Almost as good as Bosnich's own goal in Buenos Aires!

The Socceroos have lined up a two match, home series against Turkey. Quite an interesting match up, and the first big match involving the Socceroos on home soil for a while.

I live in hope of having a national team to follow on a regular basis (that is to say, I wish they played at home more so I could watch them live). Hence, I was dead keen to go along to this match. I’m sure the football would be of quite a good standard and there would no doubt be a cracking atmosphere (well, better than a league game anyway, eh Georg?).

Check out the ticket prices here:

‘A’ reserve: $97.00
‘B’ reserve: $67.00

This match is at the SFS. So I thought there may be some ‘B’ reserve seating up ‘in the heavens’ (ie, the higher tiered seating). Nup! All ‘B’ seats are behind the goals. This might be bearable if you’re at a place like Highbury, where the seats pretty much start where the back of the net ends.

But when the SFS is set up for soccer, there’s about 10-20 meters between the back of the net and the start of the seats. Unless you’re up quite high, its very difficult to get a sense of the movement of the ball up and down the pitch once play moves past the half way line. And the natural curve of the pitch (higher in the middle), means you'd be looking at a bunch torsos running around. That might be alright when you fork out $12 to see Marconi play Olympic (well, I guess we’ll never be doing that again anyway). But $67 to see Mark Schwarzer’s butt? No thanks.

Are they for real? I didn’t pay that much for my ticket when I went to see the Socceroos v Maradona (minus life-support machine) World Cup Qualifyer, at the very same stadium (my seat was on the half way line, half way up the lower tier, some pretty premium real estate).

I’ve racked my brain trying to think of why they’ve decided on this pricing structure. It can’t possibly cost that much to use the stadium – I’ve been to events there where the ticket cost less than a schooey of VB and a hot dog (yes, it was the ARL, and it was Souths vs Adelaide Rams, but I think my point still holds up). And staging a soccer match isn't the world's greatest logistical feat.

Sometimes organisers undoubtedly bump up the prices to kick revenue along when they know demand will be high enough that they can charge what they like and still attract bums on seats (Rugby League State of Origin, or Bledisloe matches for example). I know the new boss of Australian Soccer Australia (or whatever) may be used to sell out stadiums and cashed up bandwagon jumpers, er, I mean Rugby Union supporters, but I really do think this approach is totally wrong.

Do they honestly think that they will attract new supporters to their ‘revamped’ competition with this approach? Have they chosen to call it 'the Australian Premier League', not because they football will be of premium quality, but because the supporters will be 'premium Australians'?

Surely it would make more sense to make the highest level of soccer in this country accessible to the greatest number of people. You want national support? You need to get the kiddies in, with their families. You know, the ones that play the game in record numbers? How many families (assuming an average family of 4) are going to fork out almost $270 just for tickets (at the least), and then pay for all the other stuff like transport/parking/food/merchandise?

Interesting to see that SBS’s SMS poll last week, which asked whether the tickets were overpriced, not only attracted a record number of responses, but also indicated 80% of people agree that $67 would be better spent sending premium rate SMS messages....

I guess it just wouldn’t be normal if Australian Soccer actually got something right.