The A-League's best football takes place in the finals

J b The myth of state of origin I think both yourself and David are correct in a way . Many players stayed in Queensland and were chosen to play from Australia from the Brisbane rugby league and some even from country nsw competitions . Many warringah with the pokie dollars started bringing players down , then big mal went to the raiders but the Queensland rugby league paid there stars like king Wally to stay for many years and teams like Wynnum manly and Souths with Wayne Bennett as coach had about a dozen kangaroos between them . Eventually the broncos came into the competition but state of origin continues to flourish. And I like the A league having finals, but the competition is currently dire and needs a reboot . Whatever Australian soccer can do to get our young players to be as good as the kids carving up at Liverpool spurs city Ajax etc , I will support. I’m thinking it’s the academy’s and quality of coaching at these clubs , and the desire of the individuals to be able to master the skills , which is something Aussie soccer players are falling short on at present.

David The "mythology" surrounding the huge success of the State of Origin matches has grown exponentially as the years have passed. The truth is a bit hard to swallow for today's top Rugby League men, for the man who suggested and put in place the "new" rules,Senator Ron McAuliffe, unashamedly posed the question that was to change what was developing into a fiasco (such were the scores) when he asked, and I quote, "Why do the 2 Manchester United players,Law and Best, play their every day football in England, and yet play international football for Scotland and Nth. Ireland respectively. When told they played for the country of their birth the Senator smiled,snapped his fingers, and said "that's the answer". Two years later the first State of Origin took place and went on from strength to strength. The changes? NSW were no longer allowed to use players born in Queensland and as any die-hard RL fan will tell you,before that date most of the codes best players were playing in NSW mainly due,not to their birth state,but to the money being available in that state due to the influence of poker machines. Cheers jb.

Lionheart, I was there and I can tell you that the WHOLE stadium, bar the 500 city fans, got involved, and nearly always do. There are several chants that the RED ARMY start and lead, and the whole stadium gets involved. I'm sorry if your TV medium didn't reflect the true atmosphere.

FYI Buddy, Hindmarsh holds 15,500 so the 13, 232 that turned up on a chilly Sunday evening, while the Crows were playing down the road, is a GREAT result. So a bit unkind to suggest the stadium was 'well short of capacity'.

Once again, Just because the northern states always play finals doesn't mean its the same for the rest of the country. Not to mention they were the ones who forced it on everyone else because they were weak enough to accept ideas from non-football people as gospel. Also saying that football traditionalists in this country like me are only interested in copying english football is ridiculous when the majority of our migrant cultural influence is from the Mediterranean countries, which funnily enough, also have no interest in bogan playoffs either.

There are significant rumblings that the ALeague owners will be happy to tear up the current TV deal when they take control of the ALeague. From what I've been told, the deal can continue seamlessly with the transfer of ALeague to the Clubs; but it requires both FoxSports and the new owners to sign the new contract. Rather than haggle about how much of the current $56M/yr deal should be assigned to ALeague inventory, the clubs are now willing to walk away from the existing deal. They were furious with the deal the FFA struck with FoxSports. The APFCA's advisors (who also advised the EPL on TV rights) had recommended a totally different deal, which FFA summarily dismissed, presumably because of close links between the FFA CEO and New Corp. Big changes are coming.

As you say, we'll be lucky to get to 14 before the end of the current media deal (how many seasons left? 3 or 4?) Next season we return to the largest amount of clubs which have ever participated in the A-League: 11. That one season we had 11 clubs is the worst on record in terms of attendance. In other words, very difficult to predict how things will shape up next season, let alone when we get to 12 the following season. No doubt, for many good reasons, 14 teams remains an achievable objective, the speed of getting there is not so easy to predict.

