A buoyant Victory and a busted Sydney – just what the A-League Men’s needed

Maybe Newcastle are the team people should be talking about. The people’s champs , the heart of football in Australia. They were very slick at times against Wsw , just need to bury those chances.

While I can consider entertaining the possibility there are conscious or subconscious biases relating to major metropolitan teams in the interests of maximising broadcast revenue It's worth mentioning that given the build-up in the city etc the preference would have very much been for a Jets win on that particular GF just as they would have preferred WSW to win when CCM beat them so any preferences can go either way when it comes to metro/regional depending on circumstances

Yeah there's a fine balance in ensuring the cap covered by broadcast rights ensures viable teams and general competitiveness if teams are well coached Other side is teams with the means to do so need to be able to acquire quality in order to help competitiveness in the ACL which represents the profile of the league internationally

I can understand WU as it is half regional based in Geelong/Ballarat which aren't strong enough for their own team and half based on melbournes western suburbs. Similarly I could understand Charlesworth wanting CCM to also encompass northern Sydney Hard to escape the sense that Macarthur would have been better off being Wollongong or a "South Coast" side encompassing Wollongong and southern Sydney. There is certainly a better relationship with the local council going by them allowing WPFC to use it as a home base Agree, I had been hoping Canberra and perhaps Tasmania had picked up teams but Canberra and Wollongong would have been fine. Hopefully Gold Coast and FNQ are viable in the long term

Tbf there was benefit to the "unite the tribes" approach to having a singular team in Melbourne and Sydney for the first couple of years and the billboards having the City name at the centre line emphasised supporting the given team for that city Expanding for WSW made sense, Heart less so and ironically WU would have made sense at the time as it is quasi regional but as it stands when Heart turned into City and a proper identity was established the issue sorted itself out As for Brisbane, QLD has always been considered important as evidenced by the fact that two of the early expansion teams were on Gold Coast and FNQ and it is majorly unfortunate at least one of those teams was unable to remain viable Having 3rd Melbourne and Sydney teams at the expense of expanding the greater footprint doesen't make sense to me especially as TV broadcast revenue has ended up halving anyway Managing fans/active support wasn't done well but that goes for every stakeholder though as FFA eventually got team owners and players offside as well.

MV result was good in that it might be good time in re-engaging the AL support given attendance disruptions and pull the averages up etc The away win against WU could just of easily been a 0-0 draw and it is to MV's advantage the matches have been in Victoria so far With Sydney it's a bit of a mix in the sense that surprisingly they haven't scored in two games but at the same time only conceding one goal in the two games points to a fairly robust defence and if you are creating chances as a team while one result may go against your team ultimately the team will do fine What was encouraging was seeing the Matildas crowd and good FTA coverage so in time I do feel Channel 10 driven publicity will bear fruit although it will take time with Wellington and Macarthur playing in front of empty home away from home stadiums dragging down the average and looking heinous on TV

ahahahahaha gold Stu, if you said that in a public house, I would have bought you a cleansing beverage

smaller clubs? what do you mean?

Do the “bigger” teams bring in more crowd numbers & higher TV viewers? Is it really true that a successful Sydney FC mean a successful A-League? Ok, let’s end the season with the smaller clubs at the top of the table. Is this new ladder more beneficial to Channel 10? Does it make more money for football? 1. Newcastle Jets 2. Brisbane Roar 3. Western United 4. Wellington Phoenix 5. Perth Glory 6. Central Coast Mariners 7. Adelaide Reds 8. Macarthur Bulls 9. Western Sydney Wanderers 10. Sydney FC 11. Melbourne Victory 12. Melbourne City

It's much the same in Spain, The A-League lacks the football history and the broader political and social history to make it work in the same way.

LH -Another example of you starting to question what you are seeing. That was my original intent when I said to you that you, as a long term supporter of Roar, should start and form your own opinions and not base your thoughts on what others write and say in media circles. Refreshing, keep up the good work. Cheers jb.

I used to sit right next to the away side at Suncorp. MV were average most years, had one good year of away crowds as I think they organised away trips for fans. Sydney and WSW have a reasonable number of local fans, or border crossers perhaps.

No doubt they were the better side, but the game could still have gone either way until Ivanovic missed the sitter.

Brisbane rarely complain, to my knowledge. Us fans might, but we don't often hear much from the executive or coaching team.

AA I don’t buy into the argument about who’s on the board of the FA, the reason I’m a llifelong Sheffield Wednesday fan. It’s accepted in the UK that everything( not just football) is governed from London, begrudgingly however by those from the North. In Sheffield given its historical influence on the game(worlds oldest football club, the Sheffield rules usurped by the London based Football Association Rules) there is even greater dissent. I see no difference here with the big 2 cities, power & influence in the country will always reside there in most things, including football. I never said I liked this imbalance, but it’s a brick wall job trying to change it and being a Wednesday fan my forehead is covered in bruises and I don’t need any more with the Roar. You also see similar in the Melbourne centric AFL and Sydney centric NRL. Will it change, extremely doubtful, but that’s not the reason Brisbane are at Redcliffe, the momentum was there at Suncorp at the end of the 2013/14 season , the owners failed to capitalise. Can’t speak for Adelaide that’s your territory, but I do know the Roar (like Wednesday in a football mad city with over a 150 years of professional football existence) could have done a lot lot more with their 3 Grand Final wins to engage the good folk of Brisbane, in particular football fans. They didn’t and that’s down to the club, not powerbrokers in Sydney or Melbourne.