Soccer: A closely contested ASB Premiership?

We are heading for a really tight ASB Premiership season, if New Zealand Football can be believed.

In a press release announcing the draw for the summer national league this week, New Zealand Football competitions manager Chris Kemp pontificated that this 10th season of the national league (in its current incarnation) would be the most closely contested yet.

It was the first official prediction for the 2013-14 league, which kicks off on November 10.

And it was a remarkable statement on several counts. Not least because no effort was made to produce any evidence or opinion to substantiate such a bold claim - apart from the incongruous observation that over the last decade 29 All White have played in the league, which is of course neither here nor there.

In a press release every bit as awkward as a badly written Sky TV movie synopsis, Kemp said he was "satisfied the tenth edition is going to be one to watch".

That's excellent news for those of us alarmed by the manner in which attendances have dwindled in recent summers, and media coverage has similarly slumped from the high watermark of weekly television highlights packages in 2004-05.

But it's surely a wretched disappointment for defending champions Auckland City, who might reasonably have expected to be feted as red hot favourites for a runaway win, given their pre-season efforts of beating Wellington Phoenix and stripping nearest rival and biggest title threat Waitakere United of its two best strikers.

Of course the desire of those with a vested interest to talk up a league as "close" is understandable. Closeness is not necessarily a measure of quality, but in terms of presenting sport as drama, there is a general perception that if it's close, it's at least worthy of more eyeballs.

Ironically, such cheap spruiking is not required when there is genuine public expectation that a sporting contest will be close. In the same way that when someone is well known, you don't actually have to describe them as being "well known", a self-reinforcing pretence of significant truth is rarely necessary in publicising well established sports competitions.

But this belief in a close competition must have some significance otherwise NZF simply would not have taken such an angle with its draw release when there was so much newsworthy fodder available, with two teams having name changes, and the introduction of a new team - the bizarrely named Wanderers SC - which will be a vehicle for the Junior All Whites as they prepare for the FIFA U-20 World Cup in New Zealand in 2015.

So it's worth examining historic closeness in the ASB Premiership.

If closeness is defined as the points spread between the top and bottom teams, the closest league was in 2009-10 when Auckland topped the table with 31 points (the lowest points tally of the modern era) and Waikato finished bottom with 10 points.

And the most "unclose" competition was in 2005-06 (albeit over 21 matches rather than 14) when Auckland won with a record 48 points and Hawke's Bay United were bottom with five points.

The smaller a league the easier it is to stay "close" and the longer a league, the more the quality teams will express their quality and surge ahead. Note that in an ideal world we would have a longer league - even at the expense of it being less closely contested.

Nevertheless, in the five summers of a 14-game regular season, the league spread has never been less than 21 points. And no matter how good the league is, one team must always finish bottom.

Only once has the bottom team made double figures (Waikato FC got 10 in 2010). That was the closest season on record on another count, with the margin between first and second being just two points.

Since the league season was reduced to 14 matches in 2008-09, the round robin winner has never lost more than two games. History would suggest that if this is indeed to be the most closely contested ASB Premiership the bottom team will need to win three matches (which only Waikato FC has managed in 2009-10).

Of last season's bottom three, Youngheart Manawatu have been axed in favour of Wanderers SC (the U-20s), while both Otago United (now Southern United) and Waikato FC (now WaiBOP United) have new names, new coaches, new players, and in the case of WaiBOP, a new home ground (Beetham Park).

Wanderers SC are a completely unknown quantity at this level, to the extent that we still don't even know where their home matches will be played.

And with pre-season matches sparse, and with many subjective factors at play, there would appear to be plenty of scope for it to go pear shaped for at least one team. Indeed, whatever the conceptual opposite of the "most closely contested league" might be, it would be worth a lazy tenner at the TAB.

New Zealand Football has an irritating habit of completely ignoring the rich history of the national league in only ever framing achievements in terms of results over the duration of the current summer format. But if closeness is something to desire, we should really celebrate the final winter national league before the summer competition was re-introduced.

In the 2003 national league, Miramar Rangers finished top with 33 points and Tauranga City United were bottom with 14 points - a spread of just 19 points across 10 clubs. And with the title decided on goal difference.

It was the epitome of closeness. The closest a New Zealand national league has ever played out since we shifted to three points for a win in 1983. Closer than a great big close thing.

But for all the drama of 2003, New Zealand Football had no hesitation in axing the winter league in favour of a re-introduced summer format in November 2004.

It just goes to show how incidental a closely contested league can be in retrospect.