An Asian Super League is not what Australian football needs

I am coming late to this article but I agree that it seems like it could almost work in our favor. We keep going on about the need for a second division. i dont know the format but I am assuming each county would enter a couple of teams, not just one (as there only seemed to be 6 nations mentioned in discussion). So it seem to me that this could be our new top league with the A League acting as a second division. Surely this allows us to push our very best players forward on an international level and open up more opportunities at home for more players to enter the professional realm. It would be a great stepping stone for our best and brightest to be seen and develop against higher level opposition, especially if the clubs entered were under the authority of FFA, they could really exploit it to develop our potential Socceroos and support their move to bigger and better things from the A League. We would still have our local A League to support week in and week out with the NPL below hopefully pushing plenty of young players through. Isn't this what we want, a real pyramid set up that allows us to cast the net wide, push those exceptional players, then promote our very best in an effort to launch them onto the international scene?

the immigration pattern has changed, there are only 1m poms in the country , ethnic clubs who will watch football, before the child exploitation era ethnic club would go out of business when the social club stopped making money, now with rego fees they can live on forever at NPL level.

Can you ask the SMH and daily telegraph why they dedicated print space every day for the get rid of Lowy articles and once he was gone, there was hardly any coverage of the A-league. Though even then it was something compared to the zero A-league articles when the move to Paramount happened. What happened to the big anti Lowy cheer squadron on here as well. They seemed to have all deserted the ship.

Waz - The reason the A-League took up its shape and content was simple, it was fiscal and nothing else. You see the NSL contained teams that were totally dependent on their social clubs for money. Pass the hat around at a game or make a request to the social club committee usually got some satisfaction and the Hakoah early departure from the NSL mid season was proof of this anomaly, At the AGM of the Hakoah Social Club the new chairman posed the question, where had the $300,000 expenditure showing on the football books, gone the previous season??? The answer was never forthcoming but months later Hakoah/Eastern Suburbs were withdrawn from the NSL mid season. Frank Lowy was chairman of the soccer club at this time When Lowy was asked by the government to "save soccer" some 20 years later he elected to get rid of this "problem " immediately. This was done by making it a franchise based league where an entrant had to come up with $.5,000,000 for a license not to mention the costs of signing up players and staff before a ball was kicked. Now put yourself in the place of say a Marconi Social Club committee member, elected annually at an AGM, when a branch of your Social Club, the football department, suddenly pops up with a request for $10,000,000 for starters, what are you going to do say yes or no.????? I'll leave that for your perusal. Cheers jb.

The ethnic clubs were products of their time, a very specific time in Australian and wider world history. The migrant communities which built those clubs no longer really exist in their original form. Not just European migrant communities - this is a change also affecting Asian migrant communities as well (Chinatown isn't what it used to be). Ironically, the Internet and social media has made it much easier for Australians of various migrant backgrounds to stay in touch with "home" than ever before - possibly making such institutions redundant in a way.

Without repeating comments I’ve made on some of the items you raise, complaining about ‘driving a wedge’ between the professional and non-professional game is such nonsense. Let’s not forget, except for a short lived and failed experiment with promotion and relegation, the NSL was a closed league. The ones complaining loudest about the A-League, like South Melbourne, are hypocrites. They are happy to be part of A closed league so long as they are in it. They think Australian football owes them an existence even though they were doing their best to run it into the ground at a time when it should have been booming. If the A-League has raised the gap between the professional and non-professional game in this country by raising the standard of the professional game, then that is not a bad thing.

Except we have tv and sponsorship deals of over $40m/year. And yes, Lowy Snr deserves credit for getting the AL up and running BUT in doing that he drive a large wedge between professional football and the rest AND sucked revenue out of the pro-competition to support the FFA starving it of growth funds. Lowy Jnr took what Frank did and turned it in to a train wreck - he was at war with fans, pro-clubs, sbs, competing codes, the media, his national team manager, and the rot started in his shift. The APL were left to pick up the pieces - so far they don’t look up to the job tbh.

pre Lowy NSL crowd average 3-5k grand final TV rating of 2 in Melbourne for a Melbourne team Lowy crowd averages 10k+ Tv ratings good post Lowy back to the NSL Yes we have returned to the good old days.

The concept of a super league is not that of the current intercontinental competition. The latter means occasional games while still playing in the local competition and is a good idea. The super league means the intercontinental competition is now the main weekly competition and the local league is deprived of it biggest clubs. Asia super leagues wont require investment, and what exactly would the Australian govenment do to fund them exactly. Potential super leagues would be north east asia, Middle East, South East Asia.

Lowy needed to go. If only to allow succession to take place

The current powerbrokers in Australian football had no plan for the game other than ousting the Lowys and gaining power. The signs were always there for those looking through objective lens. Now even their biggest boosters are beginning to see it.

Unfortunately yes.

The saviour of Australian football just ended up being another smooth talking used car salesman.

This is a real hit to James Johnson’s credibility. His days are numbered, will leave after the WWC I recon

Hmm...The question marks were meant to be a thumbs up.

Respectfully Jack...they are motherhood statements.. The most pressing issue for the health of the code is match day attendances in the ALM...Ticket prices absolutely....but are people not watching their teams because the system hasn't been unbundled...or because of junior fees?.. Back when the League began Uncle Frankie's ambition was that by now all clubs would be averaging 15k ...with the top 4 averaging 25k....is a lack of unbundling the reason we are not there? Happy Easter to you too.????

There is no way anyone would want Australia in an Asian super league because of the flying distance. There could be two super leagues easily, east and west , a combined one on the other hand would not work,

let's hope we see that