A-League season start under threat with referees on strike

It is seemingly a rare occurrence indeed that Australian football does not find itself in some degree of turmoil.

So it is perhaps of little surprise that as the A-League Men's and Women's seasons fast approach, the code is once again lurching towards another crisis.

The nations top referees have been on strike since September 4, citing "significant changes to the elite refereeing structure" proposed by Football Australia (FA).

The change would see the referees contracted directly by the league, instead of FA.

The Professional Football Referees Association (PFRA) says those changes would be "detrimental to individual referees and represent a drastic step backwards for the professional refereeing program".

The A-League seasons begin in four weeks. And the parties are, as things stand, at something of a stalemate.

The APL and FA have all told ABC Sport they are continuing to work together with the aim of reaching a resolution.

The referee's body said in a statement earlier this month that it would "continue to engage with Football Australia with the aim of resolving the outstanding matters and returning its members to the field as soon as an acceptable outcome can be reached".

As players and supporters at all levels know, without referees there can be no game, so how have we got here?

To get into the weeds of this dispute, we can go back to the 2020 decision to decouple the A-League from Football Australia.

FA relinquished full control to a newly formed body, the Australian Professional Leagues, after a long period of agitation from both the clubs and world body FIFA about governance issues within the game.

In practice, this meant handing over the commercial reins of the A-Leagues to the clubs, in line with many other professional football leagues around the world, such as the Premier League, Bundesliga and J-League, among others.

The clubs believed the separation from the national governing body would help the competition's long-term viability .

In 2024, half of A-League Men players said they were "dissatisfied" with how the competition had been managed by the APL , and close to half said they had "low trust" in whether it could improve the league.