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Joined February 2012
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If saying he doesn’t like the sport, accusing its administrators of corruption, alienating most of the potential supporters in his club’s catchment area and generally acting like a giant douche isn’t enough to warrant being thrown out of the league I’m genuinely interested to hear from soccer supporters what they would consider to be sufficient grounds.
Seriously, what would it take? Openly putting a contract on Ben Buckley’s head, or perhaps running an ad campaign saying “Don’t come and watch my team, you’ll have a better time at the Suns or Titans?”
It's not time to Palmer off Gold Coast. Yet!
It may that it is in the long term interests of soccer to be on FTA, but what possible reason does anyone have to believe that doing so would lead to improvements in the cash flow positions of clubs right now?
It strikes me that right now soccer in this county has a preponderance of people who are good at finding fault with things, but precious few with any practical solutions. Tony’s suggestions to renegotiate the deal might sound nice, but how on earth is that going to generate significant extra cash when the whole thing Fox is paying for is exclusivity?
Palmer's frustration is with the FFA's financing of football
“When it comes to Queenslanders you think of toughness, courage, spirit and a never-say-die attitude”
No, when it comes to Queenslanders you think of people who never stop going on about toughness, courage, spirit and a never-say-die attitude when they win anything, but fall strangely silent about the apparent absence of such characteristics when they lose. Important difference.
Why you should never write off a Queenslander
I’m not bitter, just worried about how the gang cope with preparations for next week’s sectionals. And after that it’s nationals! Let’s hope Mr Schu and Emma make up in time to help Melbourne Heart with their song list, although I here there’s going to be tough competition from the kids at Vocal Adrenaline!
Football fans are a national living treasure
And in next week’s episode of Glee, Fin tells Rachel he loves her but Rachel says she still has feelings for the guy with the weird hair.
Seriously, is there anything that happens on a soccer pitch worth celebrating, or the entertainment value based purely on the fact that some of the fans are quite good at chants?
Football fans are a national living treasure
“Overwhelmingly, in any expansion poll of reputable sample size carried out over the past three years, the Central Coast Bears have won, usually with daylight second.”
Out of interest, do you have any links to such reputable poll data? I’m not trying to be inflammatory, I’m just interested to see if there is any actual poll data as opposed to the the unscientific nonsense in the form of web-polls that appear on news websites.
Listen to the fans and allow Central Coast Bears in
Expansion into areas such as country NSW shouldn’t be an all or nothing affair. How about a Sydney club signs a deal with a couple of major regional centres to pay 1 or 2 games there per year? Like Hawthorn have with Launceston. Do it right and you can grow your fanbase without alienating your core market.
What about the bush for NRL expansion?
I have a bit of a soft spot for the Bears, having spent a couple of very pleasant sun-drenched days sitting on the grass at North Sydney Oval watching them lose heavily whilst living in Sydney in the early 90s. The great thing about those trips to watch the Bears, apart from the lovely sunny weather and generally heroic loserdom of the team was that there was plenty of space, no queues at the food stalls or toilets and space to stretch out. Even public transport was pretty manageable.
The reason there was plenty of space was because there weren’t many fans. Even when they starting winning (92 or 93 if memory serves correctly) crowds were still at the modest end of the spectrum. I mention this not to condemn the good League fans of North Sydney, but to point out that golden-tinged memories of a wonderful old sporting club don’t change the fact that not many people actually supported the team back then, and not many will support it if it re-enters the competition.
I’m no fan of ditching traditional teams for the sake of it but there has to be some commercial rationale to expansion, and bringing back a team that never had many fans in the first place hardly seems a positive move.
Are the Bears finally to come out of hibernation?
The US has a population of 320 million and the NFL has 32 teams, or one team for every 10 million. Can you see the inherent problem in using that as a benchmark in Australia with our population of 22 million?
A simple vision for a nationwide NRL
Firstly let’s address this issue of Tasmania. The AFL may indeed have ‘shunned and overlooked’ Tassie for ages but they’ve done that for a pretty simple reason: Even in a state of rusted on fans, the numbers don’t add up. Whilst running costs for an NRL club are less than an AFL club, the idea that they could make a Tasmanian team work when the dominant sport in the state can’t is, to put it simply, impractical. Give it up.
Now onto the really zany idea: Sydney, the heartland of League in this country, birthplace to sporting icons such as the Rabbitohs, Roosters, Sea Eagles and Dragons get a grand total of three teams. THREE TEAMS! How can this be a serious proposal? Adelaide get more NRL teams per head of population than Sydney??? I’m sorry, but this needs to be filed in the bad ideas draw, inside a folder labeled “bad ideas, do not open” and locked in a safe with the letters “really bad ideas” painted on it in big red letters. And then burnt.
A simple vision for a nationwide NRL
The derby is no doubt a significant game of soccer and a big deal for fans of the two teams. To suggest however that it’s the biggest event in town is simply false. Media attention and public interest has been squarely on the cricket, with over 60k at the T20 international last night.
By all means watch and enjoy the derby, it certainly does attract more interest than most soccer games and has established a strong niche in the city’s sporting calendar. But baseless claims don’t help your cause. From a purely subjective basis, there has been far more discussion about the superbowl at my work place than the soccer, particularly amongst younger people, but I won’t claim that this proves NFL is bigger than soccer in Melbourne.
A-League's Melbourne Derby is the hottest ticket in town
I’m not so sure Nathan. I can imagine Palmer claiming that the statement that “I have paid Zoltan the hitman from Kiev $500,000 to execute Ben Buckley” was taken out of context, and that he was really referring to the way in which Eastern European referees have traditionally been harsh to the socceroos.
I can then imagine lots of soccer fans coming out and saying that Palmer does make some valid points, that Zoltan is after all a very good hitman with a track record of doing some good work for the Russian mafia, and that we shouldn’t rush to judgment. Maybe give it a while and see what happens when the survivors from the car bomb at FFA HQ recover enough to put together next season’s marketing plan.
Message to the moderators and Clive Palmer: The above is intended to be satire. I am not advocating the assassination of sporting officials, nor inferring that Clive Palmer has any connections with either the Russian mafia or hitmen from Kiev. Or indeed hitmen from any other part of Eastern Europe. Thank you.
It's not time to Palmer off Gold Coast. Yet!