Wanderers' success: we must expand the A-League now

If the FFA wants more teams in the A-League, they need to find places of interest that would appeal to football fans. That's why the Wanderers worked so well. Western Sydney is a place full of football fans which was evidently shown in the NSL days and now with the A-League. Hopefully they create a club that's not going to cause confusion regarding location i.e. Melbourne Victory and Melbourne Heart even though the Victory is meant to be the club for Victorian fans, while the Heart mainly catered for city fans.

my list in order: Canberra Illawarra Geelong Ipswich Townsville Auckland Hobart Launceston Darwin

How bout this 4 an idea a combined wollongong-canberra side it would cover a massive area & have a massive junior base they can play half there games at wollongong & half at canberra i think they would both struggle on there own but together could be a real force just a thought

Sorry the site doesn't let me reply to your reply comment. But yes i agree it would be a good friendly rivalry much like heart vs victory, but I feel that Brisbane is a one team city for its sport such as broncos and lions. The roar would suffer if a north/south divide was made, as maybe you have noticed lining up for a bus home at suncorp, the number of people traveling to north-side areas is equally as big as for south-side areas. I would love a derby but maybe Brisbane is not ready to be divided just yet I think if anything Brisbane seems to have thrived on its own and key rivalries have been made on the back of its success with mariners(top two clubs), MVFC(stole our coach) and sydney(we hate anything blue about NSW) and that we can continue to prosper without a true derby for a LITTLE longer. Bring on expansion into other cities such as Ipswich, which is growing hugely and improving as a city, but dont divide an already great club for a few games a year that will only add a few thousand extra bums on seats.

How bout this 4 an idea a combined wollongong-canberra side it would cover a massive area a massive junior base they can play half there games at canberra & half at wollongong i think both would struggle on there own but together could be a real force just a thought

Historically, the Southside was allocated as housing commission and still contains the lower income areas if you include Logan as part of Brisbane. But yeh I'll agree that distinction is not as clear now. But also, that makes for a friendly rivalry because everyone from Brisbane is aware of the South/North (other side of the world) divide but it has no bitter history.

Consolidation before expansion. WSW are specials and are right in the middle of the biggest football area and the greatest number of football participants in the country. Can't see any other proposal doing as good as WSW. Give it 5 years at least before we get another A-League team. South Melbourne will buy out Heart before we get any new team.

Consolidation before expansion. WSW are specials and are right in the middle of the biggest football area and the greatest number of football participants in the country. Can't see any other proposal doing as good as WSW. Give it 5 years at least before we get another A-League team. South Melbourne will buy out Heart before we get any new team.

i agree, expansion keeps me interested in the a-league, large crowds gets me excited and when i hear news of new signings i think the a-league is moving up.but we can't just jump into expansion ever time we see a big crowd, my main example is when the heart was introduced, the season before meblourne averaged 26,000 at home games and the next season, heart averaged 8,000 and melbourne average 18,00 do the maths. we should let the rich teams roll and help out the poor teams for 4-5 years, then, depending on the crowds and profits think of putting in a new team (which has to be brisbane 2) for the moment just sit back and let the 10 team league stay

i feel like the a-league needs to stabilise the 10 teams we have now before they think of expanding (Brisbane #2), but what the a-league must do to ensure a future for australia's top flight of football is to do this, every single team must give 25% of their overall profits from a season, this goes in a pool that the a-league has control over, every team gets %8 of this pool back, regardless of how much they put into it. this will help out financially struggling team like heart and glory, while teams such as victory or sfc don't loose a lot of money. the rest of this pool (%20) goes into funding a new a-league team. this should go on until the a-league feels its time to enter the new a-league team and all the current teams are financially secure, they can't hope of putting more teams into a league where teams are already struggling to stay afloat.

Im born and bread in brisbanes southside and a roar fan, to be honest nobody could care a bit about north vs south of brisbane. Yes people are generally divided as to where they live, I never travel to the north side, but there is no social or class divide that makes me remotely fire up for beating them unlike WSW vs SFC.

