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The success of the opening instalment of the FFA cup round of 32 has people talking about the possibilities of a true football pyramid in Australia and whether teams could rise all the way from obscurity to play in the A-League.
Football pyramids exist all over Europe.
The basic idea is that if your team finishes bottom of the league they will be relegated to a league in the tier below, replaced by the winner of the lower league.
As you go down the pyramid, smaller geographical areas are covered by each league. With more leagues at each tier comes the pyramid analogy.
Creating a proper football pyramid in Australia would necessitate the existence of an A2-League. The top team(s) would be promoted from the A2-League into the A-League, with a corresponding number of teams relegated from the A-League each season. Known as promotion and relegation, it is a staple of football leagues all over the world.
For a fully automatic two division promotion/relegation system to work in Australia it would require every team in both divisions to be playing under identical conditions. That is, they would all have the same maximum and minimum salary caps, all stadiums and facilities would need to meet the minimum standards and administration of the clubs would need to be of a certain standard.
Fans need to know that if their team finishes top of A2 they will be in the A-League next year and they don’t have to wait for a committee meeting to ratify it. Having the same salary caps means newly promoted teams will already be on the same financial footing as the existing A-League clubs.
This sounds good but would it work? Let’s say next year a 12 team A2-League is introduced. Because of the salary cap, the Australian football fraternity would somehow have to pluck double the amount of money out of the air to maintain the standards of both leagues. Overnight, I can’t see that happening.
It is the same issue for an unrestricted football pyramid that runs all the way to the top tier. Pick any town, let’s say Bellingen on the NSW North Coast. Beautiful spot near the river with the green rolling hills and cake shops and the old pub on the main street there.
Imagine they were promoted all the way to the A-League. There is no way they could compete for funds with the other teams, so this would lead to a cut in the salary cap for all the other clubs. Could you imagine all those out-of-work footballers busking on your street corner? There is a bit of a paradox with movement between tiers and the salary cap.
I would introduce another league above the level of the stated-based National Premier Leagues, called the NPL National. This would be a semi-professional league with the best of the NPL teams as members. There would be a maximum salary cap the same as the A-League but no minimum cap. Teams could be as professional or as amateur as they wished.
The competition would also be moved in season with the A-League to make promotion and relegation smoother. Promotion and relegation would not be automatic. The team(s) finishing in the promotion position(s) of NPL National would be promoted only if they met the minimum criteria for the A-League.
To add the true pyramid flavour, the team finishing bottom of NPL National could be replaced by the state-based NPL champion.
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