I saw their new offices in the newspaper the other day and also read about the 3 new employees they have there now and i must admit i was impressed. I doubt it if any other Premier League Club has such offices.

I might go to a game or two this season and see for myself what they have done and see whether its worth supporting them again this season.

But to be fair, i must say well done for their efforts to date, but of course they’ve still got a long way to go….

how can you pay $38,000 to enter a comp their is no adds for the comp and the prize money is $25,000 does that make sense

I know the Victorian state comp seems to be against the ethnic teams and Football NSW has some stupid rules regarding P&R where it should just be first goes up and last goes down.

It seems stupid to interfere in off field matters like they do, imposing criteria and such. State league is never going to some huge money making league they should run it in winter with straight fair and square P&R. If there good enough who cares if a Sudanese only football team wins the comp?

Stay tunned have over 2600 members on facebook whereby sydney fc only has 1458 is the first sign.

1500 +++ season pass holders in state league is the next step.

Stay tunned sydney olympic fc is back baby!!!!

Nuff said.

These were the true holders of the faith when football was maligned and derided. They were the one who put the money and worked in their spare time building clubs and teams when no one was interested. I can understand that when football becomes an attractive item to governments and sponsors they are marginalised with no recognition of all their contribution. And we know from the socceroos that the development of players from this team was top notch. Some commentators have stated that the technical skills developed were higher than the current A-league offerings.

However

We have to take Jeffa point of people speaking Greek. What’s the problem speaking Greek? None whatsoever. (I am a native Italian speaker myself) and just because these people are from Greek/Italian/Croatian/Macedonian etc. origin are they less ‘Australian’ than others? Not at all.

But following a team is not a rational decision. There must be some link to emotionally attach to a team and support it through thick and thin. And of course there is a question of perception. When you want to attract people to something, perception is important. So even if a team has become truly ‘Australian’ perceptions that it really belongs to a particular group (through colours, chants, sponsors and language spoken) can prevent people to come on board. Unfair? Yes. But that’s the reality. That is why the A-League had to create a new clean slate and create teams which provided a perception that they were not attached to any particular group, but the attachment was purely geographical rather than cultural.

So any football supporter that feels some schadenfreude at the ‘problems’ the A-league may be experiencing at the moment is doing the cause of football a disservice. Yes the NSL had fans with passion and knowledge but it was not a mainstream sport. It was seen as irrelevant and marginalised.

Having said that the phobia of the FFA to include the ‘old soccer’ (for better words) is a mistake. If I have one criticism of the FFA is thet I think they may be great administrators but do not have an appreciation of football culture. If we could somehow combine the two (ie. taking the Western Sydney team as an example) I think football would be in a much stronger position.

“Fighting yesterdays battles today”

In the time the FFA have been in charge the Socceroos have gone from a once in four year’s team to Australia’s biggest brand… It is in fact hard to find any level of the game in better shape under the NSL management than FFA management…

It is easy to shout from the barricade anything you want …. BUT there is no comparison between the two sets of management or team structure models… if that comparison is based on revenue, media coverage, mainstream interest, crowd averages.

You state the following…”Fox wouldn’t have paid that large amount of money if the A-league had ethnic clubs.”

So you believe that if the A-League had ONE Ethnic club out, say, of a total of 12, that Fox would NOT support it?

If that is true (and I believe it), its a disgraceful indictment on where this country is at the moment.

I admit it was a bit of a hyperbole to say no one will go near it or to infer that the league had no sponsors

However it was a response to the assertion by OlympicsFTW that the problem with the NSL was not the ethnic clubs but due to lack of money from sponsors. He an NSL fans states that one of the main problems of NSL was that it had “minimal sponsors”.

Obviously the league had some sponsors and some of the sponsors came from major corporation but they never paid large enough money to make the competition viable.

Unless you are suggesting that the NSL didn’t have a problem with attracting large amounts of money from sponsors. Maybe the reason why sponsors didn’t spend large enough money is due to the non-mainstream nature of the perception of ethnic clubs. Fox wouldn’t have paid that large amount of money if the A-league had ethnic clubs.

