Western Sydney A-League bid empowered

As a football fan for most of my adult life, I feel very strongly that lessons from MLS need to be learned. start up teams in big caverous stadia kill the atrmosphere generated. the unique atmosphere of world football is what will draw the undecided/curious in to HAL games, there will be NO atmosphere if the West Sydney team plays in the Olympic stadium. It will fail IMHO. They ned to play their regular season at Parramatta with Derby games at ANZ and should it occur, the GF at ANZ only. despite the financial incentives on offer, the team will draw no fans with no atmosphere. 15k rattling around in ANZ will be a terrible image for the game and will do nothing to induce the fans of the former west Sydney NSL teams to support the HAL team. just my $0.02 as a fan who sees the WS team as a good addition to the league and could really move the domestic game forward if done properly!

This is related to the Chris Tanner GWSFG bid. The kits and logo are identical to the proposed name in the bid. They want to play every match at ANZ stadium, leaving Penrith, Campbelltown and Parra for pre-season friendlies. They think they'll get 30k against most of the big clubs and with ANZ paying 400k + revenue sharing are expecting a stadium profit of about 1 million. ANZ is a black hole for atmosphere, and no-one will support it, especially not to levels of getting 30k fans.

Have ALL AFL fans been brainwashed? "...the epicentre of the sport?" Have you heard of the phrase, "The World Game"? There's an Australian website dedicated to it; you should check it out...

Once the FFA dump the Gold Coast next season, the Western Sydney team will be introduced the year after that. The national competition will be made up of the following. NSW will have 4 teams. VIC will have 2 teams QLD, SA, WA, NZ will have 1 team each. Great to see the national competition thriving. It looks like the FFA have finally introduce the "Brisbane Line" from World War 2.

Lets just clear up yet another misguided attack on the FFA - the FFA did not "dump" the Western Sydney Rovers A-League consortium. The consortium couldn't come up with the $6M financial guarantees to buy the franchise. The FFA are very keen to have a second Sydney A-League team, as most of us are. They gave the Sydney Rovers plenty of time to come up with the money and extended the deadline on several occasions to give the Rovers every possible chance. The Rovers were the ones that withdrew their bid, when it became obvious they were not going to come up with the money.

Ah, Axel, let's not forget, the Storm have only won once, way back in 1999, in front of the biggest crowd to ever watch a RL Grand Final. The other ones never happened. And Punter, the 2006 NRL Grand Final was between Brisbane and Melbourne. (I think that one still officially happened)

punter..Melbourne Victory have hosted Adelaide United twice in the Grand Final..and been terrible hosts from a manners perspective;) United coming away with nothing twice now:( The idea of a neutral venue for the HAL GF is just stupid IMO, which means there is a high likelihood that Ben Buckley is probably at least considering it:( Maybe in the future when the game has grown big enough to ensure a sell out regardless of who plays, perhaps then a neutral venue that can be 'bid' upon to FFA by different cities, like the Grey Cup in the C(anadian) Football League. Each city could then compete to stage the biggest and best football carnival. Ultimately as the HALGF gets bigger, the FFA could even use the lure of the GF to entice state govts to spend money on rectangular infrastructure..particularly those like mine (SA) who outside of the WC have no real inducement/requirement to spend money on stadia that aren't primarily or the AFL.

Not been following the league as intently recently, so not sure if there has been a non NSW (both teams) GF.

A WS team should have been there from Day One.

It would probably be better if it moved around with basic conditions (40K+ Stadium). This way tickets to the Grand Final can be sold months before the GF and give it a chance to sell out.

AlexV----I hear you Bro :D Looking forward to next year. I've have only missed two home games in two seasons. Next year will be our real test; with some of our youth team to step up to fill the void of our most experienced exiting players..

Haha :) , I really enjoyed MV vs GCU despite the result! The midfield was rubbish but it still made a great spectacle! And although the crowd was tiny, the quality of the crowd was not lacking ;) great atmosphere provided by the Beach and traveling MV fans. 3000 GC fans were making more noise than most 10,000+ matches.

Axelv----another disappointed MV loser paying the GCU. :) However, I agree with you on that other match---GCU's loss to CCM was a great boring shame. A real pity we didn't have a derby Grand Final so we could have put the Raw to the sword.

The best team won on the night but the match was still boring , I also watched all the finals games and every single one of them was awesome except CCM vs GCU! :P

The same can be said about the Storm vs Paramatta! and all of the other Storm titles, they were all won in Sydney. The NRL also has fixed location for it's Grand Finals...

sounds like the AFL having it fixed on the MCG :D Sydney vs West Coast, 99,000! Brisbane vs Port Adelaide, 99,000! Only in Victoria.

There are a lot of advantages to having a home base, hallowed turf, the epicentre of the sport, etc, etc. Suncorp makes an excellent case to become that, and the Queensland state government would be quite supportive too.

Sydney Olympic, Sydney Utd, Marconi etc are all plastic franchises, they think that they are Greek, Croatian and Italian but they're just Aussies wanting to be like them. And they could never pull a crowd! I remember watching Perth Glory vs Paramatta Power in the Grand final in Sydney, they pulled 9000 people and I was watching it with my friend who never really watches soccer but insisted on watches it because he watches all Grand Finals, he was so baffled as to why the stadium was empty for a Grand Final, meanwhile I was just embarrassed!

Check my profile I have not altered any information---it remains set in stone. But I live on the GC so I support the local club as well 'til I die. ;)

AF, I thought you were Syney FC till you die?