Promotion, relegation system is a pipe-dream

Model for A League 16 teams in 2 8 team divisions. The 6 new teams would be Canberra, Gold Coast, Auckland, Somewhere else in QLD, Victoria and the NPL champions Top 4 finals in A League with 2 leg KO Bottom team relegated Top 4 finals in B League Winner promoted 2nd team plays off against 7th place A League team

AGREE 100%. A P&R system at this stage is pie-in-the-sky stuff. If it was such as great thing as is promoted by some people then the crafty souls at AFL HQ would have done it already. What the AFL knows is the health of teams is based on a strong and large paying supporter base. You start tampering with supporters they'll leave you in droves and your income base shrinks. What we need is a strong and financially viable top league first. Half baked dreams come second.

Here's what I think should happen: ===A-LEAGUE FORMAT=== The A-League needs to extend to 12 teams next season - if not Sydney Rovers then it should be Canberra United who already have a team in the W-League, a stadium to play in and a team of corporates, politicians and sponsors who are itching to get into the national competion. The 12 teams should then remain for at least the next 2 years in a 12-team A-League format. The teams play eachother 3 times so there will be a total of 33 games. Each team should play 3 midweek matches (2 home, 1 away or vice versa) and the next season this should be reversed so over the next two years each team plays 6 midweek matches, 3 at home, 3 away. The home&away matches should also be reversed the second season. ===A-LEAGUE EXPANSION=== In the background of all this during the next two years the remaining four licences (to make a competition with 16 teams) should be preparing to getting on board the a-league. I think a 14-team comp is silly and it won't work so give it a couple of years and bring in 4 more teams. My personal opinion is that these teams should come from Geelong, Tasmania, Canberra/West Sydney (depending on who comes in next season) and a second New Zealand team (if not Auckland - NZ's biggest city then South Island/Christchurch - NZ's biggest south island city). The A-League might be able to lure in existing teams possibly from the New Zealand Football Championship such as Auckland City FC or Canterbury United (ChristChurch). That way with NZ's recent involvement in the FIFA World Cup they should be able to sustain a second team in the A-League and create some kiwi (cross-city or cross-island) rivalry...it also means that Wellington Phoenix don't have to travel out of New Zealand for EVERY single away match! ===FFA CUP=== You get the top 16 teams from the State Leagues as per their respective ladders, i.e. top 3 from NSWPL, 3 from VPL, 2 from Adelaide, 2 from Perth, 2 from QLD, 2 from Tasmania, 1st from ACT and 1st from Darwin = 16 teams, together with the 16 A-League teams will play in an FA CUP 'KnockOut' tournament. The winner of the 'FFA CUP' will also get a spot in the ACL or at least an opportunity qualify - this will give State League teams a chance to play in Asia and for something greater than just finishing on top of their league's ladder for a plastic trophy at the end of all of it. ===TELEVISION RIGHTS=== The FFA need to make some incredibly smart decision in the coming seasons. First and foremost I think should be get some football on free-to-air television, if not One HD, SBS 1/2 or even ABC (who are already showing one W-League match per week) but I think half of next year's games (3 per week) should be played on Free-to-air television, this is imperative to increasing A-League's mindshare in your average garden variety AFL/NRL fan and reaching out to everyone who doesn't have Pay-TV, yet Fox Sports subscribers also still get some A-League value out of their subscriptions! ===Conclusion=== Unfortunately there are a some MAJOR challenges with football in Australia. 1. We're a huge country and travelling time/costs are much greater for our clubs than teams in a country in Europe, i.e. England, Spain, Italy, Netherlands. 2. Our population is tiny for such a big country so we'll have less supporters than European countries' teams which makes financial survival a lot more challenging with less members/fans through the gates. 3. Association Football is NOT the number football code in Australia, we'd be lucky to be third after AFL, NRL...throw in Super Rugby (former Super 14) and we have a HUGE up-hill battle on our hands. Apart from Australia's geographical borders and population size, we can overcome the third major challenge. We just need to persevere, support our clubs and by the FFA making some smart decisions and this is the time to get this right! Hopefully in December we are granted hosting rights to the 2022 FIFA World Cup which will definitely boost the A-League's and Association Football's mindshare in Australia. Thanks for reading - apologies for the long reply!

What is better for Australian football would be more clubs. Clubs like Geelong, Canberra, Tasmania and wollongong and for South Melbourne to have the chance to draw 13k again. Imagine Gold Coast relegated and South Melbourne promoted? I agree with you that a scenario where the most supported club goes down and a smaller club goes up is going to result in a temporary net loss in attendance but that would be temporary and overall I think an A2 would result in higher attendances over time.

