FFA Cup's outstanding opening night shows potential of a connected football

Interesting to see how its done over there. Everyone assumes scandinavian countries are uber regulated, big govt places...its more nuanced than that and the sport reflects that. Its a very private sector driven economy... Its good to see they give the football clubs quite a lot more control than here and arent scared of the more anarchist themes in the organic growth/contraction approach.

There is more than one size of business and with it more than one size of football clubs. They dont all need a trawler net size catch, if the size chart/regulations allow for it ;)

@ Ben: To answer your questions, the Norwegian FA uses a system that is prevalent in Europe. Football is for the most part the leading SPORT (not just code) in Europe and in a lot of countries by a fair margin. Football has a position both in the media, sponsorship, & public domains that the AFL has in Australia and thus has certain competitive advantages that are not present in Aus. In terms of how the Norwegian association has dealt with the issue of competitive balance in Norway, the main regulative method is the combination of a promotion/relegation arrangemnt with a division structure that is somewhat regionalised (from the 3rd tier down). In some ways, Norway experiences a 'tyranny of distance' disavantage like Australia in that the country is sparsely populated in comparison with the total landmass (only 4.7M people in the whole country). So teams that are promoted in very rare instances aren't able to complete that promotion as they either do not meet the licence criteria for playing in the higher division, or they don't manage to find the finances to run the team for the whole season. This type of organic growth is what nordster is refrring to and what sceptics fear, but is actually quite workable and commonplace in European countries. The case of Rosenborg is actually somewhat unique - Sweden for instance with similar parameters for their league has not had the same experience as Norway - and was amplified by both the demographics of the time and the influence of the Champuions League. With income from the Champions League, Rosenborg was able to buy the very cream of talent in Norway (as well as supplement with a few stars from abroad) and had a position no other club to rival. In that regard, yes, there was a situation whereby the domestic league may have become boring for some as it Rosenborg 1st and then daylight - however, you'll notice that the organic nature of the competition still provided for a wide variety of clubs who came 2nd & 3rd, and thus competed in Europe via the UEFA Cup & Cup Winner's Cup. As an aside, the Rosenborg sides of the 1990's were actually quite good in European competition with them occasionally topping their Group and having wins away (not just using the home davantage of playing at near zero degree temperatures with snow on some occasions!) against teams such as AC Milan, Real Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, and Olympiakos. That Rosenborg has been less succesful recently has more to do with both them & the league dropping in standards - 2003 saw their mega-successful coach retire & since then it's been a revolving door in trying to repeat the 'glory days'. Since 2007, the league has experienced a lot of financial hardship as costs have had to be slashed (particularly in the wake of the GFC) and overall clubs havemade combined losses of over A$80M. The NFF hasn't regulated anymore or less than previously except to clarify and help clubs meet their financial requirements to keep their licences. The period 2000-2007 saw clubs expenditures explode to unsustainable levels (Rosenborg for example had an operating budget of some A$50M dollars back in 2008!) and the clubs have been using the past 6-7 years to readjust - Rosenborg operates on a budget around half that amount now. The recent efforts of Stromsgodset (league winners last season) are actually an example of a little club (think CCM) managing to do better than the big boys with a lot less money (they have a budget of around A$10-12M). The important thing to keep in focus is that it's not the amount of money a club has to use, but how they use that money - we see in the HAL that clubs like MV & SFC can still operate at large losses and not win titles, whilst CCM run on a shoestring and are there at the end when the prizes are handed out. The same happens in leagues all over the world. The main benefit of the Salary Cap for me is not to make an even competition, but to curb spending upon wages so that clubs don't go bust trying to 'live the dream' - the case of Norway is an example whereby widescale overspending has a type of 'drug-high' effect whereby the come-down period afterwards is quite brutal and decreases the quality throughout the whole league. However, Norway also shows that through organic growth of clubs that are free to manage their finances as they choose even the little clubs can achieve success and that in some ways, the success is all the more sweeter for it! :-)

It is good to see that Australia innovating! The FFA is doing a wonderful job with the soft cap in achieving competitive balance - rather than blindly following the old order, it is trying something different with remarkable success in a cutthroat market. I, for one, am glad our league is far more competitive than a "free" market like Norway (Rosenborg winning 16 times in 22 seasons) or Scotland (where Celtic now reign unchallenged). Rather than suffering cultural cringe because "straya" is brave enough to try something different, I am proud of the FFA of having the guts to carve out something new (warts and all) rather than swallow something uncritically simply because that is how the old guard has done it.

