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The year is 2018, and the A-League has announced that they will be adding another two teams to make 12.
After Australia’s successful world cup in Russia and Tommy Juric being named in the world cup best XI, the time is now to add an extra couple franchises. But where?
South and north Sydney has released their bids as have Auckland, Melbourne #3, Geelong, Canberra, South Coast, Ballarat and North Queensland.
Back to reality, who will be the next two teams to join the A-League (we are not debating if there will be another two teams for the sake of this article)?
Let’s go through the possibilities.
Auckland by the next crop of expansions will join the AFC, so that makes Auckland a possibility.
The largest city of NZL has a large enough base to support a team, but they have never embraced football. The recent world cup qualifiers have struggled to get 10k whereas Wellington got 30k for a dead rubber against Mexico.
I really don’t believe I can see more then 7,000 people game in game out if they had their own team, therefore the answer is no.
Geelong the second biggest city in Vic.
Do they have a large enough population to hold an A-League team? Geelong has a reasonable football culture along with the AFL. They don’t have a rectangular stadium but Kardinia Park is quite skinny.
It is possible, but it would be best to play some Melbourne Heart home games there to test the water.
What about a third team in Melbourne? This one is easy to answer. South Melbourne and the Heart need to merge to make an identity, and three teams is out of the question for one city.
What about the South Coast? They are in the same boat as Geelong and North Queensland. Do they have a large enough football culture? Practice matches are the key to determine this, but I would say no at this point.
Ballarat isn’t going to happen. The town is way to small to hold any sort of professional team. If accepted, maybe a Geelong team could play two matches a year in Ballarat, but apart from that there is no hope.
Canberra, the nation’s capital, has long spoken about getting their own team. This one is a difficult one to answer. Is Canberra big enough to hold a team? Most likely. But as the NSL teams showed us Canberra doesn’t have a large football culture but times have changed.
I really have no idea on this one – have times changed enough that there will be a support base for the side?
Finally, what about North Sydney? This is probably the best of all options. They have a large population and the Northern Spirit did quite well in the NSL compared to the other teams.
The only downside is they could poach Sydney FC crowds. However, I say go for it.
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