Sydney FC desperately want to control the Illawarra region

I spent many years going to Brandon Park. The gong is seriously a proper football town. It is beyond me that the Wolves are now considered a feeder club. Sydney trying to capture the market will merely turn further Illawarra football fans away from the game.

15k a year and people wonder why Australia is not producing more top quality footballers. The EPL is the biggest vulture in the world and Australia is seen a as one of the prime targets for exploitation. The key problem is no one wants to produce footballers anymore and identify talent they just want to find the richest parents.

Ridiculous headline, Sydney FC part of the reason they did a lot fo school visits to the Wollongong region is because they used to have quite a few players living there. Dont know if thats the case now. One of those is Jacob Timpano who is at Wollongong Wolves now. its also ridiculous to compare the case of WSW who are scared of a team 40km away and made them delay by a season becuase they were playing even further away at Homebush the previous season to Sydney who are playing mainly at Kogarah now and thats only 10km away from Moore Park anyway. So it makes utterly no sense to allow WSW to delay a team for a year despite moving back to their home stadium from Homebush and then argue that Sydney Fc should have allowed a team where they have moved to their location and are away from their home stadium for the next three seasons. There is obviously no issue with a Wollongong team.

No they are one of three Sydney teams so they can no longer use the logo or slogan "we are Sydney" as they are not they are one third of Sydney .must be Desperate for supporters they cant get support in Sydney so now they are trying out of their area in another city for fans for when their new stadium is ready . must be embarrassing to have a new 40,000 stadium with only 6 thousands fans attending .Stick to Sydney, Sydney fc.

oh go away you must be from Football south coast is that you Eddy what a load of bull .utter rubbish you speak . your clearly not from the area and have no understanding . we still hold the biggest crowds in the NPL ,the wolves are our team always have been and always will be everyone remembers the two NSL crowns and how fifteen thousand turned up for the celebrations at the Frat .As for Sydney teams they need to understand football is tribal its about representing your local area your fans Wollongong is not sydney and we feel no connection to any Sydney team so why would we support any of them when we have our own team .we support the wolves thats it . other Sydney teams have tried before and failed and this Sydney team will fail as well as will the team from Sydney western suburbs Campbeltown bulls they should be worried of the wanderers cannibalising their market being up the road from each other campbetltown parramatta are next door to each other . . We are not Sydney we are Wollongong on the south coast of NSW and have no interest in supporting Sydney teams . Proud to be from the Gong. sydney are our rivals thats what would make a Wollongong wolves team in the A league so great all the rivalries we would have against all the Sydney teams

Interesting comment, Sydney is just too spread out to have one team represent the whole area. That's why they resort to hashtags such as 'Sydney is sky blue' to try change that. But you can't have someone from Bondi or Coogee standing next to someone from Blacktown or Mt Druitt supporting the same team, because the former looks down on the latter as being less human due to their postcode, they even sing calling us scum. It's why WSW got such a fanatical following in Season 1, you're not meant to be proud to be from Western Sydney but here are a group of people holding up their postcodes to the same people who look down on them because through the A League there was finally an outlet for them (us) to be proud of it.

Those who know how to think , need no teachers.

The Wolves are a bit of a joke on the South Coast, needing a Park Footy (RL) team to buy their stadium and then playing in an empty WIN Stadium, I think it’s awesome the Sky Blues showing an interest in the region.

Haha, I don’t think Sydney needs Wollongong, even as a proud resident of the Illawarra. The really interesting point will be how the Wolves fare against Sydney FC. They are leading the NPL with a really attractive, flowing form of football. Another talking point will be the attendance figure for that match. The Wolves have one more home game this season, and apart from that it may be a chance to celebrate the NPL title. The last time Sydney FC came to town they got 8,000+. If they could go near that again (or exceed it), then they will have attracted a bigger crowd than the Dragons three recent games.

This article is rubbish. The denouncement of Southern Expansion Sydney FC was more about the St George and Sutherland Shire areas and not Wollongong as this is where a large proportion of its existing membership resides. Sure, Sydney FC are investing more in Wollongong but so what? I know a few Sydney FC fans from the Gong and I suspect that if the Wolves ever got into the A-League they'd dump Sydney FC for Wollongong and that's fair enough. The Gong is an area that is ripe for the A-League in my view and would arguably offer more than the Nix and the Mariners with a genuine football culture that exists down there and a production line of quality players over the years (which is the real reason Sydney FC are investing down there). Given there is a vacuum down there at the moment in professional football Sydney FC are just trying to tap into it wherever possible mainly in area of player talent spotting - but to suggest they are desperate in their quest for control it is way off the mark. The author is clearly biased against Sydney FC with reference to "Bling FC" (lazy stereotype that harks back to Dwight York days but is not relevant these days) and the comment about "tightened the muzzle on the Wolves" re the MOU. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Sydney FC held a gun to the head of the Wolves in making them sign it.

They've moved some of their junior teams into Valentine Park - which is WSW territory, so they can try capture some of the talent pool. We've already had WSW juniors tell Sydney FC they're not interested when offered contracts. Looks like the new WSW Academy is paying dividends already. Kids loyal to the West who won't stand for people singing about how their home is scum.

This article just reinforces what we've been saying all along, Sydney FC are definitely not a 'team for all of Sydney'.

The Smurfs should target the Inner West (Leichardt) instead as their secondary market - it'll put the squeeze on Wests Tigers!

This will all change with a second division and pro/rel. Do you honestly think Wollongong would want to be attached to Sydney FC once this happens, of course not. This idea that a club has a monopoly on certain areas and regions is ridiculous. You win over hearts and minds firstly by getting the opportunity to compete and secondly by serving your community, members and fans well. Do that and you become a pretty well run club. Its not rocket science. I look forward to Wollongong being part of a future 2nd division and then promotion to A-league if good enough.

"The illawarra most definitely does not identify as part of Sydney." - There have been proposals for the Illawarra to become a separate state. It doesn't just not identify with Sydney, it barely even identifies with New South Wales.

Until the Wolves get into a national 2nd division I don’t see a problem with Sydney linking with the south coast. There’s plenty of youth there who would want to play professionally and if Sydney can fork that link first good luck to them.

The illawarra most definitely does not identify as part of Sydney. There's a little piece of land called the national park dividing us. As someone who has lived their entire life down here, I can confirm we hate nothing more than being grouped in with Sydney. It's not that we dislike Sydney, just that we're vastly different people. As far as Sydney fc go, a lot of people in the illawarra area support fc, but this is and always will be wolves territory. We're a proud old club that had success and looks like adding to that this season. Crying out for A - league football down here and the wolves are the only team that should provide it.

Bring back relegation, then you'll have real football! No time for turf wars.

1) Wollongong should have its own side in the A-League. 2) They only need one more win to be crowned NPL premiers. 3) Interesting: The NPL Grand Final will be at the new stadium in Parramatta. 4) Tottenham Hotspur seem to "Love The Gong" - Commencing in February 2020 The new UOW Tottenham Hotspur Global Football Program will offer students a unique opportunity to study a qualification of their choice at UOW's Wollongong campus, while also developing their football skills with training provided by fully qualified coaches from English Premier League (EPL) club Tottenham Hotspur. The first of its kind, the program brings together one of the world's best-known football clubs and one of the world's best modern universities. The cost is $15,000 per year and as part of the program, students will undertake 16 - 20 hours of football training each week for 36 weeks around their academic timetable, and will have opportunities for selection to compete at a local, national and international level. Applications for our 2020 intake are now open. Find out more about the application process below. - https://www.uow.edu.au/study/football/

Illawarra is not part of Sydney, like Geelong to Melbourne