There's nothing wrong with a rod on the beach. If you're fishing for fun. If you're trying to sustain a business or fulfill contracts( to provide a certain catch) then you need to fish with a big net offshore. I guarantee John West didn't start and establish his business with a single rod and reel.i agree that the wage floor needs to go, but with our league still in its 'put down roots' (consolidation) stage, capping costs with a salary cap continues to make sense. The by-product of a more 'even' on-field league is one of the great aspects of our local league that gives us a point of difference vs the overseas leagues who might well have a higher standard, but lack the excitement of the unknown that our league has in spades.

Doesnt seem to hurt any other league in the football world. The upside is you're making the league more accessible to potential new entrants and growing the market that way. Australian sport grossly underservices regional areas imo, but i guess u are of the Gallop "fish where the (big) fish are" mindset. Or only fish with a trawler net where the large schools are. Nothin wrong with a rod on the beach too;)

How about SU58 vs WSW. A dream match up if ever there was one. Popovic heading back to where it all started pitted against his good mate Mark Rudan. It would be amazing if they allowed the game at SU58's home ground at Edensor, but because its an artificial pitch they would never allow it. We have plenty of fans of Croatian background at WSW and it would just be a fantastic celebration of football.

Here's a thought - what if Perth Glory win their tie against the Jets and draw Sydney Olympic in the round of 16, at Belmore? Would they turn up? :)

Nordster The problem is that de-regulating a "league" by ridding it of the salary cap has the potential to snuff out the championship credentials of all but two or three sides,who will then win everything, including the FFA Cup, because they will become so powerful no-one will touch them.

Arto, How has the Norwegian association dealt with the issue of competitive balance in Norway (if at all)? I note from a quick wiki search that one team (Rosenborg) has won the Tippeligan (Premier division) 16 times in the last 22 seasons (since the league went professional in 1992). This included a streak of 13 seasons in a row between 1992-2004. The league seems to have gotten a little more unpredictable in the last 9 seasons, with Rosenborg only winning it 3 times in that period. Is the new found unpredictability a result of the introduction of a deliberate equalisation policy by the association, a short term aberration as a new team takes over the top of the pecking order or Rosenborg sorts out some internal problems, or a new order of competitive balance that has been achieved without engineering the competition?

Hehe never mind the thread, its a day old now so we can run amok hahaha Consumed too much raspberry vodka to add any more for now;)

@ champ: In the sense that soccer is a game, then yes, the FFA Cup is more of the same - more games in amongst all the games that are currently played in Australia such as cricket, AFL, rugby league union, basketball, tennis, etc. However, are seriously suggesting that the FFA Cup is like the HAL??!! As you have pointed out yourself, the FFA Cup involves semi-professional and amateur teams competing in a knock-ou-format competition, where as the HAL involves 10 professional teams playing eachother for 27 rounds before a knock-out Finals series. If these two competitions are the same according to your argument, then what is the difference between the AFL and the VFL or SAFL, for example? And isn't then Super Rugby the same as the Shute Shield competition? Or what about the differences (?) in a Test series between Australia vs India and the competition run by the Armidale District Cricket Association (http://www.armidalecricket.com.au/index.html)? For fans of each sport, having a national knock-out competition is definitely NOT THE SAME as the elite domestic (or international) competition that they follow. Before I moved overseas, I could quite happily go watch my local cricket team every now and then AS WELL AS watch Australia pummel the Poms last season. I understand that Fox Sports or Channel 9 isn't interested in telecasting Eastern Suburbs vs. Randwick-Petersham on a saturday afternoon as I wouldn't even be guaranteed to watch it, but that doesn't mean the competition is either useless or "squeezing the orange" too much! If you weren't so interested in the FFA Cup Rnd of 32 and didn't want to watch it on Fox Sports, well that's fine, but surely you can see that for both fans that are interested and the clubs involved in the comp it is certainly not a case of "squeezing the orange" too much??!! But then again maybe you can't see that as you did question the relevance of the comp in your initial post... "Soccer seems to be 12 months of the year anyway but noticeably the big comp escaped winter to get more exposure" - yes it did, and as you can understand the match-up (between the codes) was heavily skewed in favour of the well-established AFL & NRL. Yet, I think you're still missing the point of why soccer moved to a nominally summer sport at elite level (you'll notice that almost everywhere at grassroots level up to the current 2nd tier, soccer is played nominally during the winter!). The NSL, in order to obtain enough "exposure" as you correctly point out, was never going to successfully compete against the already well-known and well-funded AFL & NRL competitions for sponsorship money and media attention, and without thses wouldn't have expected to bring in more fans to the matches