How is it only logical if you live in NSW? - The seasons are align - 6 of the current teams CAAS acrreditation - Access to expansion areas like the South Coast, ACT How many other states have this apart from - Victoria with Geelong and 3 or 4 teams that could get CAAS acrreditation that is not enough to properly sustain a P&R system to the a-league -Queensland is out of the question because extremely hot to align the Season with

I never understood the need for a Cup. It seems antiquated even in countries like England.

Seriously folks, promotion and relegation for the sake of it is a death wish for aus football at the moment, especially when there is a salary cap in place that restricts the ability of clubs to reinvest in success. I mean Adelaide, the top team in the comp right now, would have been relegated last year!! However that is not to say that A2 is a bad concept! What an A2 league should be is a league for smaller regional teams and potential new big city franchises operating on much smaller budgets which serves the purpose of spreading the game and building grass roots support in new markets. If teams showed that they were worthy of A League status by meeting a range of criteria over 2 or 3 seasons (i.e. table position, crowd growth, finanicial performance) they could be incorporated into an expanded A League (similar i think to the model used at the start of J League and also for the seatle sounders / portland timbers in the MLS). Conversely if a team was hopeless for a number of seasons in the A League then they could be shifted back to A2. My idea is that the carrot for A2 could be that the season champion (and perhaps an extra playoff winner) could be included in the A League playoffs as a wildcard team(s) which would create extra interest and add an extra dimension at the lower end of the A League Playoffs. The teams would also obviously also be included as part of the FFA cup so they would get a few chances to have a shot at the big boys. If the game in Aus ever gets to the point where it can outgrow the salary cap then by all means bring in promotion / relegation. Around the world the promotion/relegation system relies on a purely capitalistic system to work, it cant work in the current socialistic one we are using to develop the A League today.

it's only logical if you live in NSW

2nd Div: The FFA outsourcing a 2nd div to FNSW is quite logical and possible and would promote competitive federalism P&R: could work in a way, if we gave outliners Perth,NthQld, Adelaide and Wellington immunity from relegation

I think the headline is a little harsh. Promotion relegation may happen...in 20.30.40 years. But everyone throwing around thories on how this will happen need to realise they are just that right now, theories. Therre's not much I can say that hasn't already been said but to summarise... a) A-League must be a viable 12-16 team comp first. b) by viable I mean not waiting for TV money to save it...clubs should ideally be 0-5% reliant on TV money but no more than 25% should be the aim. The rest would come from usual sources, members, better stadium share etc And that the concern with all the theories I am seeing "...the TV money will cover it..." Any second tier MUST be able to survive with minimal TV cash injection. Just in case

Supporters in red and blue trying to kill eachother? sounds like an Adelaide v Victory game if some of the fixtures over the years are anything to go by! Agree with relegation/promotion being silly, imagine how many times everyone would change teams? for eg Victory gets relegated, they get crowds of 500 in the vpl, all the greeks living in melbourne jump back on south melbourne....a couple yrs later victory come up and south go down...everyone goes back to victory...LOL what a farce that would be! Keep the A league as it is, introduce the cup and look at a viable nationwide 2nd tier, also good as a backup if any current hal clubs go bust perhaps one of the strong 2nd tier clubs can go up, thats the only way promotion should be done. has nothing to do with ethnicty for me, the whole ethnic tension thing is one of the most ridiculous overblown arguments ever heard, the A league isnt suddently gonna become violent with one of these teams in the hal.

I assume that support doesn't spring out of thin air. And that a big club would not enjoy attending local league matches as punishment and losing millions in the process. Otherwise South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights would still be drawing 13,000 and 6,000 per match respectively It's not good for our game. What is better for Australian football, more clubs like Gold Coast or more clubs like Melbourne Victory and Adelaide?

At this point in time it is not viable. In the future it may be if certain conditions are met, however at this juncture it appears that the time it will take for these conditions to be met is beyond the longer term time frame of the strategic planning for the game's administrators. Hence it is largely crystal ball gazing. The FFA Cup is not, however, outside of that strategic planning time frame and hence is more practical item for discussion.

The recent talk is about an FA Cup style competition, not a second division.

