To understand the latest existential crisis facing football in Australia, one must start at its genesis, which strangely coincided with the game’s highest point in recent memory. In January 2015, the Socceroos lifted the Asian Cup on home soil. The team became darlings of the nation and their coach, Ange Postecoglou, was elevated to something approaching sainthood. The Matildas were about to embark upon a Fifa Women’s World Cup campaign, at which they would reach the quarter-finals – to this day the best result of any senior national team.

And yet, despite it all, trouble was brewing. Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy had presided over the domestic game’s remarkable transformation, but the governing body’s messy 2010 bid for the 2022 men’s World Cup was still fresh in the mind, and the billionaire businessman’s style of rule pitted him against the A-League clubs who wanted a voice. Lowy was due to stand down in November 2015, as per constitution.

As political tensions bubbled beneath the surface, a golden football opportunity was missed. The Asian Cup triumph should have been the catalyst for a major growth spurt. Instead, the A-League was left to its own devices, and crowds and TV ratings tumbled. It was one of many moments on which FFA should have capitalised, and Postecoglou, in particular, grew frustrated at an apparent lack of vision.

In September 2015, Postecoglou became further irritated by an ongoing pay dispute between FFA and the players’ union. When it threatened to disrupt the Socceroos’ preparations for a World Cup qualifier, Postecoglou publicly urged both sides to end the impasse. FFA’s chief executive at the time, David Gallop, was not impressed, effectively telling the national team coach to butt out. The hero of the hour had been fatally undermined, and it is from this moment one can trace Postecoglou’s ultimate departure from the job six months before the 2018 World Cup.

Then, in November of the same year, FFA appointed Steven Lowy as father Frank’s successor. A-League club owners, haemorrhaging money and lacking influence, were furious. They sought to have a say in how the league was run and demanded one seat on the board. They got nothing.

In August 2018, when Lowy Junior announced his intention to stand down, he warned his critics to “be very careful what you wish for”. While today’s precarious state of affairs may prompt some to see those words as a sage reminder of happier days, it’s worth remembering all organisations must move with the times.

After the successes of Frank Lowy’s early years, his departure was widely viewed as a chance to re-democratise the domestic game’s governance. In handing the baton to Steven and refusing to acknowledge the growing momentum behind evolution, FFA unwittingly took its first steps towards an unwanted revolution. Three years later Steven Lowy was gone, with his defining legacy a protracted, bitter governance war that required Fifa intervention.

Back in 2015, relations had reached a tipping point in late November, some five days after Steven Lowy’s appointment, when Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph ran an inflammatory front-page expose on football’s hooligan fringe. For sure, there were some bad apples in the A-League fan cart. But the “shame file” – as the story was dubbed – infuriated a supporter base already feeling marginalised and stereotyped as thugs and criminals. News Corp columnist Susie O’Brien labelled banned football fans “suburban terrorists”. Alan Jones linked violence among A-League fans to that month’s Paris terrorism attacks.

Gallop was expected to mount a resolute response; instead, he committed the biggest faux pas of his tenure by failing to defend his own constituents. Fans voted with their feet, and many haven’t returned.

As it all went down, football’s biggest and longest commercial partner was getting nervous. Fox Sports has invested millions in the domestic game over many years and grown the domestic league to a level previously unimaginable. The pay-TV network was rightly alarmed at the drop-off in interest, crowds and ratings. Its reaction, however, fell more in line with the familiar mainstream group-think than one with an intrinsic understanding of the world game.

As fans struggled to make themselves heard, Fox tightened the screw on discussing important issues which needed airing. While non-football journalists were given free rein to have a crack at “soccer”, those actually paid to cover the sport were neutered.

Off-field issues are invariably dull journalistic fare. But as with all sports, if the politics remain unresolved, the on-field game suffers. Yet few were able to hold the game’s powerbrokers to account. The online Fox Football platforms – so carefully cultivated and hugely successful in their early days – were comprehensively remodelled, with Premier League stories taking precedence over local football conversations.

That shift did the local game no favours, especially as the A-League club owners also failed to deliver on the big promises they made following the congress war. As problems grew, the numbers of key News Corp football journalists in all the major states shrank. The current tally of public football voices in the mainstream media is worryingly low.

With Foxtel’s bottom line having suffered in the wake of massive media-industry upheaval and the company having purportedly overspent on acquiring rights to many sports, Fox’s commitment to football was always due for a review. Covid-19 merely sped up the process.

Given its straitened circumstances, popular opinion says the A-League has done well to retain Fox as its broadcast partner, albeit at about half of the original rights fee. It is a perfectly legitimate view, particularly as at one point the broadcaster appeared prepared to walk away. But observed from another angle, Fox has played a canny game. By reducing its investment but also preventing a professional sport from dying, it has crucially retained a level of control in a changing marketplace, where its once-unquestioned pre-eminence as Australia’s sports broadcaster is now less certain. It has bought itself time to resolve problems around the Kayo platform, and kept football away from the clutches of the real potential domestic disruptors such as Netflix or Amazon. For now, at least.

With football positioning itself to take advantage of its global reach via new-media platforms, the shorter-term deal with Fox could yet play into the game’s hands – but only if new FFA chief executive James Johnson can build upon his early gains.

The former Brisbane Strikers player instinctively seems to understand both the sport’s desires and its inherent problems. Having resolved the professional game’s short-term future and secured the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup (which should bring the chronically under-funded sport much-needed government investment), his biggest task now is to unite the game behind a plan to move forward.

He went some way to addressing this with the release of his recent “XI principles” paper. It hit all the right notes, including the desire for a national second division, which is vital to closing the chasm between the professional and non-professional ranks. The troublesome governance model will also receive attention, with the game crying out for a unified voice instead of the current haphazard system.

But, as with its predecessor, the 20-year Whole of Football Plan (ironically released in – yes, you guessed it – 2015), two yawning gaps remain: timelines and funding. Without them, these principles are just another wish list, of which football has had too many down the years.

Intriguingly, Johnson is also eager to switch the A-League from summer to winter, a move which has raised eyebrows. Taking on the bigger codes in their own season is broadly seen as a big risk. Yet Johnson rightly points out football is traditionally a winter sport, that the tiers need aligning and the oft-quoted ‘clear air’ the game used to occupy in summer has long gone.

His determination to drive the governing body – and the game – forward as a football-first organisation, is laudable. However, the sport must also be wary of the “messiah complex” that has dogged it for so long. One man cannot do it alone.

If Johnson is to help discover football’s true identity and solve the absurdly complex riddle of how to connect the professional game with the largest grassroots participation base in the country, then those ‘XI principles’ must be executed. Faith must be restored in a governing body which further damaged its reputation through its handling of Alen Stajcic’s sacking as Matildas coach, and has again come under fire for the recent travel debacle involving the A-League’s three Melbourne teams.

Active fans must be encouraged to return and more appropriately sized stadiums utilised to provide the best possible atmosphere. Global best practice for football must be introduced, with more focus placed on footballers. In short, more Luke Brattan, less Luke Skywalker (some will still remember that cringeworthy Star Wars-themed round of 2017).

After many false dawns, the game must finally realise its vast potential by believing in itself, and constructing a future based on its own terms. For if it continues down the same road of mainstream appeasement, it will be forever doomed to exist on the margins.

• Simon Hill was chief football commentator at Fox Sports from 2006 until 2020.