knows that he has a defined window in which to achieve his goal, and he knows he won’t do it without stepping on a few toes.
But O’Neill’s experience of rugby has taught him how to get things done.
Before taking on the ARU job he ran a bank and it didn’t take him long to discover that simply applying basic business principles to a sports institution wouldn’t necessarily work.
“It took me a while to understand that the structure of sport was embedded with waste, duplication and inefficiency and that can’t be changed by banging people over the head.
“There is a problem with sports administrators because it seems that the longer you’ve been around the bigger the blazer you get to wear. You get better tickets for games and a better parking sport. It is to do with people’s status and when it comes to effecting change you need to be less threatening and more effective.
“If the people who run the clubs or the state bodies feel they are under threat you end up with a continual state of civil war.”
So these are the principles O’Neill takes to Australian soccer. One of his first tasks is to lose the use of the world and have the game called by its more or less universally accepted name, football – something that may not play too well in the Melbourne office of the AFL.
But O’Neill’s pragmatism means he’s not planning to go head-to-head with the footie boys.
“You can’t do that. You have to find your points of difference and competitive advantage and work on that,” he says.
Among those advantages are some 1.2 million players, of whom 74 per cent are under 17 years-old and the country’s increasing awareness of its place within Asia.
“We won’t be the Premier League but we must link with Asian football. Globally we may be a speck on the radar, but Asia is developing quickly as a balance to Europe and we want to be integrated into the Asian Cup and an Asian Champions League. That can make the difference.”
