Time for A-Leagues to take stock after calamitous and underwhelming season

Winter has come. And with it, the A-Leagues’ season has come to a close. Western United’s 2-0 victory over Melbourne City in Saturday’s grand final provided the final chapter for the 2021-22 campaign as John Aloisi’s side won a championship in just their third season, going a long way towards establishing them as a true player in Melbourne’s ALM scene.

It was a significant upset – a buoyant Aloisi observed post-game that oddsmakers had lost “a shitload” on the result – and provided a suitably unforeseen ending to a season that started off with so much anticipation and promise but rapidly descended into a desperate fight to keep above water.

Between Covid and wild weather, the league was forced to reschedule 113 of its 226 fixtures, serving as an unwitting beta-tester for sporting competitions thrust into an environment in which the Omicron variant irrevocably destroyed the bubble that had previously surrounded dressing rooms. In the face of the subsequent fixture crunch, prevailing trends of pragmatism were magnified.

Off the pitch, with broader trends across Australian sport already showing a downturn in attendances, all but the most loyal fans appeared to give up on the process of trying to keep up. It should come as no surprise that one of the priorities of league administrators, the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), this offseason is the early delivery of a fixture list they hope will not change.

Against this backdrop, the self-inflicted wounds and growing pains that came with a new broadcaster in Channel 10/Paramount became magnified. Improvements on that front have been promised by the APL, who have no actual control over the platforms, but the presence of adverts during play, even in Saturday’s grand final,