Gallop urges fans to stay interested

Football fans in Australia will need to become accustomed to longer seasons after all we have in the past had so long off seasons now we seem to be moaning that the season has gone on too long. This is about Australia maturing as a football nation and getting used to seasons of 10 months and short off seasons . When this happens we will know that the domestic league has really stepped up and become the power house it needs to be .

Not too bad a read there, Paul. Other than your contention an NPL game was faster paced than the HAL, means the alcoholic refreshments must have impeded your judgement. Next time drink light beer.

Liverpool were going through the motions. They didn't get out of first gear, son. Any football fan worth his salt should know this.

Macca, from reading your articles it appears you've never played football. When I write articles it is totally apparent that I have played football to any other big shot reading the content. For those intending to see the big Europeans play some kick and giggle in practice games, save your hard earned for the HAL, ACL and the Socceroo WC qualification campaign.

I cant decide if Martyn50 is a Eurosnob or eggball stooge?

Football as a 12 month sport. What is wrong with that? In my household, football has been a 12 month sport for a very long time. The traditional season has been March to September for local football. European football has always been August to April. For ten years, we've had A-league in the summer and state league/NPL in the winter. You can actually see some entertaining football with the NPL and in the smaller stadiums you are close to the action. I enjoy going to the A-league as well, when we can. Since I was young, I have known there is football being played somewhere all year round. And with TV, we get to see some of it. Going back a long time ago, we used to have BBC Match of the Day all through summer. Then SBS started The World Game, and we now had football from all different countries. The NSL in Australia switched to summer and that was on TV as well. Now we have the A-league, which is continually getting better. I really am quite happy having football all year round.

Why do some posters continue to refer to the AFL? I don't get it. The thread's title is: Gallop urges fans to stay interested. I have surmised that one of the reasons why the FFA CEO has had to act in such a public manner is because of the complete collapse of A-League TV ratings over the past month. One rating from the weekend, involving last year's championship winning team, got a meagre 26k. Without labouring the point too much, but 26k is about as low a rating as you can ever come across for a program which has been broadcast without interruption. Two weeks earlier, the ratings of four games fell between 30k and 32k. And as AR points out, the Victory have just won a historic third premiership, which is a great sporting achievement, but a mere 47k witnessed the event on Fox. On a positive note, that 47k was the highest rating game of Rd 27 of the A-League and snuck into Sunday's STV ratings at no. 20.

As a Commonwealth realm we inherit (as do all the other Commonwealth realms) 1689 Bill of Rights

And yet another AFL-focused post from Fuss. Just for some perspective, for its Premiership-clinching final match, the Victory drew a national audience of 47,000 viewers. It's quite odd that you attack other sports for supposedly meagrely ratings.

I have no idea what your post means Justin. "Proportionality to tv revenue"..? How would anyone know what revenue the tv networks make? Fuss was crowing about the Victory's crowd getting 2k more than the Western Bulldogs. I'm not sure how spectacular that is, but its apparently going straight to Fuss' pool room.

Justin, with all due respect I think you should read my question again. I did not ask who would select the team, but inadvertently who could possibly lineup for the team given the amount of football that is on. Surely it would not represent an All-Star lineup.

That's a fair argument, now use proportionality to the argument about relative ratings and TV revenue and I'll listen to you. Until then. Not a chance.

1. We have no right to freedom of expression in Australia. 2. Scott was being a World Class Knob and self-indulgent to say the least. 3. SBS should have simply suspended him from football and put him on news rounds for a few months.

I stated (probably here somewhere) at the beginning of the A-League season, before the Asia Cup and all the other distractions, that we should expect a drop. I was one of the few predicting it. I did so on the back of flagging interest towards the back end of the AFL/NRL season and my reading of the general economy at the time. I thing football was just the first national code into the reality of the new economy. Something had to give and crowds was it. Ratings is more complicated and probably more related to season length and the other big events, but interesting from Victer below who clearly isn't here to grind an axe.

What a silly question. The line-up would be decided by the fans, the expert panel and the fan selected coach as with the previous two games?

Would it be too much to believe that some of that 3,500 increase may have watched Victory for the first time when they played that game against Liverpool? Cheers jb. Yes jb another positive benefit from the touring clubs. ciudadmarron Yes historically it applies to media for sure i.e. Aussie Sardine vs Overseas whale shark and the fawning, but the MLS has arguably a greater mountain to climb in that respect than the A-League ,yet we see the above figures during an increased Overseas Touring club period.

Thanks for those links, Victer. Very comprehensive & well-laid out data. But the AFL season average for FoxSports is wrong. There have been 36 matches and the total viewing is 6734, which means the average is 187k not 249k as stated in the spreadsheet. My guess is the person compiling the data has divided the total by 27 (3 rounds of AFL matches) not 36 (4 rounds). I presume he's done the same for his 2014 comparative data. If he hasn't then it means FoxSports ratings for AFL have dropped 27%. So, after the opening 4 rounds FoxSports Ratings AFL = 189k HAL = 81k Remember, AFL gets $120m/yr from FoxSports; HAL gets $36m/yr. So is 189k average ratings good or bad when you're paying $120m/yr?

He has already changed his name many times.

MF, You need to take into account that Australia was ranked over 100 in the world & they were playing sides in the top 15 in the world, the 2 finalist from the previous WC. Against Chile, Australia was pushing hard for a 2nd goal equaliser when Chile scored in the last minute. Against Holland, who had just smacked the world champions 5-1, we were 2 goals to 1 ahead & had them worried, before they scored 2 goals. Now when you look at stats, yes you are right, again the misuse of stats. However, most people who understand anything about football, was very positive of Australia's performance in the WC.

It's partly the coverage of it. You'd be forgiven for thinking that they visiting team is playing on their own sometimes; this is all the more ridiculous when those behind the sycophancy are usually nowhere near football matches. As the cove so aptly put it - "we play every week". If more was done to showcase the local sides and players - and not just in a gushing "so how does it feel to be up against Ronaldo's squad replacement because Ronaldo didn't come" way - then there might be a bit more of an effect in terms of interest in the local sides - especially if they do well. JB, we've a long history of attending big matches in this country. I'm sure you're familiar with the site but in case others haven't seen it - check out some of the attendance figures throughout history for touring sides. http://www.ozfootball.net/ark/Socceroo/Socceroo.shtml