Sky Blue: Inside Sydney FC premiered on Paramount+ last week. This four-part documentary series parachutes viewers inside Sydney FC men’s and women’s teams during the most transformational year in the club’s history – the club’s 2021/22 A-League campaigns. Giving viewers real-life sporting drama that delivers triumph and disaster, hope and despair, agony, and ecstasy, this is the perfect watch ahead of the return of the Isuzu UTE A-League and Liberty A-League seasons.
This week The Water Cooler caught up with Executive Producer, Ciaran Flannery to get some insights on the making of this series.
Tell us about Sky Blue: Inside Sydney FC and how it came to fruition?
When we began the broadcast partnership with the APL and A-Leagues a little over a year ago, one of the key strategies for growing Football in Australia was to use our platforms to tell stories about the sport. Not just on the pitch, but off it as well.
If we help our audiences connect with clubs on a deeper level and get to know the players better, it can only benefit the game. We’ve seen this work on a larger scale with shows like Drive To Survive.
Sydney has the largest population in Australia, so the potential for growth is there, but it was the uniqueness of the club’s story at this moment in time that clinched it. Them playing at a small suburban ground with just one stand while their new stadium is built, and both the men’s and women’s teams coming from Grand Final losses gave us golden opportunity to follow a season of redemption… or failure.
What goes into creating a documentary like this? How far ahead did you have to start working on it?
We began filming a week before last season began, so it has been a whole year of filming and several months of planning before that. And in fact the last few shots of episode four are to be filmed this weekend when Sydney FC play for the first time in the new Allianz Stadium!
Planning to shoot a documentary over a whole year when you don’t really know what is going to happen, is a big challenge. We call it longitudinal production, because we have a budgeted number of filming days over a long period of time and we have to work out how best to use those filming days as we go.
We picked out the players and staff that we thought would give us the most interesting stories, but ultimately you have to be agile and reactive to events on the ground. We did not expect the men’s team to have such a bad start to the season, and it meant that we had to have more cameras at more games in that period to ensure we didn’t miss key moments (like the team finally winning a game).
Creating this documentary gave you unparalleled access to the world of Sydney FC. What surprised you the most?
Rather than a surprise, the thing that I found most fascinating was the story of the women’s team.
It was critical for us that the documentary covered both the men’s and women’s team equally. This is the only sports documentary we are aware of to do this.
The women are semi-professional players who earn only $16,000 for a whole season. They all have day jobs and have to train at 6am each day before they go to work. Some of them have children and families to juggle as well. Despite these challenges, the commitment they show is astonishing. And the bond and love between the players and the coach, Ante Juric (who is also a school teacher), is beautiful to watch.
They truly love what they do, and that positive atmosphere clearly pays off on the pitch!
You would have witnessed a lot of intense moments during shooting. Did you learn anything from the players or coaching staff about how to deal with that pressure?
I think the one thing you truly learn about pressure in sport is that everyone deals with it differently.
Ante Juric just exudes positivity. When things get difficult he just reminds the players of how much he loves them and how good they are – and completely removes the pressure of winning from their minds.
Steve Corrica, the coach of the men’s team, faced very different pressures when his side embarked on one of the worst starts to a season in the club’s history. I’ll be honest, it does result in a few more swear words behind closed doors, but I think the way he handles the pressure is very impressive. It would be easy to blame others when your job is at risk, but he faced it head on and always protected the squad from criticism.
If you weren’t a Sydney FC fan before, can we assume you’ve taken up the title of their No. 1 fan now?
I am an obsessive Arsenal fan (top of the league by the way), and unfortunately no club will ever replace them. But Sydney FC are my local club and I will be in the stadium cheering them on this weekend and throughout the season! I’ll certainly be going to cheer on the women when their season starts in November too.
Come on the Sky Blues!
