The FFA Cup's quest for an upset

well as the other song goes - ' always look on the left side for Broich'

Bit of pressure on the nix now - lost a couple of key players and although 1-5 doesn't make or break a season it can become a stick to beat you with if the first few weeks of the new season don't go according to plan.

Hmmm shame the SFC had to lose. And watching City win 5:1 against the Nux was a nice way to spend a balmy Wed evening down at AAMI stadium.

No one covering FFA Cup tonight. That's a shame. Some good football going on. SFC v Adelaide is nicely poised. I have a feeling SFC will edge through.

Uncle - it was the old fashioned newspaper sort do j don't have the link. It was in Melbourne Airport so it was the age I suspect. I'll see if I can find it on-line and post a link.

It's that time of the month for AFL and Newscorp journo's where they start ripping into codes which aren't AFL. As a rugby league fan I wouldn't take anything they say seriously, the fact they're talking about FFA Cup shows its slightly on their radar.

@LordBrucie The standard of the NRL & AFL is absolutely comical. The standard of Sheffield Shield cricket is so boring, even the seagulls can't be bothered turning up to watch. So what's your point?

I'd prefer a later start as well but after Christmas you'd have the lower league teams under-prepared and in their preseason, plus you'd have some teams in the ACL. Until or if the HAL season reverts to a Feb-Oct typed schedule were probably stuck with the current option.

Michael Zappone just reported they're expecting 3k at the Olympic Village tonight to watch 2 famous NSL clubs battle it out. Massive for a mid-week match involving 2 semi-professional clubs in suburban Melbourne featuring a team from interstate. Quarter Final berth in the 2015 FFA Cup is up for grabs. 2 Aleague teams also in action next to the CBD at AAMI Park. Will Melb City vs NIX get a bigger, or smaller, crowd that the 2 NPL teams?

One difference to Europe is the timing of this Cup. I appreciate that's it doubles as a pre-season competition so the HAL doesn't commence until October however if games were played during the season the HAL clubs would be more pre-occupied and more upsets would ensue. If Green Gully can take on Newcastle in between two hard HAL fixtures it is more likely some Newcastle players will be injured or rested etc. Certainly in Europe the upsets are aided by the bigger teams being focused on their domestic league and Europe rather then the domestic cup.

I think the point is to have the gap close enough so certain NPL players are more prepared for the jump when they are able to eventually crack it with an a-league team. When you think that the likes of Sasa Ognenvski and Vedran Janjetovic made the jump from the state leagues to the HAL, there would be a lot of others out there who could easily do the same.

Just out of curiosity, who was the AFL journo in question? I ask b/c admittedly a considerable portion of them over the last few years have scaled back if not ditched completely their antagonism towards us & the other codes, most notably Jon Ralph from the Herald-Sun; from writing an invective derision of the Asian Cup in '07 to now contributing decent opinions on the game on SEN radio. From the sounds of it though, this was in the Adelaide press which I'm assuming is still very much in the Dark Ages regarding inter-code relations.

We've at least three tiers - HAL, NPL and then the Capital Leagues which often have multiple divisions. Depends how you're counting? Anyway fitness - two seasons ago the fitness standard was "the NPL" for most semi-pro players; after all that's all that was needed. Two seasons later and you have the FFA Cup and the bar just got lifted, at least potentially. So now clubs and coaches have the motivation to organise their players better - fitness, diet, structures etc ... they'll never close the gap, but they will improve.

That's a cup upset. Ask the players and supporters of both clubs :)

How different would the financials of Brisbane Roar be had that ever got finished hey?

It's been touched on in a round about way, even Lord Brucie made some sort of sense, but fitness, and amateur v professional status is a huge reason for the disparity in scores. The A-League players are full time professionals. The NPL clubs, even though some players are paid, all have other jobs, and train 2-3 times a week, after work. There is a massive gulf in fitness. Watching a few of the games last year it was evident that most NPL clubs carried a few fat-boys. After about 30 minutes their legs would go as they struggled to match their physically superior opponents. The most organised side will lose if they càn't run. Also there has been plenty of talk about "cup upsets" and "giant killings", and comparisons to England, but these are misleading. How many genuine giant killings are there now? As a boy I remember footage of teams like Leatherhead , Yoevil and Sutton knocking out top division sides. Actually Leatherhead may have lost to Leicester in the end... The upsets that happen are premier league sides, usually second string lineups, being knocked out by championship or league one sides, hardly " giant killings" particularly when you consider England has 92 professional sides, but even the Blue Square (still called that?) Sides have relative wealth these days and many are full-time. That's almost 5 professional tiers. Australia has one, so the gulf between tiers one and two is enormous, arguably much bigger than the Premier League to the Blue Square. The English leagues are pretty homogenous too. Outside the tyop 6-7 clubs there's really not much between the next 30 sides, therefore "upsets" are more likely. Ultimately you'll struggle to find many fat boys in England. Fitness levels are pretty similar, therefore lower league teams can compete for a whole game, be organised, keep it tight and cause an "upset", usually against a second string side though. We need to stop comparing apples with pizza

Waz - From 1967 when it opened until 1974 there was a model of the finished Perry Park ground lay in the foyer to the clubhouse which showed the finished article ,grandstand and all. I believe it may heve been lost in the 1974 floods when most of the QSF records were lost in the floods that inundated the city. Cheers jb

there was another cupset. 3rd tier South Springvale winning on penalties against NPLNNSW South Cardiff. technically two tiers below even if not from the same federation.

Low crowds??? maybe he should look at the now defunct Foxtel cup for a comparison.

Lol Just wait until the AFL start to consider the same concept