Melbourne's new rivalry will revive the A-League

Reality check .... In the Aleague tipping comp I was a miseraable ? out of some 2400 odd participants. Not a problem I thinks to myself, I started late. Joined the NRL tipping comp on day one, eagerly awaiting the results and find that before the first ball is kicked I am 24573 out of 24573. Now I realise what a job the Aleague has in front of it. In the old days, the NRL had the support of the multinational community and embraced it. Lately there has been some ethnic polarization with the likes of Canterbury, but in general it is still multinational based supporter base. The problem in the Aleague's late start is that the fan base is no longer a multinational conglomeration of people, it is population base of multiple nations, like Sydney, Campsi is Korean, then you have all the chinese suburbs, Marrickville is predominantly Vietnamese, Leichadrt has the best Pizza, Auburn and the west is Arabic, I'm sure you know what I am talking bout here, and it is nota racist thing, it is a reality that Gov and political spinners try to shove under the carpet. I personally enjoy this situation as to get really good Vietnamese food you know where to go, like Pizza etc. I went to an NBL game at the entertainment Centre in the Kings Heyday, right in the middle of Chinatown, I counted seven chinese people in the crowd of nine thousand. The Kings have since died, because the media spin doctors believed that Sydney needed to be won over for the sport to succeed. I say B....sh.t, they should have left the game power brokers in Melbourne and worked on the pockets of support to grow the league. The big money advertisers are not interested in trying to help a sport grow, they want the support fully grown and then they will come on board. The problem of the ethnic rivalry will diminish as the new blood comes thru wanting to play for Australia, and I hope that that time comes in my life time.

You goose.

Im hoping Hearts has more goingfor it than ex NSL guys getting their old mates jobs in the HAL. Victory has done well because there is a market for soccer in Australia. The HAL and Socceroos are proof of this. Hopefully the existing clubs will still be in the HAL remaining sustainable to start making earnings and then the quality and money will gradually increase. IMO, it already has.

i agree. victorians and melburnians are nuts for sport. they arent fickle like the NSW crowds.... give them a contest and am sure they'll turn up.

agree with the idea of replicating an arsenal or barca style, but in all honesty you need the players with speed, technique and they arent available in the Aleague - espec with a salary cap... the results driven team on a budget = CCM.... theres realisitc blue print for HAL success. maybe a strong NYL team wld produce the players needed - and as the Ship guy is schooled in Ajax's ways maybe he knows how to make the most of a club reliant on a conveyor belt...?

Melbourne FC... It will work .... trust Obie Wan...

ABCDEFG: i agree i also thought of the name melbourne athletic being used. its not stupid like the melbourne destroyers fc or the melbourne thunderbolts. its a traditional, commonsense footballing name. im all up for the atletico madrid kit or the juventus kit

I think Gold Coast have shown that because of the Cap your not going to have 11 great players. Your going to have 3 maybe 4 if your really smart, a few solid ones and a few making up the numbers. SFC are probably in the best position to play something like this style because there guys that make up the numbers come from their NYL team which was the best in the country last year. After 5 years of HAL I guess the Jets have been the best example of Sexy football.

On 442 there are appear to be plenty of potential fans like you - that never really took to the Victory. However, some of these people appear to have quite unrealistic expectatios of the "style of football" this new club will play - as if overnight a replica of Barca will run out onto the Bubble Dome.

Fair comment Pippinu.

I'm keenly interested in Melbourne Heart. Despite being a Melburnian and avid football watcher I never really felt like a Victory supporter. The Heart have what looks like a pretty good coach with a lot of experience. The board seems like a bunch of well-intentioned blokes who want to grow the sport in all of Victoria. If I were to pick colors it would be predominately white with some grey strips or lines and Melbourne Athletic would be a good name.

ante milicic firming as favourite for the assistant role.

Freud Joe (and others) have made comments today like: " They are not interested in our game and we’re not interested in theirs" - so that's the point, precisely what you just said. Put another way - if we looked through SFC's 8,000 or so members - would half also be members of NRL or the Waratahs (they might be - I don't know).

What is your point? Melbourne is an AFL city, of course there are going to be a lot of AFL members there. Australian's generally follow more than one sport so why shouldn't we expect there to be a lot of AFL members at MV games?

Joe as Das and I say many times over - about 50% of Victory members are AFL members.

I assume Jesse that this article is an example of what is known in the trade as taking a bit of licence. Football is “going down the toilet...in a bit of trouble”! Over the past five years more people have attended, viewed and read football than any other five year period in the history of the domestic game. Twelve months ago there was similar doom and gloom concerning the economy but we’ve all survived and so will Australian football. Certainly there are numerous problems that require attention but the game in this country is making progress, even if it’s two steps forward and one back. And by what criteria does Les Murray determine that Victory has included ethnics while the other clubs have not? Merely because he says so? It’s hardly breaking news to describe Melbourne as unique, every city like every person is so. My experience at Sydney FC matches is that the crowd is representative of the diverse cosmopolitan populace that makes up that city. Why bait AFL fans with “and a challenge to the hegemony of the AFL in Victoria...and, blessedly, an extra annoyance to the AFL”? That was only ever going to do what it has in fact done, provoke obtuse and puerile retorts. They are not interested in our game and we’re not interested in theirs, let’s leave it at that.

Someone's already working on the red and white hoops idea: http://au.fourfourtwo.com/forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=18554 Melbourne Croatia Mk II - here we come!!

Actually I feel pretty good about it. Always happy to see my tax dollars spent on sporting infrastructure rather than another piece of misguided social engineering, middle-class welfare or ill-conceived stimulus money that ends up in the hands of Tabcorp. I'll certainly get along to see the Storm play at the new stadium when I'm back in town.

Will have to see One question is about "where are Heart going to get their fans from?" Melbourne Victory is happily is multi-ethnic without being completely or notoriously "claimed" by one group. I would have thought that Croatian fans in the main would stick with Melbourne Knights, a CLUB built by the community in honour of their heritage, something fo substance they feel a part of. That is opposed to a plastic franchise that has decided to 'target' them because they are a big "Soccer" loving minority. What would have really led to a tasty rivalry would be if they let South Melbourne/Southern Cross in. The practice match was fairly good and passionate, only it unfortunately got overshadowed by that flare thrown onto the field which hit a player. But of course the FFA won't allow for that, because everything old soccer is really bad, and the only thing that is good is plastic with stupid names yet no soul. MVFC have done well, they have managed to engage Football and generalist sports fans, and groups of several minorities. Who can Heart target. Should be interesting to see how they organise the layout of SSS for Derbies. Hopefully they get a proper name too, if they really are targeting grassroots types they will need it. Good in that they seem to be developing a good football philosophy too. Speaking to one prominent journalist, he seemed to suggest that MVFC was going to become the "club of big business" etc while Heart became "grassroots", as in a sense of class warfare basis for the rivalry. I'm not 100% sure though, MVFC have some grassroots types, but Australia is a notably classist country like in Europe, plus the fact that in Collingwood the biggest working class AFL institution which even until relatively recently still played at its suburban ground sometimes has now transformed into the big business Corporate type club kind of says a lot

not to mention the fact that the heart will enter the competition a month or two after the conclusion of the world cup. it may or may not be a coincidence that melbourne's break-out season, '06-07, was on the back of a very successful germany campaign by the roos. i can definitely anticipate a few people getting into 'this soccer caper' or some such next june/july, and deciding to give the a-league a chance. odds are the new recruits will go to the new side if there's nothing specific drawing them to the victory.