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The Central Coast Mariners defeated Adelaide United 2-1 Sunday afternoon in a bottom of the table clash in the A-League.
Goals to Fabio Ferrera and Kwabena Appiah were enough to edge the Mariners past United, it’s the first time this season the Mariners have been able to secure back-to-back home wins, albeit this victory came from a moved home fixture to Canberra.
It also means that the Mariners are able to keep their slim finals chances alive heading into next weekend’s match against the Western Sydney Wanderers.
Surprising as that may be to many, considering the poor first half of the season the Mariners have had, it shows that the A-League has now reached a point where a ten-team competition just isn’t enough.
For the Mariners to be in a position to make the top six and the finals after 18 games, with four wins, four draws and ten losses shows a serve lack of competition.
If they beat the Wanderers, Paul Okon’s men could head into Week 20 of the A-League three points adrift of the sixth spot with seven weeks remaining in the season. That shouldn’t be possible.
The fixtures also produced another Melbourne Derby, only six weeks after Victory and City had played each other.
The buildup was lacklustre, the excitement down as the day approached with yet another derby scheduled so soon. On February 18, Sydney FC will play the Wanderers in another instalment of the Sydney Derby, a mere five weeks since they played out a 0-0 draw at Allianz Stadium.
Sometimes too much of a good thing can eventually be detrimental to the product.
Is the A-League in its current form getting stale? I say yes.
For the past few years the Promotion and Relegation calls have been building steam, alongside that has been the call for further expansion of the current top tier A-League.
With Football Federation Australia opening talks between potential bidders for new A-League licences, it couldn’t come at a better time. More teams equal more games, more games mean the derbies and big clashes are more spread out across the season and not scheduled every time the first day of the month arrives.
A second division is still years away, and while I believe it is something that is needed, expanding Australia’s top league should be priority first.
An expanded A-League of 14 teams will generate renewed excitement and give football a fresh shot in the arm, not to mention the extra revenue more teams will provide.
A 14-team league would see each club play each other twice during the season, one home and one away, which means we no longer get saturated with replayed fixtures only weeks apart. The season would go for 26 weeks in a round-robin system, only one match day short of the current 27 the A-League plays, plus finals and the FFA Cup.
It would also create more pathways for professional footballers in this country, something that is clearly lacking as limited opportunities are given in the current ten team A-League setup.
With bids from Melbourne, Tasmania, Wollongong, Geelong and Brisbane already being made public, with potentially a Sydney bid among others, there are plenty of suitors for the FFA to create a 14-team A-League.
Official criteria for the expansion bids are set to be released in March, which will outline what each consortium will need for acceptance into the competition.
Hopefully among that criterion is the plan to add another four teams, even if it means a two and two system broken up over the next four years.
It would give the A-League a fresh look, new sets of fans and new rivalries. It is something the league is crying out for it.
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