The NYL and the W-League also exist because they do or had a level of government funding. This is because there is government support for different youth and women's sport that are not necessarily commercially viable. With regards to a second division my fear is that the FFA will impose one in the next few years without it being a viable standalone self funding prospect. As I have posted in other threads it needs to be an organic league that comes out of a re-structure of the existing state leagues. It should only come into existence once certain targets for each state league have been met. These might include total club revenue, membership numbers, crowd attendance, stadium quality, a mix of capital city and regional clubs etc. Lets take NSW as an example. Firstly NSW, Northern NSW and the ACT should all be merged into 1 association. Currently the NSW PL has 11 metro teams and 1 regional(South Coast Wolves-the current incarnation of 2 time NSL champions the Wollongong Wolves). The 2nd division, NSW super league, is also 11 metro and 1 regional(Central Coast). The NSW state leagues, division 1 and 2, are also 90% metro teams. As you can see this is very Sydney centric. There are 15 towns/cities across NSW/ACT with populations greater then 30,000. Ranging from Lismore up to Wollongong, Central Coast, Newcastle, Canberra and Sydney. The top 2-3 divisions should have at least 25% of teams from a regional area. Or to make travel easier there could be beneath the Premier League Southern Conference and a Northern Conference. Until the state leagues are made more inclusive there shouldn't be any move towards a 2nd division.

Guys, It seems most of you are forgetting why there was a football overhaul and why the NSL became defunct! It's because most of the clubs were supported by an ethnic group and still are in the state leagues! Sure, not all of them, but think to yourself, South Melbourne - Greeks, Melbourne Nights - Croatians, Marconi - Italians, Sydney Olympic - Greeks, Preston - Macedonians, etc...I'm sorry but for someone like me who was born in Greece and went for South Melbourne Hellas/Lakers/FC I've seen what happens at those games; the two ethnic groups usually get into fights! I was at the South Melbourne Vs Preston match watching from the grand stand where it took 8 policemen on horses to stop the sea of red supporters on one side and sea of blue supporters on the other side from killing eachother! The A-League was the best thing that could've happened to Australian football because it's kept ethnic emotions and history out of Australia's football, which I believe is what was killing it in the first place! We can't go through that again. If the ethnic-backed teams get promoted to the top tier football, the A-League will most probably have the same fate as the NSL. Apart from that, those smaller, poorer teams simply cannot afford to travel from one side of Australia to another - this is not Netherlands where you can take a bus/coach from one city to another, Australia is the size of the whole of Europe and sending a Cairns team to play in Perth can get quite expensive. I strongly endorse an FA CUP style competition to run side-by-side with the A-League season where the top teams from the state leagues go up against A-League sides. This will give all teams more to play for, more exposure, more money and the opportunity to develop more talent, but Australia simply cannot support a relegation/promotion type second-league!

Why would that be a disaster? Do you assume no extra supporters for the promoted team and the relegated team losing most of it's supporters? TV money is going to pay for it not attendance money. And if a team that is playing so bad that it gets relegated is still managing average 20k per game then they are likely to get good attendances in the A2

If i were to tell you a little refugee from war torn Europe would become Australias Richest man and own the worlds largest shopping chain would you believe me? If i were to tell you that Australian Football would reinvent itself, have a league that is professional, sign a tv deal worth 120M only to be told years later that it wasnt enough, qualify for consecutive World Cups, Join the powerful and Riches of Asian Football, Have a domestic football league which is a mere stepping stone to something bigger, where Australias Club Football teams would journey to places never before seen to play teams they have never played before in search of the ACL title, Kings of Asia, and if successful go on to play another competition to be crowned Kings of the World. What if I were to tell you that Australia would qualify at all levels for every single World Cup, youth, Mens and Women. What if i were to tell you that the Australian Womens National Football team would be crowned Champions of Asia. What if i were to tell that it is Australian Football that would raise the bench mark across Asia? I could add a lot more, but you get where this is going. This has all happened within the space of 5 short years. People tend to forget where Football was, and their vision is cloudy to where it is going or they just try to slow its pace down getting where it deserves to be. Now if i were to tell you that Australia will host the World Cup, Australia will win the World Cup, Australia will be ranked in the top 10 teams amongst the 208 Fifa Countries of the World, The Matildas will be crowned Fifa Champions of the World, An Australian/indiginous player will one day be crowned Fifa player of the year, Australia will have an FFA knockout style Cup competition and a National second division......would you believe me? probably not, and thats ok. Because there are plenty of us that do, and when that day happens, we will celebrate and sing with you, and inside we'll pleasantly hear the words...I told you so

Focus must be on consolidation of A-League. Discussions about the viability of an A2 league should only take place once this has been achieved. Must learn to crawl before we can walk.

Imagine a team that gets 20,000 average at their home games gets relegated and a team that gets 1000 at their home games gets promoted, what a disaster that would be. The depth in Australian soccer is nothing like it is in Europe, we can't support a promotion/relegation system. We are Australia, not Europe.