One important consideration is that sports competitions in Australia developed the way they did because of our geography and history, and we're not the only ones - e.g. see Brazil, Argentina, et al. Until the 1970s, players in Australia's major codes were happy to stay in their own countries, just as footballers around the world generally did. This began changing during the 70s, gradually, with the gravitation of talent to the NSWRL and VFL comps respectively, thus reinforcing the view they were the undisputed "elite" leagues of their sports. It also began to impact interstate games, City v Country in Rugby League, etc which led to the introduction of Origin rules for these contests. If you look at the Kangaroos test squads you'll find that players from the BRL and country comps were still being selected at the time - as recently as 1982 (the year of the "Invicibles" team), a player from the Queensland country leagues was in the squad. The pokie dollar in NSW changed the rules. While Victoria didn't have the pokies and VFL/AFL clubs never developed a reliance on them, recruitment from interstate was not without is financial consequences as the 1980s bore out. By that time, national leagues for the major codes (the NSL and NBL had started in the late 70s) was inevitable.

I think they’ll go to 16 teams pretty quickly. Certainly not before the next media deal though, we’ll be lucky to get to 14 by then. The biggest question mark is New Zealand’s participation, if Nix stay I recon they’ll chance their arm on an Auckland side; if they don’t Canberra here they come. Canberra is the only obvious gap in the equation so add them, a second NZ side and perm any two somewhere along the east coast from north Brisbane to Tasmania. I think the existing owners will drive this - $18m/Licence divided between them.

Football has been playing “finals football” for a Century now. There’s no ability to “land grab” tradition ... unless you want to be die Ufuk and day “but, but ... the English don’t do it”?

Can you not have rivalry to see who can produce the most pathetic performance?

The season will be shorter but not by a lot. The likelihood is that the season will be reduced from 27 games to 26 games. With an 11 and 12 team comp, that means 2.5 rotations of games, i.e. some teams will play each other three times, others twice. When a 14 team comp comes in some time in the future, 26 games will be ideal, and that's where it will sit for a long time to come.

Clubs like the glory won't have to worry about getting relegated for a long time. Not only is P&R coming in going to be well, well into the future, when it does come in, it will be so restricted, it will be like one chance out of a hundred that some tin pot team from nowhere will be able to replace an original club.

It was such an astonishing achievement that will never be matched we won't shut up about it.

Please go away ;)

jb. There’s been plenty of discussion on whether Fowler will make a good coach or not; no one knows of course but he is what people would describe as “a winner” and has a personal/professional “brand” to worry about - so I don’t expect anything from him other than an aggressive attitude to success. I think you’re on the money with your thoughts here - Fowler is probably trying to tie down 3-4 UK based players as his visa group, and maybe add in a very functional O’Donovan.

Have a shorter season with less games, cut a couple of months out of the dull regular season.

Yep what an enlightened take. Us plebs should be so grateful to have such insightful analysis. Whats the point of the regular season when knockout games by nature guarentees us gripping Football and higher metrics? Let's just have a season long playoff system instead, with every single team involved, obviously played exclusively in AFL stadiums. It's clearly so much better since the Non-Football fans in charge (and their bootlickers in the media) have so easily tossed aside longstanding Football tradition and culture that many fans hold dear as a unique point of difference to our game.

Wa v Victoria was huge in aussie rules and was a bigger rivalry than vic v sa at one point. Wa invented state of origin in 1977 and beat the vics more times than not until 1986. State of origin died in wa, when the eagles began. People like myself enjoy glory beating Sydney or Melbourne clubs more, as there is a perception that the a-league administrators and foxsports can be very Sydney and Melbourne centric. Even the talk of promotion and relegation. The only teams that realistically have a chance of promotion (that arent all ready in the a-league) are vic and nsw teams. Glory being relegated would have dire consequences to the game in WA.

"Not being sponsored by Red Bull, hey" - Maybe they should be a sponsor, they could make an ad based on the story. The bulls need to make a getaway but get cornered. They all have a drink of Red Bull which gives them all wings so that they can fly away. Red Bull gives you wings. (supposedly) - In fact they've already made a similar ad: https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/366935e7189ab74415d8667e9165f541 https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/red-bull-agrees-to-pay-15-million-for-falsely-claiming-to-provide-superpowers/news-story/e3404eb4df0abb5c91230dc6b8d501f9