Despite all the (reasonable) complaint about how channel 7 buried football. The official reasoning behind them not broadcasting the NSL was that one of the conditions when channel 7 bought the rights to the NSL with a larger sum of money then what the SBS had offered was that there would be a reform of the NSL to de-emphasised and rebrand the ethnic clubs. When that failed to happen to channel 7 liking, that’s when Channel 7 decide to shaft the NSL (along with them wanting to please AFL as well)

you said ” The NSL despite the few multicultural clubs had a stigma of being an ethnic league. No sponsors would go near that.”

Coca Cola went near it by sponsoring it.
So too did Ericsson
So too did Phillips
and West End and Qantas………

I think you have no idea what you are saying

My point is a philosophical one. At a pragmatic level, if South could guarantee 20,000, the A League would HAVE to accept them.

But it is NOT going to happen. Greek Australians don’t need the crutch of a Soccer team to retain their Hellenic identity.

however just because it’s prejudice doesn’t mean the prejudice is wrong, unfounded and not based on reasonable thought. To me it’s like being prejudice to clubs that are unsuitable to a professional league.

Any old “ethnic” clubs who want to join the A-league should undergo what Brisbane Roar ( who has links to brisbane lions a dutch ethnic club) or what Southern Cross bid (which I thought was unfairly shafted). eg.completely rebrand itself and advertise itself as a multicultural club and follow strict FFA rules of no non-Australian flags into the stadium.

In a place like Sydney where there is a huge geographic spread and plenty of rectangular stadiums then there is no way you would want a team that draws from an ethnic demographic rather than a geographic base.

In Melbourne where both teams will be playing out of the same stadium then I can see some sort of case for South Melbourne.

It is freedom of association. The A-League will not allow a team to enter that has a unique cultural link. Yet, if this team was able to attract an average of 25,000 to each game, how stupid would the A-League look?

I am not saying that any of these Ethnic backed clubs could. I do not believe any of them could get a crowd (except for South Melbourne perhaps).

My point is that the prejudicial behaviour lies NOT with the old NSL (who accepted clubs like Perth Glory, Northern Spirit) but with the current A-League structure.

Multiculturalism is about bringing different ethnic groups together not separating them

Therefore isn’t it against multiculturalism to allow ethnic exclusive clubs to join the A-league.

yes, who’s being racist now indeed.

Who is being racist now?

You say … who survived for over 50 years … some would say … who held football back fifty years…

I sorta over, the pass … my team Auburn was gone many many moons ago…mine you it’s still their today but a shadow of the side it was back in the late 20s, 30′s, 40s, 50s & early 60′s…

I just hope that as the great John Lennon once sang …. Imagine was the song …

I hope you come and join us
and Football can be as one.

The NSL despite the few multicultural clubs had a stigma of being an ethnic league. No sponsors would go near that.

There was a story about one of the italians clubs looking looking for sponsorship and the company rejected them saying we want greeks to buy our products as well.

No matter how big the crowds the old NSL clubs had, they could never would have found mainstream acceptance unless restructuring takes place to diversify from its ethnic roots.

But lets remember Northern Spirit…an attempt to build a club with no ethnic ties….Where are they now? Waiting for Sydney FC.

It’s just that it’s not suitable for a professional club

Part of the aim of a professional club is to expand the supporter base to people of all background.

Having people predominantly speaking greek will limit that. It will also limit any sponsors who want to get in board and back the club as well.

Let’s just say this, football should be inclusive of all background and if there is one common language in Australia that all people of all backgrounds can communicate each other. It will be English. A vietnamese ethnicity person can’t communicate to a Greek person in greek or in vietnamese but they can with English.

again there’s nothing wrong with having a greek social club but that’s not conducive to a professional sport in a national league.

The A league clubs work on 8 million dollars a year. State League is Olympics level. They have only lost a couple of players to A League clubs and it’s not like Olympic are dominating NSW.
And let’s be honest here the other states suck at football, winning the NSW League makes you the 10th best professional team in the country.

As to the pram comment, my 10 month old has already been to 2 A league matches and a NYL game. By the time he is 15 he will be talking about the Roar the same way you talk about Olympic.

The old NSL welcomed new clubs that were not ethno-specific like Northern Spirit and Perth Glory and Adelaide United, yet the new A-League would NEVER accept an ethno-specific club.

So, which league is being racially exclusive?