FFA dump North Queensland Fury

Punter I'm not sure what that's got to do anything, but I accept that Australian Football is a purely domestic game.

When AFL starts supporting 10 national sporting teams then come & ask where the money has gone, until that happens, please concentrate your energy on building an int'l sport, so non AFL supporters can follow AFL's national sides.

I understand the Federal Government is currently investigating what happened to $11 million of it.

The $45 million for the World Cup bid was Federal Government funding. If the FFA hadn't gone for the WC that money wouldn't have gone to other areas of football.

Yeah good question! Questions definitely need to be asked of the FFA when it comes to their expansion policies. I honestly think they have learnt their lesson on this one. Harsh reality tells me that this experience will help the FFA get the model right for West Sydney and make sure they don't do anything half hearted! I think they realized after Matheson left that the club wasn't viable. Having said that, they averaged 6,700 for home games last season, which for a new team in a small town isn't actually too bad!

I for one am glad that it is over at last. It's been the football equivalent of waterboarding for the Fury. Tough for all the people up there involved, but a team that is fighting for survival and still only pulls 4000 despite public appeals for support simply isn't viable. West Sydney is the key move, with hopefully Canberra or the Gong to even up the numbers. Life goes on - it did for AFL and NRL when they had to cut clubs. Buckley must have the longest leash in world sport. I simply don't know how he is still in the job. On every measure the A-League has spiralled downwards on his watch.

jtg The Cowboys crowds back when they first started were fantastic how did the Cowboys with high crowds almost went out of business under the Rabieh's leadership?. It's fascinating to think the NQ Cowboys would of being gone despite the strong support it had despite being terrible on the field. As I said in a previous post it's a crying shame that the Fury went but I feel they be back sooner than later all hope is not gone. The FFA will feel the repercussion soon enough expect less support for the A-League for now while former Fury fans would support another league (EPL,etc) or support the Razerbacks NQ's local football team. An A-League team will be back in North Queensland sooner than later. I hope.

FFA appointed Rabieh as CEO. With all due respect to Rabieh his track record in Townsville with the Cowboys was not good. Cowboys would have folded when he was CEO until Newslimited rescued them. He burnt alot of local businesses and I know for a fact that alot of local businesses would not back the Fury with him in charge.

This isn't quite true though, each of the states maintain many levels of competition, I don't think it's too unreasonable to up the ante a bit to feed the state leagues into an A2-League. Its not especially fancy, but as you point out, with four codes in this country commanding a lot of money, there is a serious demographic and financial budget that association football in this country is on. A sort of Kia Rio model to the FA's Rolls Royce model. We do need another alternative to pissing clubs like North Queensland (and their supporters and their sponsors) up against a wall. The consolidation to ten clubs may have been good for the A-League as a whole, but it came with a lot of costs that I can't believe were necessary.

North Queensland Fury remains the only club in the history of the A-League to have all staff contracts voided, be forced to operate at a percentage of the full salary cap and be prevented from attempting to re-sign current players and make offers to sign new players. At the same time that all this was occurring Adelaide United were being run by the FFA and were running at the full salary cap and were able to sign or re-sign any players that they wanted to.[why?]

JB Agree with most of your comments. But to be honest, I think both Melbourne clubs are doing fine in comparison to the rest. Victory will probably get 15,000 members next season, and Heart will probably finish up with 8000-10000. They will have the 2 highest membership bases in the league next year. The expansion may have diluted some of the fan base to start with, but I think in the long run, these 2 clubs have the potential to be massive clubs in Australia in the not too distant future. You have seen the crowds and the matches that the derbies have produced this season, and they will only get bigger and better. These 2 clubs will forever keep pushing each other for market share. This can only be a good thing. Another reason why I think the West Sydney side should be coming in ASAP! Sydney FC have had issues this season, but I reckon another club in Sydney would challenge them and ultimately improve them.

Jtg I agreed that NQ wasn't the wrong place to expand. And I can understand the sentiments towards the FFA by the people up there. I don't think the FFA did everything they could from day one, once Matheson pulled the pin, things have gone downhill from there. The FFA's inability to back the club 100% from day one, always meant that business leaders, and the average Joe, were going to be skeptical about spending their hard earnt on the club. Definetely a lesson to be learnt here about expansion. I hope next time they do things the right way. But some of the blame must also go to the club, Rabieh has done a good job up there, but once Matheson left, they have had 18 months to sort themselves out regarding sponsorship, further revenue. A club should always be on the lookout for potential investors, sponsors and the like, not just at the end when their head is on the chopping block. They have had time to put things in place. Didn't happen, they couldn't run like this forever! Next to be fixed... GC! Engage the community and fix your ticket prices or ship out!