@ Ben: Thanks for expanding upon your POV. I can't say that I disagree a whole lot with the sentiments in your comment as it is indeed against the HALs best interests that the comp becomes a Syd-Mel-Bris triumvirate year-in year-out. I would argue however, that instead of pulling the leading clubs back to the average, it is better to reward those who are successful. Yes, I realise that there is still the potential for the differences between the leading teams and the poorer (both financially & performance-wise) to blow-out, but then is this not the result of teams making mistakes? Syd, Mel & Bris may have certain benefits due to their locations and demographics, but there are multiple examples of teams from smaller areas out performing so-called bigger ones (and I'm not talking about in the HAL). But if we do look at HAL teams, CCM for example, has not just performed well in the competition over the years, but they have produced a number of good young players and the systems they have in place are not the result of hobbling the likes of MV & SFC who could in theory have used far more resources than they have so far. How about if FFA allowed transfer fees between HAL clubs so that an unrestricted MV or SFC paid 100's of 1000's for a Mustafa Amini or Tom Rogic instead of the Euorpean teams who did? What you probably will find is that the transfer fee domestically is higher between competitive teams than between teams who have no competitive interests so CCM could have potentiall had access to far more cash than they have and possibly wouldn't have had to sell so many players to balance their budget. This issue is complicated and yes, you do put forward some good, strong arguments for keeping an 'equalisation policy' in place, but that's not to say that it is only a good thing, without it's downsides. I'm not a full-on laissez faire libertarian like nordster perhaps, but I do see a lot of merit in opening things up for the clubs to be more self-reliant. I'm a great believer in rewarding good performance as opposed to either focusing more on punishing bad or providing an uncritical cruch for contestants to lean on.

@ nordster: We probably should have started our own thread to save these poor souls from having to scroll down the page so much to view the other comments that are more directly relevant to the actual thread title!!!! :-D HAHAHAHAHA!!!

@ nordster: Yes, it is a good discussion - so I tip my hat to you too! :-) Without rehashing all of what we've discussed, I must say I agree with a lot of your points although I don't think I'm as libertarian as you (both in relation to the HAL & society i general!!) so there are going to be differences of opinion here that are probably not going to be overcome. Still that's what makes discussions boards like this so much fun and worthwhile in terms of contributing - God knows I could actually be using my time more productively on occasions!!! ;-) I can't say I agree with you regarding the Bob Day school of thought - IMO, human self-interest will undermine any attempts to compromise and logic's greatest enemy is a lack of intelligence and perspective, so it's not always a given that all parties involved can understand or see the same logic! :-) I do agree with your point regarding the appeal of promotion/relegation for the fans/spectators side - yes, we are familiar with it and yes, it does add an extra element of interest to the contest. The problem I see is that the clubs (& more specifically their investors) are not too interested in adding that element of risk to the competition - why would they be? They don't gain anything from it except another issue to to try to mitigate or insure against. I like your idea of skewing the HAL in terms of teams from larger population centres, although the problem with having so many teams in one division is that you spread the talent pool more thinly and the result is more often than not a whole heap more boring, poor-quality games that don't look good either to the fans at the games or on tv - thus you also dillute the value of the product and over time this harms the game (this very phenomenom has happened here in Norway after the NFF decided to increase the number of teams in the league some 5-6 yrs ago. The result has been a drop in attendences and ratings of around about 35% and combined losses for clubs of approx. A$81M). So increasing the size of the comp is not only about which places could sustain the team financially, but also whether the talent pool is strong enough to cover the additional teams - something which in general has not been a part of the 'expansion debate'. I'm against the concept of the wage floor - as I agree it provides a barrier to entry into the marketplace, even if it does provide players with a certain amount of financial security. I think the players through the PFA (read union) have negotiated this as a condition of employment, which is probably not so different to most other employment sectors, but is it really necessary? Why can't the players either through their union or via their agent have their salary negotiated on an individual basis so that clubs have more flexibility in their wage budget? I'm also against the concept of a Salary Cap in principle as I agree it does have the effect of hobbling the leading teams in order to keep the gap between them and the weaker teams small, but I see it as a necessary evil whilst clubs can't manage their finances well enough. That's one of the main reasons why the idea has been floated around in European football circles also. And yes, I see the contradiction in the idea of a third party controlling the clubs in this regard and that at some point 'a parent has to let their child go', but until clubs can demonstrate better financial control (and let's face it, running a club whilst it is a little like running a business has it's unique challenges that are very difficult to master) then we need to make sure we're not 'living the dream' ala Leeds Utd or worse! And it's also not good enough to rely on "subsidising" or the benevolence of wealthy backers (ala SFC and MCFC as HAL examples) as this slows the 'education process' down and ironically goes against some of the principles you are probably a have of... ;-) But as a compromise, maybe the FFA could intorduce a tweek to the Salary Cap along the lines of each club can get a bonus amount of Cap space equivalent to the percentage of profit they make - eg: say SFC make a profit of 2% on their budget, they can then have an extra 2% of the Salary Cap for the season. I wouldn't 'penalise' clubs who don't make a profit as they are already penalising themselves, but it rewards those clubs who can turn a profit and also gives the incentive to run their business well. And finally to add to our discussion of the restructuring of clubs, the problem I see with this phenomenom is that too often it is seen as a type of 'get out of jail free card' by clubs as they claim they need to sack staff or breach the principles of their contracts by asking their employers to take a cut in salary. You could argue that if this is a clause in the employment contract, well then that's a risk the employee takes, and yes, I agree with that. The point though is that these situations arise sometimes through no fault of those who are impacted (although you could argue that if the on-field performances are so bad as to jeopardise income streams via relegation for example, then the players are probably directly responsible!) - those in charge of the performance side of things often have very little to do with the financial decisions a club makes and therefore are often blindsided when the economic situation suddenly becomes common knowledge. I hear you say this is the case in almost all aspects of employemtn life, and yes, that's correct, but we also have safety nets for these situations in other employment areas (eg: govt. bailouts!!). So whilst I'm not advocating that FFA takes over clubs who run their economies into the ground, I believe we do need some sort of system in place to avoid clubs getting into such serious financial messes and that probably comes under that dreadful word to you, regulation! ;-) However, we can also make sure it's not so complex as to provide the barriers we've talked about - it's a delicate balancing act!!! :-D

