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Joined July 2009
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Bear with me, football fans. While it may seem a little mean to reject the oft-treasured ideal of equality, their really is no place…
The A-League needs Sustainable Growth using the MLS Model taking into account the limitations of Australia’s population distribution, market capabilities and the realities of the constant drain of losing its best players overseas.
The A League’s focus should firstly be on getting itsframeworks right in terms of growing the supporter bases of existing teams, giving teams more independence, increasing exposure, maintaining players and creating better pathways for talented young players to become internationals.
Realistically there is little benefit in adding more teams in markets with 5-10k crowds to the a league for now, which is why a lower budget 2nd division would be a good option in the medium term as a place for smaller markets to grow supporter bases with the potential of becoming a league teams.
Help design the future A-League (Part 1)
This is the much bigger rort! The AFL / Ticketmaster have discovered that by holding registration for the ticket ballot before the preliminaries they can even make a extra $250K+ from the members of the teams who don’t even make the GF!
And forget camping out any more, this random ballot system has also taken away the opportunity for die hard members to ‘earn’ their ticket by lining up on Monday morning, which was a GF tradition for fans. For which ever teams make it there will be thousands of fans who have seldom missed their team play a game for years, only to miss their big day.
AFL ticket allocations are a Grand Final sized rip-off
Leaving the other teams out of it, my original point was the unhealthy arrogant attitude of Man City and Chelsea that has risen from their quick rise to prominence. The belief that they have now become more important than the integrity of the game reflects badly on their more humble and celebrated histories, which is sad. Then again you could probably argue that this applies to most the bigger clubs in Europe.
Adebayor grabs the headlines
Good examples Colin/Robbos. I was originally going to just say that Ferguson is probably the only manager of the ‘power teams’ that would go out of his way to discipline a player for such an action, but I threw in Liverpool and Arsenal in the interests of avoiding a typical anti man u backlash!
In relation to all this, I just bought Adebayor into my Fantasy team last week so i’m a little pissed that as a result of scoring a goal he will most likely be spending a few weeks on the sidelines!
Adebayor grabs the headlines
His celebration was a disgrace, showed a complete lack of any class and he deserves any slap on the wrist he gets. The worst thing about it is City’s reaction, where they have just blown off the incident with a BS excuse. The clubs themselves need to take responsability for these types of undisciplined ‘i’m a superstar, and i’m bigger than the game’ actions from players. Chelsea’s reaction to its champions league exit is the other such incident that immediately comes to mind. It’s probably no coincidence that it is Chelsea and Man City, the two ‘new money’ clubs that are the ones turning a blind eye to these ego driven incidents. Say what you want about Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool, but their tradition demands much better standards of discipline from their players.
(For the record I am a neutral supporter when it comes to the Premier League)
Adebayor grabs the headlines
My point was that it was a joke all along to think that the networks would be falling over themselves to throw extra millions at the AFL to show Gold Coast and Western Sydney games in prime time. If anything the networks will be burdened if they have to show more low rating AFL games in the southern QLD and NSW markets every friday or saturday night.
Don't believe the hype, the code war is a myth
Funny how bearly two years ago Mike Fitzpatrick and the AFL spin machine sold the public the two new AFL teams on the premise that they ‘would be the carrot to get TV rights above $1bn and secure the future of the game’.
Now that the AFL has established their new teams to a point of no return, they finally come out and admit what many of us have been thinking all along – these teams will add no extra value to the rights while undermining the AFLs ability to support its existing clubs.
Don't believe the hype, the code war is a myth
The initial premise of the I.R. series was that it was to be the previous years All Australian team playing together (i.e. a proper Australian representitive team). Although the game wasn’t really AFL, it still intrigued fans to see the best AFL players all playing together under different conditions. In the past few years the Australian team has basically featured a list of B grade players willing to take some time out of their off-season to have a extra pay day.
Add this to the slightly cringeworthy composition of two similar but different games bastardised into one, and a lack of anyone really giving a stuff about the result, and you have several reasons why I.R. should be shelved. The AFL would be much better served by reviving State of Origin as a real platform for representitive level football.
Should the AFL kill off International Rules?
Seriously folks, promotion and relegation for the sake of it is a death wish for aus football at the moment, especially when there is a salary cap in place that restricts the ability of clubs to reinvest in success. I mean Adelaide, the top team in the comp right now, would have been relegated last year!!
However that is not to say that A2 is a bad concept!
What an A2 league should be is a league for smaller regional teams and potential new big city franchises operating on much smaller budgets which serves the purpose of spreading the game and building grass roots support in new markets. If teams showed that they were worthy of A League status by meeting a range of criteria over 2 or 3 seasons (i.e. table position, crowd growth, finanicial performance) they could be incorporated into an expanded A League (similar i think to the model used at the start of J League and also for the seatle sounders / portland timbers in the MLS). Conversely if a team was hopeless for a number of seasons in the A League then they could be shifted back to A2.
My idea is that the carrot for A2 could be that the season champion (and perhaps an extra playoff winner) could be included in the A League playoffs as a wildcard team(s) which would create extra interest and add an extra dimension at the lower end of the A League Playoffs. The teams would also obviously also be included as part of the FFA cup so they would get a few chances to have a shot at the big boys.
If the game in Aus ever gets to the point where it can outgrow the salary cap then by all means bring in promotion / relegation. Around the world the promotion/relegation system relies on a purely capitalistic system to work, it cant work in the current socialistic one we are using to develop the A League today.
Promotion, relegation system is a pipe-dream