The A-League must expand to improve

"Do you think that's wise Captain Mainwaring?" ;-)

Canberra could easily hold a team. I can easily imagine Cenberra United having a mens side in the A-league.

@ j binnie: Actually I wasn't questioning your figure of 6 visa-spot players as you quite rightly, list them all above. My point was as AZ_RBB wrote more clearly than I below: 2 x 5 = 10, not 6. :-) From what I have heard, they still have access to a 6th visa-spot player for this season, but have chosen not to pursue that. I suspect this is to dispel the notion of FFA giving unfair help to a team they currently own - this concession was agreed upon by all clubs prior to last season so everyone has gone into this with their eyes wide open, but perception is everything nowadays so for appearances' sake they (FFA) are avoiding the obvious conflict of interest and should be applauded for that, IMO.

My study of Mathematics in 1995 shows that 6 is not twice 5. :P But you are right, finding enough talent to come here will be the toughest challenge. Nothing wrong with waiting 4 or 5 seasons and seeing where the game is at. But my smurf buddy below also makes a good point. Any expansion should be done through a long process of building.

Arto.- Study of the 2012 squad will show,Hersi,Ono,La Rocca,Poljak,Polenz & Kresinger all playing for the club,that making 6 overseas players. I think you may be discounting Ono's status as a 'marquee" when arriving at your 5 figure. Ok?. jb

Wollongong is too small a city to host an A-League team.

apaway- I too was there & running the football side of an NSL club until 1982 when I was approached & asked to join the Queensland Soccer Federation where for 4 years I beat my head against a brick wall trying to change the "order" of how the code was run.The "confederation set up" was actually introduced in 1984 & ran for 3 seasons until "tossed out" after the 1986 season was completed.By this time Mr Lowy has departed to be closely followed by "his" team,arguably the best team to play in the NSL's "good" years but who regularly played in front of average "home" crowds of around 2500 in the opening season 1977, until their last season in 1986,no great change in 9 years. I think you will find with a little more digging that more than a few of those 24 teams disappeared into oblivion after 1986.Keep up the good work jb

Plus Canberra regularly get 1000+ to W-League games.

@ jb: "Last year’s runaway winners,aided & abetted by twice the number of “allowed” overseas imports...". Really? I thought the max allowed visa spots on the 23-man roster was 5, so by my maths you're exaggerating this point a bit, don't you think? Otherwise, I agree - poorly planned expansion will only hurt the game long-term. IMO, the long-term goal has to be more than just tv-money covering the salary cap of all HAL teams, all teams should be running with a profit in an ideal world (dependent upon club administrators being smart enough to both spend within their means and max all their revenue streams). Hopefully, we can get a 12-team comp in the future - even if that is via the use of the model Ben of Phnom Penh advocated above (which sounds quite interesting to me - I wonder if David Gallop & Damien de Bohun have heard of it?) .

Actually, JB, the NSL decided to REDUCE the number of teams at the end of the 1986 season from 24 to 14. The expansionist two conference NSL ran in 1985 and '86 and was an absolute mess. I know, I was there, along with the other more illustrious names you mentioned. And they still got it wrong, with teams from Newcastle and Brisbane falling by the wayside and leaving us with a national competition which compromised 13 clubs from Sydney and Melbourne and 1 from Adelaide.

Hi jb & Mantis. I think you are both in heated agreement. You both agree that a rapid expansion for expansion's sake is detrimental and that some conditionality is required before a considered expansion takes place.

i think the next batch of expansions should be held of until the end of the russian wc. i dont believe these expansions can happen next year, by 2017 i can guarantee Geelong will be 300k + inc. torquay and other local towns. i think heart should play 3 or 4 home games at Geelong.

I dunno about expansion just yet but there does need to be more games - either 30,32 or 34 (note even number so all teams play the same number of home and away games). To achieve that would mean having an extra 3,5 or 7 games based on some formula eg based on previous years position in the table or perhaps geographical considerations (which would create more derbies) or even just a random draw for the extra games or some other method

Mantis. Would you mind taking a minute & explain what is stupid about factual figures taken from historical data!!!!!!!!.Keyless was pushing for expansion & I never said he wanted to "double" the number of teams. The more important data is that a Victory v Heart derby & a Sydney v WSW derby this year & 2 Victory v Heart derbies last season have outdrawn the total gates attracted to any 3 of a 12 game weekend back in 1986. As I have said often the A-League thread you talk about as being a "different beast " from the NSL can all be traced to one man, the present chairman F. Lowy who was chased out of the NSL 2 years before the" conference leagues" were put in place so he cannot in any way be blamed for those expansionist policies that probably saw the start of the demise of an idea that was to drag on for another 16 years before finally 'keeling over".almost bankrupted & obviously totally devoid of any plan to get our game back into working order.Maybe Frank Lowy sees things differently from Keyless,if so,thank goodness. jb PS You did read the last sentence in my comment, it almost matches the last sentence in yours jb

Geelong is pretty much Victory territory, as you say. There is potential for a team here, but swaying the existing supporters from Victory would be a challenge. I don't know if I'd convert from Victory to a Geelong team. Maybe I'd support both, but who knows. ;)

Apparently Geelong is Victory territory. Canberra, Wollongong, Nth Qld (Townsville/Cairns split, occasional match in Darwin) and Tasmania (Hobart/Launceston split) are the obvious contenders. Any second NZ team should come from the South Island - Christchurch/Dunedin split maybe?

Forget Wollongong you need teams in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. We've seen the success of local Derbies in Melbourne and Sydney. Geelong could also be a struggle with Melbourne heart barely getting a crowd on a consistent basis, however if the Victory ACL clash could reveal some potential

jbinnie is spot on. Unless the A-League can maintain the standard of football on the park & administration off the park in an expansion club, dont bother. I would go even further & say that given the nature historically of football support in Australia(ie mainly gazing across the miles to Europe) that improving the football standard amongst the current 10 clubs is THE most important focus of the FFA. I still see amateur errors in the A-League & as Craig Moore once said ,yes every league makes errors ,inaccurate passes overhit crosses,poor ball control,crap tackling by defenders, end result unecessary turnovers that stop the flow etc but overseas in the better professional leagues they are kept to a minimum. The A-League still has too many for my liking. Adding teams to repeat the same amount of errors & arguably create more unless you can guarantee new A-League team squads are at least equal to the squads of present teams is lunacy. Set the goals of the current A-League clubs according to the best that can be achieved in the highest competition they compete in. That is the ACL. When were up there with the JK league & I believe in future the C League,then think about adding more teams. If however there is no guarantee that the standard of the new club(s) will be equal to the present 10 dont bother. As it stands now the bottom two clubs have 4 points each & the top two 24 & 19,so were a long way off either an equal competition or becoming the best League in Asia.

Well that's a stupid comment. Clearly Keyless isn't talking about doubling the number of teams or creating conferences. And as you would notice by looking at any A-League thread, it is clear that it is a different beast than the old NSL. I agree that the A-League must expand, not straight away, but sooner rather than later, and that it must be done in the right way, so that the club(s) are financially viable.

Youre using the fact that Canberra Soccer teams in the NSL had low crowds as a reason for them not to get a team. The majority of clubs struggled for crowds in the NSL. The A-League, as stated on basically every thread on this site related to football, is a different kettle of fish to the NSL. Canberra would work. There is no competition at all throughout the summer, and decent crowds have shown up to the Central Coast games that have been played there (which were poorly advertised and the majority of people would have no ties to), as well as over 20 thousand which showed up to a second string socceroos team to play Kuwait. A third team in Sydney and Melbourne would be stupid. The FFA want to develop new markets. Two is a good number