One Ear on the AGM, Both Eyes on Northcote

Monday night was supposed to be about football governance.

Instead, it became about football governance, family, promotion, nerves and my desperate attempt to look as though I was concentrating on a Zoom meeting while another screen had almost my entire attention.

FSAA

I had been asked to stand for election to the General Committee of the Football Supporters Association Australia, or FSAA.

For those who haven't come across it, FSAA is an independent national organisation representing football supporters in Australia. Its purpose is pretty simple and, I think, important. Supporters should have a genuine voice in the decisions that affect our game.

Not just the administrators.

Not just the leagues.

Not just the broadcasters, sponsors and clubs.

The people who buy the tickets, travel ridiculous distances, stand in the rain, pay for memberships, take their children to games and build their lives around football matter too.

That is where FSAA comes in.

Monday night was its AGM and committee election and I was one of 16 candidates standing for ten General Committee positions.

I had been asked to stand and was genuinely pleased to be nominated. I knew there was a strong field of candidates and was simply happy to put my hand up and offer what experience I could.

There was, however, one slight problem with the timing of the AGM.

Slight problem

Northcote City were playing Melbourne Victory.

My son Max Clarke is Northcote's head coach and my stepson Nick Morton was in the starting eleven.

And this wasn't just another Monday night game.

The equation was beautifully simple and horribly stressful.

Win, and Northcote would be one game away from automatic promotion to the Victorian NPL.

So there I was.

FSAA AGM on one screen.

Craig Foster, our guest speaker, in one ear.

Northcote City v Melbourne Victory on the television.

And football occupying virtually every other functioning part of my brain.

I will confess now that I wasn't the most interactive participant at the AGM.

My camera was off.

This was probably best for everyone.

Had it been on, my facial expressions during the Northcote game would have revealed very quickly that the Football Supporters Association Australia did not have my undivided attention.

Everything on the line

Victory had plenty at stake themselves.

They were right in the promotion conversation too, sitting just behind the leading group and knowing that a win would drag them even closer.

So this wasn't one side with everything to play for and another simply making up the numbers.

Both teams needed it.

That was what made it so compelling and so horribly difficult to watch.

On the Victory touchline was club legend Besart Berisha, now coaching the side and increasingly scowling as the night wore on.

It was one of those games.

Tight. Nervy. Difficult.

Two teams playing as though the result really mattered because, of course, it did.

Northcote eventually got the goal from the penalty spot.

Was it a penalty?

That rather depends on which bench you were sitting on.

What mattered to us was that it went in.

And then came the unbearable business of protecting it.

Every clearance mattered.

Every tackle mattered.

Every time Victory got near the box, the room seemed to get quieter.

Nick goes down

Then Nick went down injured.

Everything stopped.

There is a very particular kind of silence when someone you love is lying on the ground during a football match.

For a few seconds, promotion disappeared completely from my mind.

Was he all right?

Was it serious?

Could he continue?

We held our breath.

Thankfully, he was okay.
Then, as if there wasn't already enough to worry about, Tasmanian goalkeeper Kieran Brown went down injured and had to be replaced at about the 75-minute mark.

Another little spike in the heart rate.

On came Noah, a player Devonport people will know from his time with the Strikers.

So now Northcote were protecting a 1–0 lead, Nick had already given us an injury scare and the goalkeeper had been forced off with 15 minutes or so still to play.

Perfect.

If my nails weren't purchased monthly, I would have bitten every one of them off.And then somehow we went straight back to worrying about the score.

That is football.

One minute you are thinking about a league table.

The next you are thinking about absolutely nothing except whether someone you love is hurt.

And then, once you know they are fine, you immediately start worrying about the league table again.

Helpless

Being the mother of the coach is a particularly useless position to occupy during a game like this.

You cannot make a substitution.

You cannot change the shape.

You cannot give anyone instructions.

You cannot even shout something remotely intelligent at the television because the person who actually knows what he is doing is several hundred kilometres away on the touchline.

So you sit there.

And suffer.

Northcote eventually saw it out.

Melbourne Victory 0.

Northcote City 1.

Three enormous points.

Now Friday

And suddenly Friday became massive.

Northcote now sit on 49 points, two behind Melbourne Knights and two ahead of Brunswick Juventus.

On Friday night, Northcote play Brunswick.

Second against third.

And this is why I love promotion and relegation.

No manufactured drama.

No contrived finals system required.

The table has created the tension all by itself.

If Northcote beat Brunswick on Friday, they go to 52 points.

Brunswick stay on 47.

With only one game remaining after that, Brunswick could reach a maximum of 50.

Which means a Northcote win on Friday would guarantee automatic promotion to the Victorian NPL.

That is it.

Win and they are up.

No playoff.

No second chance.

No calculator required.

One game.

One result.

One enormous prize.

This is pro-rel

This is what promotion and relegation does to football.

It makes a Monday night game against Melbourne Victory feel enormous.

It makes a penalty feel enormous.

It makes an injury scare feel unbearable.

And then it gives you four days to think about the next one.

This is why I love it.

You don't have to manufacture jeopardy.

You don't have to invent it.

The ladder does the work for you.

One club is chasing automatic promotion.

Another is trying to force its way into the race.

One result changes everything.

That is football with consequence.

Meanwhile, democracy

Somewhere alongside all of this, democracy was also taking place.

Votes were being counted.

People were being elected.

Important things were being discussed.

I am sure I nodded thoughtfully at appropriate moments.

Eventually, after the final whistle and after my nervous system had returned to something approaching normal, I discovered that I had also been elected to the FSAA General Committee.

So it wasn't a bad Monday night in the Morton-Clarke football household.

Tasmania at the table

The new FSAA committee has representatives from Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and the ACT, with a mixture of supporters, football administrators, journalists, governance people and people who have simply spent a very large proportion of their lives around the game.

I am particularly pleased that Tasmania will have a voice at that table.

Australian football can sometimes become very Sydney and Melbourne focused. Those of us living outside the biggest markets know that the football world looks rather different from here.

Grassroots football matters.

Regional football matters.

Junior football matters.

Women's football matters.

The National Premier Leagues matter.

The A-Leagues matter.

And, above all, supporters matter.

I have spent enough years around football administration to know that committees do not automatically change the world simply because a collection of enthusiastic people have joined one.

What matters is what they actually do.

So I am looking forward to finding out more about FSAA, listening, contributing where I think I can be useful and seeing whether we can strengthen the voice of Australian football supporters.

But first

Friday.

Northcote City v Brunswick Juventus.

Win and Northcote are promoted.

I promise I will be considerably more focused at the next FSAA meeting.

Unless Northcote are playing.

Then all bets are off.