The Australia Cup does not get the recognition it deserves as one of the best competitions, not just in Australian football but the nation's broader sporting calendar. Eleven years into its modern existence, it has taken the greatest strengths the game possesses and manifested them on the pitch. At the same time, however, it is also confronting challenges about its ability to force its way back into the public consciousness because, at its core, it's a competition whose founding and spirit runs counter to the separation that has long since come to define the game Down Under.
Though nationwide cup competitions are the norm in global football, the combination of scale and opportunity in the Australia Cup offers something unique across Australian codes; 758 clubs took the field in 2024, drawn from the heights of the A-League Men all the way down to the weekend warriors of the metropolitan and district leagues, in the same competition, with a trophy on the line. It offers the chance for the Gerringong Breakers or Spearwood Dalmatinac to play the might of the Western Sydney Wanderers in a competitive fixture, meeting as equals on the pitch. It genuinely unites the game.
And in a landscape where there is a ceiling on all bar 13 clubs, it offers opportunity -- no matter how unlikely -- to achieve something special. In the Australia Cup, the Glebe Gorillas or Sebastapol Vikings are ostensibly able to start a journey in the preliminary rounds that, by way of the Asian Champions League Two -- a berth in which the winners of the Cup receive -- and then the Asian Champions League Elite, could end at a Club World Cup final against the likes of Real Madrid, Manchester City or Flamengo. Will that ever happen? No, but the only barrier preventing it is what happens on the pitch. That's special.
In 2024, however, as Macarthur FC celebrate their second Australia Cup in the last three years, the competition finds itself staring down a series of conundrums just as much existential as they are logistical. What exactly does this competition want to be? Just how does it create an environment that will allow it to achieve this? And, pertinent to both; is Australian football even set up in a manner that will allow it to achieve these goals?
Certainly, the Australia Cup isn't under any kind of immediate threat. Ongoing broadcast support from Network 10 was secured as part of the recently brokered deal with Football Australia and the federation continues to produce in-house content centred on the competition. State federations are also increasing their coverage and streaming of the preliminary rounds that take place before the national stages. At 13,289, the Bulls' win over Melbourne Victory in this year's final -- becoming the first side to travel interstate and lift the trophy with their 1-0 win at AAMI Park -- was the lowest-attended decider in the competition's history but, given that this was only 5,462 off the record set when Melbourne City hosted Sydney FC in 2016, there isn't some kind of gaping chasm between peak and valleys.
And in some regards, this year's final was a victim of circumstances. If it's not taking place a day after the AFL Grand Final, a week before the NRL decider, and a week after Graham Arnold's resignation sucked up all the oxygen in the small football media, it likely generates enough buzz to draw at least a thousand more. If it's a side with a more established following such as Sydney FC, the Wanderers, or Adelaide United facing Victory, it likely accomplishes this even without that aforementioned buzz. And if South Melbourne had gotten past the Bulls in the semifinal to set up a first ever competitive meeting with Victory, with all the associated narratives and ill-feeling that would have accompanied it, then it likely sets a new record for the largest final in the competition's history.
What was your favourite goal of 2024? 🏆🤔
— Australia Cup (@AustraliaCup) September 30, 2024
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But one of the biggest reasons that South couldn't get past the Bulls was because their skipper Harrison Sawyer had signed for Macarthur themselves earlier that week -- forced to move by the closure of the domestic transfer window just days prior. And while in the short- to medium-term this is something that will likely lead to Football Australia investigating special provisos for NPL players engaged in Cup runs, it cuts to the core challenge confronting the Australia Cup: the navigation of a calendar that separates the A-League from the footballing pyramid below.
Ever since the 1989-90 NSL season, the Australian top tier has operated in the summer months whilst the rest of the game continues to be played in the winter, a shift born by a desire to avoid competition for facilities and attention with rugby league and AFL, better engage juniors, and improve viewing conditions for fans.
Under the current format of the Cup, this not only means that transfer windows have the potential to bite lower-tier clubs making deep runs, but also that the competition effectively serves as a preseason hit-out for A-League outfits. And while this does boost the prospect of more "Cupsets" in the early stages of the competition, it also ensures its latter stages are dotted with underdone A-League players, incomplete squads, and a general air from the professional competitors -- certainly during the early rounds -- that winning the competition is a nice bonus, rather than something to specifically target. This is reflected by fans, a great number of whom, especially amid a cost-of-living crisis and a crowded part of the sporting calendar, don't see the value in investing -- both materially and emotionally -- in a competition that hardly elicits much of one from their clubs.
On some level, this is perhaps why the initial novelty of seeing local NPL teams meeting -- and occasionally beating -- A-League sides has begun to wane amongst the broader footballing public. In 2015, Heidelberg United drew 11,372 fans to Olympic Village for a game against Melbourne City. This year, though, 2,077 fans were in attendance to watch John Anastasiadis' outfit knock off a treble-winning Central Coast Mariners outfit in the round of 32. Viewing and attendance habits, especially since COVID, have changed dramatically, that's to be acknowledged, but there's still not the same level of excitement there once was.
An obvious solution to this is to move the competition towards the start of the A-League season, with the final stages taking place after it had commenced, improving the sharpness and care factor of professional outfits. These marquee sides, with big fanbases, most capable of generating coverage -- which is presently swept away by finals of other sporting codes -- being given incentives to raise their game.
But this, in turn, would only serve to exacerbate one problem by fixing another: making the competition even harder for state federation sides whose long seasons are concluding/concluded, possess limited resourcing rely on often exhausted volunteers, and who, sometimes very literally, are on the beach. It would almost seem self-defeating; given the Cup's nominal purpose was fostering a unity it's otherwise structured to prevent. To alter it into something that would carry more appeal to A-League clubs -- when it has already had the carrot of progression to a potentially lucrative continental competition attached to it -- and make it more difficult for the 746 clubs would seemingly serve as a betrayal of this. Australian domestic football has been built around strengthening the A-League for the better part of two decades, sometimes to the detriment of clubs below -- it doesn't always need a leg up, and commercial considerations don't always need to be king.
A mooted women's Australia Cup will only magnify these challenges and add a few more. A-League Women teams do not run year-round programs, meaning that a great number of players play for local NPLW sides during the offseason. Further, the strongest NPLW sides -- the ones that would ostensibly provide the lifeblood of the Cup -- lose swathes of players to A-League Women programs once preseason commences. In a Cup game, who does a player signed to both FC Bulleen Lions and Western United play for?
Really, Football Australia is stuck -- again! -- between a rock and a hard place. There are no perfect solutions, just varying types of trade-offs. The A-League season's kickoff moving would help. As would shifting the Australia Cup's start date to later the year when there's some crossover between the tiers. But there's always going to be compromises because the Cup finds itself operating in an environment that almost actively works against it. After 11 years, the Australia Cup is still trying to create a bridge between two football worlds built without connection in mind.