Socceroos' failure is a blessing in disguise

No one who follows international football would predict such nonsense. You wouldn't be surprised if Australia beat Thailand at home by at least 3 goals, but you'd never predict it. You wouldn't be surprised if France were to beat Luxembourg 3-0 at home, but you'd never predict it.

Yep, Pacman, and without the owners, I would hate to think what the game would look like if they all decided to pull out on mass.

@Caltex, pretty sure the clubs know how things work. They simply want a bigger share of the pie, and I suspect are engaging in gamesmanship. At the end of the day, A-League clubs have invested heavily for little return, or more often for less than no return. They are looking out for themselves, IMHO.

Thanks pacman. So perhaps this maybe the reason why the clubs feel they are being short changed by the FFA?

Thanks for that. It's the first I've heard of that, so I'll keep my social media channels open on Monday morning. Sure. AFL & Cricket Australia have spare cash so they can inflate wages all across the organization - from the CEO, to the admin staff, to the development staff. If the AFLW players are generating revenue that pays their wages - fine. But, with free entry to matches & $0 from TV, I'd say the male competition is subsidizing the female players. BBLW will be the same. The cash generated by BBLW will not be covering the wages. Cash from the male competitions is being siphoned off to pay the women. No problem with that. But, let's be transparent & not pretend AFLW & BBLW are financial success stories.

Likely to be contra entries Caltex. Seem to remember this being mentioned in earlier press releases. Like the advertising on Fox. They agree to pay FFA a certain amount, and FFA and Fox agree on what value advertising will be run, and that amount is to be charged back via contra book entries.

The new W League EBA is announced next week (pretty sure it's Monday) along with fixtures etc. hopefully there's an improvement in broadcast on Fox and a retention of the ABC FTA deal (or st least another FTA). I take your point we don't compete with AFL/BBL but the fact they're paid well and football isn't is a focuss point at junior level where Dads n Mums are making the choices.

I'm not an accountant, but there are a few items in there that raised my eyebrow and I would like some sort of explanation to why these items are in the millions: Marketing & Media = $10.5 Please explain, I hadn't seen one bit of advertising connected to Football on FTA TV---we have all been critical saying where is the marketing of football? Event Hosting = $6.0 Please explain what event hosting have we been involved with? If these costs are for WC group qualifiers isn't this covered by gate receipts and the AFC TV monies? Broadcasting = $5.2 Please explain, I thought the money was being paid to us---who are we paying and for what?

Ok. I must've missed something. What's the announcement on Monday? Regardless, let's stop jumping at shadows. WLeague does not compete with AFLW & BBLW. Those comps are 7 week circuses. They come to town for Christmas holidays. They create a lot of noise. Then no one gives a stuff for the next 45 weeks. Let's find ways to get football community engaging with ALeague & Wleague Leave the AFLW to AFL fans; BBLW to cricket fans.

Nemesis - we will find out on Monday won't we? Tuesdays headlines will either be positive or negative in regards to what gets announced. I made a very simple statement that seems to have started an avalanche of responses - as a code we need lots and lots and lots of good news/feel good stories and an end to the overwhelming negativity; but it actually has to be positive stuff not smoke n mirrors propaganda. All I said was Monday can start that change - if the ffa/clubs can afford it they should; if they can't then don't. But the media will only be positive about the code with one of those, the latter will open days/weeks/months of negative articles on the topic that will get rehashed again and again when AFLW and Women's Big Bash kick off .... so it's time to pull up, pull up. I strongly support the women's game, the FFA (and the clubs who fund most of the professional game) have taken input. Let's see if they've listened on Monday?

I think you're having a slight over-reaction to my comment? What's gone wrong is a long, long list of things, I haven't written about them but others have - google "Australian Soccer" and filter on the past 12 months and see what you see; the find is generally negative and very often self-inflicted. And we have to change the tone as a code, we need to "pull up" to use my pun. That can start Monday with a much improved ist offer to our ladies .... and ideally we carry on with some good news sorting out the ness we find ourselves in.

Punter, and in the 'glass-half-full' version qualification for the next WC at Hombush in front of 80,000 fans and a million+ on tv will be a huge boost to the game, and a commercial windfall, arguably it's the best way to get there (providing we get there lol). You've been on these pages for several years, as several of us have, and the winters are normally dominated by the usual sort of ramblings most of which are mainly opinion. This year there is no opinion about it - the games in a constitutional crisis and has succeeded in scoring a series of own goals; it's time for that to change - all my point was Monday can be the start of that

Nem, read Caltex's post: "Nemesis – ...this is what the club owners don’t believe and want the FFA to open their books for scrutiny..."

I suppose thats why Vanuatu never make the world cup. They're set up to beat Brazil, Germany etc not the other teams around them....

jb. It's a particularly wearing cycle and one I know you're familiar with. You will no doubt know people caught up in the Football Queensland NPL licence debacle, while not knowing the rights/wrongs of this (we're a junior feeder club to a BPL side who lost out on the NPL bid so not directly impacted) it's turning into a bun fight of epic proportions and it shouldn't be this way, the ffa shouldn't constantly be fighting with its stakeholders either, it's the wrong use of energy. The code is need of some good news - some good PR - qualification will provide that but we need more as I say. But you're right, it don't happening over night. But will it happen by or in November?

No one is suggesting the FFA have cooked the books. The only point ALeague club owners are interested in discovering is simply: How much of the FFA's annual $100m revenue is attributable to the ALeague competition. That's it. Nothing complicated. No conspiracies, or allegation of corruption.

Mahler - Don't know how much you know about the "nuts and bolts" of football in Australia but here are a couple of things Waz could have mentioned. Firstly in the 13 years since the "resurrection" we have had 3 different highly paid CEO's ,all poached from other codes and one must assume a rather sparse knowledge of the "world game".It would be hard to find any substantial,long lasting influence any of these 3 have had on the game We then move to the national coaching position. Again we find 4 incumbents since the HAL was formed and we must ignore the temporary assignment of Hiddink who was only there for a purpose. With the other 3 we have had 2 that successfully got us through to the World Cup proper in the qualifying tournaments. Both were sacked and today we find our local incumbent battling to get us into that same WC albeit through another 4 matches that have to be won for success to be achieved. We then look at junior coaching and the much lauded Curriculum that was written over 2 years by a well qualified coach who "retired" after those years and then popped up in India doing the same job. He did leave another well qualified man to police the installation of the curriculum but we found that this policemen had to re-write the curriculum,which he did ,but then rather suddenly quit his job at the end of contract to join an HAL franchise. He publicly stated perhaps the National Curriculum was a step too far for Australian football. All this for a curriculum based on ideas first introduce into Australian coaching back in 1974.!!!!! Now Mahler ,like Waz and Nemesis, I could go on but can you start to imagine the dollars that have been spent in just the 3 areas I mention. Have we had our money's worth?. That is the question. Look forward to readinG your offerings . Cheers jb.

Big call to suggest that FFA have cooked the books. Especially, as I understand things, the financials have been audited.

Punter - A huge leap from the 1974 Socceroos to the 2001 Socceroos. Strange that you mention the administrators in 2001 but I can go back 27 years to a time when I was involved in arranging a trial game for Rasic's Socceroos in preparation for the WC proper. At the after match function I happened to be chatting to one of the successful Socceroos from that era ,and in the conversation he asked when was football going to get administrators with football knowledge. He pointed out an "official" who held a high position in the Socceroo structure and passed the comment,"That guy doesn't know the first thing about the game". So you see Punter,things haven't changed as much as we like to think in those 30 years. Cheers jb.