As people all around the world celebrated Back To The Future day, it leaves one wondering just how far our game has come and there is no better way to see just how much Australian football has changed since 1985.
A lot can happen in 30 years. 1985 was in the middle of the arguable ‘dark days’ of Australian football, as the nation last qualified for a World Cup only eleven years earlier (back in 1974) but were still another 21 years away from making our second appearance at the biggest event in the sport. 1985 saw the Australian side get very close to World Cup qualification, getting past a group featuring Taiwan, New Zealand and Israel to secure a playoff spot, something they would endure three more times before finally switching to Asia after the 2006 World Cup. In two games against European nation Scotland, the Australian side fought valiantly, going down 2-0 at Hampden Park before being unable to overturn the deficit in a 0-0 draw in front of almost 30,000 fans in Melbourne.
The Socceroos squad of the time was one that had just begun to infiltrate sides overseas, something that would become more significant towards the end of the millennium as players like Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka went across to England to play for Leeds. Alan Davidson and Dave Mitchell led the group of exported Australians in 1985, playing for Nottingham Forrest and Eintracht Frankfurt respectively. However, the squad was still predominantly based in Australia, with most of the national side playing in the National Soccer League (NSL), a big change to the situation we currently see today.
Even on the domestic front there are significant differences from 1985 to the place we are at currently. The National Soccer League was in its ninth season of competitive play and surprisingly featured 24 sides across a two-conference league, a system that was only in play for three seasons. Split into a Northern and Southern Conference, the league saw a distinct bias towards sides from Sydney and Melbourne, with sixteen out of the 24 coming from the two cities. The conference system would take the top five sides from each and put them into a finals system where the two conference winners would play in a two-legged grand final.
In the 1985 season the final was contested between Sydney City (now Hakoah Sydney City East FC), who finished on top of the Northern Conference and Brunswick Juventus (now Brunswick Zebras FC) who finished second in the Southern Conference. Both games were decided by a goal from midfielder Fab Incantalupo, resulting in Brunswick taking home their first and only top-tier title. One thing to note is the stark difference in attendance between 1985 and 2015. The two grand finals only drew a crowd of 10,041 combined, a fair distance away from the 29,243 that attended the 2014-15 A-League grand final and a huge distance away from the reported 100,000 that attended the 1985 FA Cup final between Manchester United and Everton.
Interestingly, the 1985 NSL season had promotion and relegation, but strangely there was only one club that was relegated, Penrith City from the Northern Conference, who had finished 11th ahead of Newcastle Rosebud United, who stayed up. The club would be replaced by Cantersbury-Marrickville for the 1986 campaign, only for the NSL to cut the league by 10 sides by 1987. The 1985 season also had a knockout competition in the NSL Cup, the top domestic trophy to play for until the FFA Cup took over in 2014. This was won by Sydney Olympic, beating fellow NSL side Preston Makedonia 2-1 in front of a crowd of 11,187 and this is a lot closer to the first final of the FFA Cup in 2014, which saw Adelaide United take the title in front of a crowd of 16,142.
Probably the most interesting thing about the Australian domestic scene in 1985 was the fact the NSL played on a winter schedule compared to the current summer schedule that we are now accustomed to. While the idea was one in motion since the start of the 1980’s, summer football would not come into effect until the 1989-90 season.
1985 also saw the initial signs starting to form in the demise of the NSL, with low attendances and clubs financial struggles starting to become more and more common. While this issue would not become major until the 1990’s, the early warning signs were still starting to pop-up.
As a note of comparison, the 1980’s saw the top division in Australia dominated by ethnic clubs, something the FFA has strived not to repeat in the A-League. Sides like Sydney Croatia, St. George-Budapest and Preston Makedonia all had large support from migrants and specific European cultures. They would be forced to change their names in the 1990’s in order to market to a wider audience, but these were often seen as damaging the history of the clubs.
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The Australian footballing scene of 1985 is one that is vastly different to the one we have today. Currently we have a national side that has benefited from the move to the AFC and have qualified for three consecutive World Cups, something that would have been insane to think about in the 1980’s. Our Socceroos players also are no longer based domestically, with most players choosing to play overseas rather than in the A-League. Domestically, our competition is nowhere near the size of the NSL, with only 10 clubs playing compared to 24, but the league is significantly more stable and that is something worth a lot more. However, one cannot help but wonder about the future and when we look back on 2015, we will wonder just how much our footballing culture has evolved and how much has stayed the same.
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