Yeh but there just isn't the population there for it yet. People who know Brisbane know that the North/Southside divide is enormous. It really could set up and amazing derby. BUT it would have to be meticulously. AND they would have to play in separate stadiums (maybe redevelop Perry park?)

NSW shouldn't get another team. Give it to anyone but New Zeland. Its called the A-League, the A stand s for Australia, phoenix shouldn't even be in the league. Canberra deserves a team. The W-League side Canberra united should have a men team. They could play at the rugby League stadium

The FFA should not be taking any leaps of faith. Expansion should be based on sound business principles. I actually think ten teams is a great number for a competition. I like the fact I can actually watch a high proportion of A-League games every week and that I know who most of the players are. Most of the areas suggested for expansion do not make compelling cases for teams. A team probably needs to crack 10,000 average crowds to break even and the smaller teams already struggle to do this. I think additional teams would find this impossible. You should also throw in the fact that an increase in teams would surely also require an increase in the number of imports because we just don't have the quality here right now.

A Singapore Consortium tried to purchase the Fury during the GFC for $8mil after the Fury's owner went bankrupt. The Fury averaged 8K a game during their initial year so there was prospect of growth and North Queensland's proximity to Asia made the sale logical. Unfortunately, the consortium's links to gambling clashed with Fox Sport's betting agenda and the sale was disallowed (or Fox put pressure on the FFA) Funnily enough, Townsville Casino was one of the Fury's sponsors and it looks like the same Consortium are making moves to purchase the Casino. The question we should ask now is - would we prefer a team based in Singapore playing in the A-League or a North Queensland based team funded by Singaporeans? I know what the kids playing football in North Queensland would say about having a career path.

Hardcore- My figures are skewed?????. I calculated the number of the total population against the number of EPL clubs and came up with a ratio of EPL clubs to population. That ratio doesn't say that every EPL club has 2.6 million fans it is simply a ratio.Doing the same exercise for Australa & NZ shows a ratio of 2.8 million. Nowhere in my "numbers" did I suggest there were only 20 teams in England nor did I say everyone only follows EPL clubs.Getting a ratio was only to compare the number of teams as against a total of population The more important factor to be considered is the distances in which EPL operates as against our horrendous distances not to mention the costs involved.ok? jb

Not to mention you could only get half the population, unless you can solve the north / south divide.

JB, your numbers are a little skewed as they only take into account the Premier League. There are actually 92 professional clubs in the English league, as well as a substantial number of professional and semi-professional non-league clubs. Not everyone follows a Premier League team. Some of the lower league clubs are often considered bigger and better supported than some of the Premier League's smaller clubs (e.g. Wolves, Middlesbrough, Birmingham City, Derby, Portsmouth...)

Yeah I goto every brumbies game and the odd raiders game. I don't mind Bruce. Theres not a bad seat in the house, and whilst the weather is often miserable, that's a big advantage for Canberra teams (maybe not against NZ sides however)

Many people in these columns appear to hold the EPL as a target we should aim to emulate. Let's examine the factors as they are at the minute. England has a population of approx.52 million people.Their premier football competition has 20 teams. ie a ratio of 1 team per 2.6 million.The greatest distance a team or a fan has to travel to play or see his team play away from home is approx, 450 kms, Newcastle to Southampton. To compare,Australia has a population of 23 million people ( 28mill if NZ is included) & we have a top league of 10 teams ie a ratio of 1 team per 2.8 mill.The greatest distance a team or a fan has to travel to play or see his team play is 5250 kms Perth to Wellington. As one can see the EPL is blessed with what could be described as reasonable distances in which to operate' On the other hand our competition,although of a comparative size per head of population is almost "ham-strung' by the tyranny ,not forgetting to mention the costs, of distances almost 12 times greater than the EPL. Can we ever have an "EPL"??? Of course we can but it will have to done by improving the standard of football being played by our 10 teams not by expanding the HAL to 20 teams.jb ..