More of the same thing devalues the whole novelty of it was my point. Soccer seems to be 12 months of the year anyway but noticeably the big comp escaped winter to get more exposure ...I am reminded of the NRL when during a boom time went to 20 teams only to see many of them disappear like the soccer ones Auckland, Gold Coast, Townsville - any others...

I can absolutely feel the pain of the Stirling Macedonia organisation. There is the type of ground that is made for an FFA cup game. 5K packed out would look utterly awesome. They have the type of facilities that SBS and ABC would have being able to handle in the past. Why not outsource the game to SBS or ABC an air it on a community channel? Have some flexibility. This is not the A league which I can understand Fox requiring certain standards of the ground. If its the players organisation who are demanding certain standards then they need to pull their heads in IMHO.

Why?! The equalisation policy is achieving its major goal - competitive balance between teams in the A-league. The spread of trophies and chances across the league's teams since its inception would be the envy of most sporting associations across the globe. Competitive balance is of critical import to the league's health because: -it boosts attractiveness to its entire fanbase (leading to larger revenues and higher demand for A-league games as a whole). -it increases the quality of the competition (despite assertions to the contrary, in my opinion having one or two well funded teams located in high population centers destroy the remaining minnows on a weekly basis does not a strong competition make, regardless of how good the winning team is). -it helps small-market teams survive (small-market teams on the receiving end of score blowouts suffer from decreased revenues which threatens both their sustainability and the league as a whole). Competitive balance is even more important in the A-league at this juncture because of the fact that: -there are only ten teams competing within it -Australians enjoy a wealth of sporting options when considering how to spend their entertainment dollars. Remove the equalisation policy and we'll see the table settle into a status quo - Melbourne and Sydney teams will buy their way to the top year in year out (and may enjoy a small, short term increase in attendance), bottom teams will suffer compounding revenue problems (with no relief in sight) and will eventually fold, and the league will die a slow death as A-league converts switch off, or back over to overseas leagues.

Actually it seems as though the FFA and the PFA have agreed to the standards required. Can't see Fox mentioned anywhere in the justification.

Fox get to choose which game they telecast, but if they are night games, there is a technical restriction on the amount of lighting suitable for a quality digital HD broadcast. So, technically speaking, its not the FFA's fault. These games are also beamed around Asia and other parts of the world by Fox, so they want to keep the quality up. This is a shame for the smaller clubs and keeping their tight small home ground atmosphere, but this was pointed out by Fox a while ago when they agreed to telecast FFA Cup games. It does seem promising for Stirling that they have been asked to move grounds and Fox want to show the game instead of choosing another one. Hopefully they can sort it out to everyone's satisfaction and the fans don't have to travel too far to watch it. The FFA want to keep that community momentum going.