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It's official: Western Melbourne and Macarthur-South West Sydney to join A-League

13th December, 2018
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13th December, 2018
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The worst kept secret of the last 24 hours has been officially confirmed, with the FFA today announcing Western Melbourne Group and Macarthur-South West Sydney have had their A-League application bids approved.

That wasn’t the only bombshell dropped at today’s press conference, however, with FFA chairman Chris Nikou also revealing that the A-League was working to establish the feasibility of a second division of competition in the near future.

In a press release, Nikou said he’d seen “unprecedented interest” from bidders to join the competition, lauding the news as allowing the A-League to “create new rivalries, bigger television audiences, more derbies and importantly, further opportunities for Australian footballers to play at the highest level in this country.

“One of the key factors in our decision was the long-term growth opportunity for each club in each new geography. South-West Sydney and Melbourne represent some of the biggest growth corridors in Australia,” he added.

In a highly competitive and drawn out process that formally began in May of this year, the Western Melbourne and Macarthur-South West Sydney bids were officially unveiled as the successful ones at a press conference this afternoon.

Western Melbourne will begin play in the 2019-20 season, while Macarthur-South West Sydney won’t join until the 2020-21 season amidst reports Western Sydney Wanderers demanded a full season at their upgraded home ground before their new local rivals joined the competition.

Gallop admitted during the press conference that the “dislocation” of the two Sydney teams from their normal venues “was a factor” in the third Sydney club’s delayed introduction.

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The news has proved controversial among A-League fans, with many cynical about whether the decision to add a third team to each of Australia’s most populous cities constitutes genuine expansion.

Nikou, however, was keen to point out they weren’t just going to stop at 12 clubs.

“Our work on expanding the Hyundai A-League does not stop here. This is the start of a journey which will see our competition grow beyond 12 teams in the future.

“In particular, we acknowledge on this occasion that a license has not been granted to the Canberra region. We do, however, continue to view Canberra as an attractive opportunity for potential future expansion,” he added.

Gallop also made special mention of the unsuccessful Canberra and South Melbourne bids, claiming the league was keen to keep talking to them but, when pressed on why those bids were unsuccessful, only cryptically said the other two bids outweight them “on the pluses and minuses”.

In total, 15 bids were submitted by the May deadline set by the FFA earlier this year, although just a month later that list was reduced to ten, with Tasmania, Gold Coast, West Adelaide, Fremantle and inner-Melbourne’s Belgravia Leisure all scratched off the list.

The list was further whittled down to eight bidders in August, with Macarthur and South West Sydney merging their bids and Brisbane City getting the chop, before a final six was settled on in October as Ipswich Pride and Wollongong Wolves were cut.

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Of the final six, many considered the joint Macarthur-South West Sydney bid and Team 11 (South-East Melbourne) as the frontrunners.

A perceived lack of development in Western Melbourne’s proposed area was thought to be a stumbling block, although it was reported the Victorian government was much more amicable to funding the public transport infrastructure that bid required, as opposed to the stadium funding sought by Team 11.

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Western Melbourne are privately funding a stadium in Tarneit, which is said to have been designed purely with football in mind, but will play out of Geelong’s GMHBA Stadium until it is completed in 2022.

As far as W-League expansion goes, Greg O’Rourke reiterated the current expansion process “never included” the women’s competition. He claimed the FFA did still want to expand the W-League, but noted any claims by bidders about women’s teams were nothing more than the team claiming “they’d love to have W-League team”.

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