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Old soccer, new football: The derby that could reshape the Australian game
Melbourne Victory and South Melbourne have never played a competitive match, yet their first meeting arrives carrying two decades of history, resentment and symbolism. In a sold-out Australia Cup Final, two clubs from different eras collide - offering a glimpse of what Australian football’s future could look like if its divided worlds finally come together.
Could this weekend’s Australia Cup Final be the catalyst for fundamental change in Australian football?
Could the biggest rivalry in Australian football exist between two clubs that have never actually played a competitive game, or even shared the same league?
Those questions might be laced with hyperbole, but they are worth asking nonetheless, and may be among the many answered this weekend when Melbourne Victory take on South Melbourne in the Australia Cup Final at a sold-out AAMI Park.
The fact the final was effectively sold out within 48 hours suggests there is genuine feeling in this one, pitting two giants from different eras of Australian football against each other for the first time since the ‘old soccer/new football’ divide was created in 2004.
At the time, it felt like a necessary distinction for football to reposition itself within the Australian sporting hierarchy, but the phrase left wounds that, two decades later, are still yet to fully heal.
Is it the biggest club game in Australian football history, as some are claiming? That is entirely subjective, and there have certainly been occasions that can lay claim to being bigger.
It may well be among the most significant, however, at least when it comes to the future direction of the game – not just in Melbourne, but across Australia.
And the game, in both city and country, could do with a boost.
Eighteen months ago, before the first-ever Melbourne Derby A-League Grand Final, we wrote about what we called the A-League’s ‘Melbourne Problem’ – the alarming decline in attendance and status of both Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City.
We didn’t even delve into the issues plaguing the city’s third club, Western United, which this year had its licence stripped and entered liquidation, ceasing to exist mere years after its birth.
With the city’s top-tier footprint shrinking from three clubs to two, and those two unable to arrest a broader decline in support and presence, something clearly needs to change.
That something, many people argue, is South Melbourne.
A four-time champion of the National Soccer League, the predecessor to the A-League, South Melbourne were a giant of the Australian game before the NSL was shut down to make way for a new national competition in 2004.
That upheaval almost caused the club – the breeding ground for Ange Postecoglou and so many other illustrious names in Australian football – to go out of business.
They were bleak times for a storied club, and it took South Melbourne years to recover. But recover they have, and now their eyes are once again firmly fixed on entry into the A-League.
Twice before the club has tried to enter the competition, and twice it has been rebuffed. There is something about now, however, that feels different.
The league has changed. The South Melbourne story has changed. And that is what makes this weekend’s clash so compelling.
It isn’t simply ‘old soccer versus new football’. It feels like something more. A glimpse into a possible future, perhaps. Even a referendum of sorts on what Australian football wants to become.
For as much as the Melbourne Derby between Victory and City has grown over the years, and City have taken it to their bigger brother on the pitch, for one reason or another the club has never truly cut through in the Melbourne sporting landscape – despite at various times boasting names such as David Villa, Tim Cahill and Aaron Mooy.
The Melbourne Derby, meanwhile, has never carried quite the same edge as the Sydney Derby between Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers, a rivalry grounded in geography that instantly felt real.
Despite never having played each other competitively, there is something similarly real about Melbourne Victory and South Melbourne.
That authenticity is an increasingly valuable ingredient in a league that was deliberately built largely from scratch only two decades ago, and which is still developing its own history, rivalries and traditions.
That cannot be created overnight.
Slowly, those clubs are building it. Victory is now into its third decade of existence, and many players now wearing its colours were not even born when the club was created. For their entire lives, all they have known when it comes to top-tier football in this city is Melbourne Victory being the top dog.
But as the A-League faces yet another period of uncertainty, questions are increasingly being asked about what the competition should look like in the years ahead.
A new greenfield club in Auckland has been a resounding success, while another in Canberra is expected to enter the competition in the coming years.
But with three expansion clubs – Gold Coast United, North Queensland Fury and Western United – having gone out of business, and another in Macarthur struggling for relevance in an intensely competitive Sydney market, the way the A-League grows deserves greater consideration.
Can the league continue to rely on brand-new expansion ‘franchises’ – to use the term often weaponised against them – with little pre-existing history or connection to the communities they represent beyond a name and geographical location?
For clubs to succeed, they need more than that. They have to matter to their community.
There are examples of expansion clubs achieving exactly that – Auckland being the latest, and Victory itself perhaps the most obvious – but there are also plenty of examples where it simply hasn’t worked.
Would the league benefit from opening the door to traditional clubs from the previous era, offering an olive branch that might finally begin repairing the wounds created by the old soccer/new football divide two decades ago?
That is why this weekend’s final is more than just another game.
On the field, it is about bragging rights, pride and winning the opportunity to represent city and country on the continental stage. From a purely football perspective, the stakes are about as big as they can get.
But the occasion may matter even more than the result, because it could offer a glimpse of what a new era of Australian football might look like if the game can find a way to move beyond the old soccer/new football divide and bring its two worlds onto the same path.
A world in which clubs with genuine connection and meaning in their communities are welcomed back into the national conversation; where two football cultures, kept apart in parallel universes for too long, begin to come together to create something new.
As long-time South Melbourne fan Paul Mavroudis said on Melbourne Victory fan podcast For Vuck’s Sake last week:
“If South Melbourne joins the A-League, it changes fundamentally what the A-League is about. It’s such a fundamental shift ideologically.”
Whatever happens on the pitch, it may come to represent something much larger: a glimpse at where Australian football has been, where it is now – and where it might choose to go next.
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