Victory tells Heart to get out of town

Melbourne Victory chairman Geoff Lord says the city’s new A-League franchise should be shunted to Melbourne’s outer suburbs – mirroring the competition’s expansion plans for Sydney.

The new Melbourne Heart enter the competition next season, and Lord has already fired a shot across the newcomers’ bow – effectively saying on Thursday: “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us”.

Lord said the new club should be based in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, providing a geographical point of difference rather than risk cannibalising the Victory’s market and support base.

Sydney’s expansion club will be based in the city’s populous western suburbs, hoping to draw on an entirely different market to the existing Sydney FC.

But Football Federation Australia’s decision this week to delay western Sydney’s introduction until the 2011-12 season means Melbourne will spend 12 months as the A-League’s test bed for a two-team city.

Lord said the decision to allow the second Melbourne team to set up shop in the Victory’s backyard was “premature”, and the Heart should base themselves in a growth area like Melbourne’s outer east.

“It should have been located in the outer suburbs, where the game needs to be taken to the people as opposed to the people coming to the game,” Lord said.

“Sydney are doing it by taking the second team to western Sydney … that would be a far more rational approach than the approach that’s being taken to date.

“You should geographically separate the bases. A new side should be based at least 30km out of the city in order to get to the majority of people.

“The A-League is to popularise the game and to do that you need to take the game to the people.

“My view is that it was premature to do it. The game’s not well enough established.”

When the Heart enter the competition, both teams will play home matches out of the new rectangular stadium being built in inner-city Melbourne.

But the Victory will continue to play their biggest attended games at the 55,000-capacity Etihad Stadium.

The Victory have also announced plans for their home match against Sydney FC on October 9 to celebrate football’s multicultural heritage.

Known as “U-Nite”, the match at Etihad Stadium will feature pre-match entertainment.

The Victory hope to turn it into a showpiece similar to AFL’s Dreamtime At The G – the Essendon-Richmond match which celebrates Aboriginal and Islander culture.