Forget for a moment about what Sydney FC’s victory over Western Sydney Wanderers in Saturday’s elimination final means for the rivalry. First, let’s postulate on why Wanderers midfielder Miloš Ninković was frogmarched out of the Sky Blue’s dressing room by two Sydney attendants in its aftermath, hurling remonstrations as he went. The silent footage released by the A-Leagues’ media arm Keepup offers few hints, which is perfect because speculation is much more fun.
Did Sydney boss Steve Corica see his former player waltzing into his inner sanctum as an act of disrespect after their year-long war of words? Was Ninković congratulating his former teammates fine until a spiteful ex-coach needlessly escalated things? Maybe Ninković wanted to go out for a chicken parma but Corica fancied a parmi?
This is the moment Milos Ninkovic was escorted out of Sydney FC’s dressing room.
— KEEPUP (@keepupau) May 7, 2023
Marko Rudan and Steve Corica explain how handshakes ended with eviction.
📰 https://t.co/xFpsfnQaiy pic.twitter.com/7J1QwxKfvL
Perhaps it’s better not to find out because the truth often sucks the joy out of things. One of the most basic building blocks for any kind of blood feud is the ability of the opposing sides to fashion wildly different interpretations of the same event, one painting itself as a paragon and the other as a spiteful villain. Regardless of what Ninković and Corica’s (probably boring) truth is, whatever happened only adds sauce to an already spicy rivalry, one which had a new chapter written even before the dressing room fracas on Saturday.
Marching into Parramatta in front of 27,288 raucous and mostly hostile fans, Sydney cut short the Wanderers’ campaign to return to prominence. The host’s best season in half a decade was supposed to end by supplanting the faltering Sky Blues atop Sydney’s pecking order. Instead, it ended in an all too familiar way: their season is over, and Sydney stays alive.
The boycott by Sydney’s active supporter group The Cove provided their counterparts in the Red and Black Bloc (RBB) with unfettered control of the fixture’s ambience, and adds a new dimension to future clashes. The RBB were labelled “scabs” before the game for not joining The Cove’s protest against the Destination NSW Grand Final. This perceived lack of solidarity will inevitably be brought up in future meetings – a tweet from The Cove shortly after full-time simply said: “Cop that you bootlicking dogs.”
One of the league’s largest support groups boycotting the game is a sign that all is not well in A-Leagues land; a potentially terminal lack of trust and respect for league administrators is still deep-seated among fans. On the field, the tactical and technical side of the game, particularly from the Wanderers in the second half, also left a lot to be desired.
But even amid the almost routine off-field distraction, the sense of occasion and narrative that surrounded Saturday’s game still provided an insight into what the league can be at its best: rivalries like the Sydney derby serve as the league’s lifeblood.
Few other fixtures can produce the kind of pumping scenes and vibrant aura that happen when Sydney’s east meets west. Recognised as football’s most unique selling point in the crowded local sporting scene, derbies carry oversized importance to the health of the A-Leagues.
When there is no promotion or relegation and half the league plays finals, anything that can provide supporters with a reason to remain invested in games is critical. Despite a bungled rollout, Western United and Macarthur were tapped to enter during the last round of expansion for this very reason, and it’s why existing clubs’ attempts to play down their new foes as unworthy of a derby tag are perplexing. As long as the league remains a closed shop, it’s self-defeating to try to tell your fans that any game isn’t important because eventually, they’ll believe you.
Of course, the best rivalries are organic. It’s why Sydney FC possesses such a fearsome enmity with Melbourne Victory: a deeper cultural and geographic divide already existed for the clubs to work with, not bore out themselves. Saturday’s clash not only showed why confecting and nurturing these games remains integral to the A-Leagues, it also illuminated the broader existential challenge still confronting them.
Fostering rivalries isn’t so much about building up the games as it is building an identity for clubs – their values, ethos and spirit – which can then be contrasted with their foes. Disdain inevitably arises from that. Not all A-League teams have clear or consistent identities but Sydney and the Wanderers do, with mutual disdain flourishing as a result, as planned.
