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Jesse Fink

You've got to wonder what the Asian Football Confederation makes of it.

Football Federation Australia, the host of the 2015 Asian Cup, stood to lose close to $9 million in the 2010-11 financial year but was saved by an emergency grant of $7.5 million from the federal government.

The fact was not recorded in the FFA's annual financial report and confirms what many have known in the Australian game for some time but been afraid to say publicly: Aussie football simply can't take care of itself without putting out the begging bowl.

The FFA has failed in its duty of care to the sport and, in my view, is being run by a pack of jokers who should be run out of town.

The farcical World Cup bid was wholly funded by taxpayers. The FFA gets more favours from Canberra than just about any other sport in the land. The A-League hasn't fired the public's imagination in the way its creators had hoped, the competition being fatally undermined by the FFA's own ineptitude in the key matter of expansion. The AFC continually marks down Australia in its assessment reports, locking in its number of Asian Champions League entrants at two, while lesser football powers get four. The looming TV rights deal, with so many crucial effects flowing on from it, stands to be a disaster.

It's not the way it's supposed to be.

And yet the comical FFA has responded to Ray Gatt's startling revelation in The Australian by suggesting there are elements working against it and "trying to make mischief".

"FFA has been subjected to more scrutiny than any other sport in relation to government funding and has satisfied all [its reporting] obligations," it said in a statement. "It's time for those who seek to make mischief to accept that there's nothing amiss."

"Those" of course, refers to journalists just doing their job. Like the pair who, in the words of the Football Media Association, the peak body of journalists in Australia, were allegedly victimised because of "unfavourable comments and suggestions to news organisations and to FIFA... in light of their reporting and commentary of football matters".

When the FMA tried to get a meeting with the FFA to voice its concerns and seek an explanation but was given the bum steer, one delegate from the aborted mission reported: "In 25 years I had not ever seen this level of disrespect for the most basic tenets of etiquette and corporate governance principles."

Sorry, the "mischief making" response won't wash, FFA.

There's too much at stake and too many good people working within the Australian game for the future of the sport in the land Down Under to be at the mercy of an organisation that is not only incapable of balancing the books but doing so with complete transparency.

Having entrusted its most important competition to Australia, it's time the AFC demanded not just improvement - but answers.

AFC, over to you.