North Qld was the right place for the A-league to expand to. Townsville has a population of 180,000 but still managed crowds comparable to Sydney FC. We were in hot, humid conditions & games that were pouring rain. The issue with the last season was the FFA said there was no future for the Fury with no players being allowed to be signed for further seasons. This was done at the start of the season. This didn't do much for local business confidence supporting the fury if the FFA had no confidence in it. The community based model was only released 3 weeks ago when we had cyclone yasi. We are still cleaning up our streets. In this short time $900,000 worth of binding contracts were signed shared over the next 3 seasons. There were also sponsors which had brought the total for next season alone to $1.6million. The fury only needed 1 more season to take off in this local community. We now have to travel 1500km to brisbane to watch an a-league game, which is no longer a national competition. Many members of the youth sides are absolutely devastated and are already getting out of socccer!!! For them to play representative soccer their families once againn have to relocate to Brisbane!!!

I think it was more a case of waiting to see if any other team folded in the mean time. NQ Fury was a reserve team for the A-League. It looks like losses would've been closer to $500k or break-even rather than the $2million loss expected by FFA. The Fury community based model has only run for 3 weeks and had signed $900k worth of contracts over the next 3 seasons. Such a shame it could not have a proper season to let the community model work.

The FFA has lost the opportunity of attracting some great athletes from the north. Have a look across all sports, AFL excluded, and you'll see a high proportion of northerners among them, not forgetting the largely untapped indigenous population. As for Townsville not able to support national teams. Last time I looked, the Crocs were topping national home game crowd numbers. The Cowboys crowds have faded with their rather dismal perfoprmance in recent years, but the locals are strong supporters when they play well. As for the other HAL teams doing well - Clive Palmer is likely to pull the plug at end of next season, he nearly did this year. The Roar also are in financial strife. Adelaide was bailed out by FFA just two years ago (or was it one?), weren't Newcastle and CCM also helped in recent years? The issue here is that the FFA has done SFA to help promote either the HAL or the clubs. You still see or hear nothing of this game, nothing meaningful anyway, unless you watch Fox Sports. In anycase, henceforth it will be the HaL.

This team was nothing more than a pin in the map, it gave the A-League a nice symmetrical presence across Australia's geography, it was an attempt by the FFA to prove to everyone how evenly spread support for their game was across the continent. The failure of this strategic outpost represents an inconvenient truth for the FFA, it's support is geographically inconsistent - just like every other football code in Australia.

Right decision and had to be made, but the decision to expand in the first place should never have been made. The FFA are a disgrace and the most incompetant sporting body, and the people in charge need to go, Ben Buckley and Lyall Gorman are not fit to run the game. The league should have been left alone to grow. Allowed to grow exposure of the game, grow in attendances, allowed to grow rivalries. Then maybe expansion could have been thought about, starting with Canberra. But the FFA completely stuffed this up. They rushed in to it, the gave North Queensland a team that was never viable. Gold Coast should be gone too, but they have Clive Palmer to pour money in. And i'm still not convinced on Melbourne Heart. It wasn't expansion it was simply conversion. Many Victory just jumped to Heart so their numbers were diluted, and Hearts crowds haven't been good except for the derbies which happens 3 times a year.

Republican, GWS and GC wont be going anywhere, the AFL have the money to ensure that these clubs will continue on into the future until they will be able to sustain themselves

Nathan: promotion/relegation will not happen in Aus Soccer at any stage, we do not and will not have the population to sustain this level of support. The key at the moment and into the future is to make sure that soccer has a strong domestic league with growth in all aspects of the game ie revenue, crowds, tv audience etc.

Check just how many millions were paid to consultants in the failed WC bids ! $1.5 million was flushed down the drain on a daily basis, the FFA are sly & underhand, unfortunately the only reason the Fury were admitted to the A-Lge was to provide a strong location infrastructure wise for the group which would have been in Tsv.