The Christmas and New Year period is generally one of reconnection, to reunite and debrief with family and friends at the end of a long year. Sometimes these conversations can be awkward, and sometimes more endured than enjoyed, but they generally serve to maintain bonds and look forward to what's ahead. For followers of the A-League, though, the rusted-on who have continued to follow the league through its ups and downs, it doesn't appear they'll get a similar opportunity with Australian Professional Leagues (APL) executive chairman Stephen Conroy.
On Wednesday, the APL, the body that has run the A-League since it was "unbundled" from Football Australia at the end of 2020, announced that former Fremantle Dockers and Victorian Racing Club head Steve Rosich had been appointed as its new chief executive, with Conroy set to step back into the chairman role he occupied before the sudden exit of Nick Garcia as commissioner in February.
"We've been through a significant period of change, and Steve's appointment marks an exciting new era for the APL," Conroy said in a statement. "Steve brings extensive leadership, commercial and major events experience within elite sport, and a passion to grow the A-Leagues to help it reach its full potential."
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Rosich, who is perhaps best known for his swoop to take Ross Lyon to the Dockers from St Kilda, will commence his new role on Jan. 5, albeit he'll be at this weekend's Christmas Derby in Melbourne as he begins the process of getting his feet under the desk and pressing the flesh with the league's clubs. He'll be tasked with helping to turn around a business that has been contracting -- or "right-sizing" to use the APL's preferred term -- its way back to profitability after the financial hit of the COVID pandemic was followed by a series of strategic blunders; missteps headlined by the disastrous attempt to sell hosting rights to the leagues' Grand Finals to Sydney, and the opening and subsequent shuttering of KEEPUP. The human toll of these chapters continues to be felt, too, with redundancies hitting the organisation's content team just last week.
One would anticipate that, internally, he inherits an A-League with a vision beyond its current austerity-driven push to keep the lights on, as well as a strategy that will be put in place to help it reach that point. And the statement greeting Rosich indicates as much, with Conroy saying he inherits "a strong platform for sustained growth." Few outside the tent, however, will likely have much idea about the specifics of what is to be built on this platform, even acknowledging there are inevitable limits to what can and cannot be shared publicly. That doesn't just go for fans, either; speak to enough players, coaches, and others involved at the coalface of the sport, and a theme that routinely emerges is that nobody is quite sure what direction the A-League Men and A-League Women competitions are heading.
One of Rosich's key tasks, then, will be providing visibility -- to give football fans a reason to follow along on the journey and fill a public-facing void left by a 10-month period in which Conroy, despite the upheaval that hit the A-League, was nearly completely absent from public discourse. The interim boss spoke a grand total of four times in his capacity at the head of the APL. ESPN had multiple interview requests for Conroy turned down during this period, a trend that was replicated across outlets that cover Australian football.
And why did supporters want to hear from Conroy? What questions and challenges lie ahead? Let us count the ways.
For a start, much of the last offseason was dominated by the saga of Western United teetering (and it continues to teeter) on the brink of collapse before being placed into "hibernation." Further north, more than 1,000 days after it was earmarked for expansion, a Canberra license remains unfilled, with a report from the Canberra Times last week (one that noted a request to speak with Conroy) suggesting talks with a preferred bidder had stalled in recent weeks and that the future of Canberra United was in jeopardy. In Gosford, uncertainty has loomed over the Central Coast Mariners for months. More broadly, if not for the entrance of Auckland FC last season, the PFA's latest A-League Men report found that crowds would have fallen in 2024-25, while attendances, per Ultimate A-League, are down 10% through the first 47 games of this season.
As Australia prepares to host the Women's Asian Cup, and the A-League Women receives a rare opportunity to recapture at least a portion of the now largely dimmed halo effect of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the women's top flight is the least preferred destination among its own players, per the PFA's latest A-League Women report, and its wages are the lowest of any major Australian code. With both men's and women's players favoring an independent commission to run the game, uncertainty abounds over the next collective bargaining agreement and a new broadcasting deal that will help to fund it, with the PFA not ruling out the possibility of strike action should talks over the former bog down. Mainstream coverage of the league (at least coverage not purchased) remains fleeting, especially of the week-to-week cut and thrust of the games themselves.
To be certain, there are limits to what anyone from the APL could have said when confronted about these issues; Conroy, for instance, couldn't exactly have come out and said that the mooted takeover of United by the KAM Sports appeared highly suspect while the club insisted it was happening. And after the bombastic promises of the APL's first few years of independence wrote cheques they simply couldn't cash, there was always going to be a correction, too. And all this isn't to suggest that there hasn't been good news during this period -- such as Auckland's entry to the league, and the emergence of players such as Adrian Segečić, Noah Botić, Kahli Johnson, and Sharn Freier -- nor to deny that significant work is being conducted with diligence and conviction behind the scenes.
But one doesn't need to discuss matters that are commercial in confidence, nor promise the stars, to give supporters an insight into a vision for the A-League Women heading into the next decade, for instance, or how the league plans to grow the number of teams and games (both of which are widely recognized as being necessary if it wishes to continue to foster talent as a developmental platform). And in the absence of this, there has been a void that, with conversation abhorring a vacuum, has been filled by others or, failing that, rumor, speculation and innuendo. In hindsight, PFA chief executive Beau Busch's blistering rhetoric at the union's "Team of the Second Decade" event before the season's commencement, with Conroy among the APL figures watching on silently as they were dressed down, feels reflective of the state of play.
As Rosich assumes his new role in 2026, therefore, the hope will be that his arrival augurs an improvement when it comes to visibility and transparency. Right now, football supporters Down Under are cynical as they've ever been, while it feels like the sport has completely fallen off the radar from the general public as any sense of cool factor that it once had is lost in the void of sparsely populated, cavernous stadiums. For the former cohort, one that is aware of wary of the history of former AFL executives coming into their code, Rosich will need to prove he's not just another suit and is actually capable of understanding what makes the game special. For the latter, well, given that Rosich comes from racing, perhaps he can take some cues from how, love him or hate him, Peter V'landys has been able to sell the NRL like few executives could dream of.
Nonetheless, it's no fun being miserable all the time, and, deep down, most of the Australian footballing public wants to get excited and buy into the game's future -- one only needs to look at the amount of grace the first year of the Australian Championship was granted simply because it was an ambitious start-up. And Rosich will be (or should be) judged on his accomplishments more than anything. But patience has never been in shorter supply, and to start to secure this buy-in the league needs to actively give supporters, as well as players, coaches, and every stakeholder not afforded a place in the inner circle, reason to get excited. A reason to engage. A reason to believe.