Yeah there was. Can’t recall which game but there was a photo that circulated around facebook. Obviously you wouldnt know if you were a herald sun reader or a channel 7 watcher!

Why? What did this have to do with South Melbourne?

So any bans/fines/arrsts for the “anti-social” fans who let off flares at AFL games at the weekend? Or is it okay at some sports and not others?

Sleemo, are you referring to Fellainis retaliation after Huth grabbed him around the neck and grabbed a fist ful of his hair?
My point exactly. Straight red for Huth anywhere else in the world.Fellainis reaction was precisely because he knew Michael Oliver wouldnt take any action.

As for your reference to Mahrez…even he got up laughing!!

I didnt watch many until around March, then watched most. You must have seen the Man Utd match on the weekend. Bizarre.

I think they got caught up in the hype, for sure. The fixturing was scandalous in itself. To actually change the fixtures??? The refereeing? I think the refs didn’t want to be “the man who broke the dream”.

If you want to call it lucky then go ahead… you can’t seriously deny they had more than the usual decisions go their way, though!

There is no doubt that this is the greatest sports story of all time, but for me it is tempered somewhat by the antics over the past three months.

Refereeing in Leicester’s games has been astonishing to say the least. Take the Man Utd game on the weekend as a microcosm. City should have had two red cards (one in the first half that was blatant!) before Drinkwater finally was red carded. Utd had a clear penalty turned down at the end and awarded a free kick outside the box..

The week before they won 4-0 v Swansea .. the first goal being a handball, the second being offside and Huth with a two footed over the top of the ball challenge, for which a free kick WAS given, somehow avoided a red card… then against Southampton at 0-0 and 1-0 there were two blatant handballs which would have resulted in penalties AND red cards…..

And lets not forget the FA changed the fixtures to take the pressure off Leicester and put it on Spurs. Is it 6 weeks in a row that Spurs matches were scheduled after Leicesters? That has never been done before!

Still a great achievement though… just a shame the FA the referees and the media helped push them over the line.

mattq

I don’t seem to be able to directly reply to your last comment …

Sure there are half a dozen cities in Australia with much bigger populations than Wellington. At present Hyundai’s advertising is exposed to 27 million people who may or may not notice it.
Take Wellington out and add 1, 2, 3 Australian teams and that advertising is seen by only 23 million. So Hyundai are getting an extra 20% for their dollar, right?

You are obviously not a marketer but the recognition is not just tv ads. It is newspaper radio internet etc that refers to the Hyundai A league. It is on shirts that fans wear around the town etc etc. That is the exposure Hyundai would miss out on.
This is just a tangent to the real issue anyway.

“NSW and Victoria both have larger populations so why not put another side there?”

Is that a serious question? Currently Melbourne City offer the league nothing. They have crowds the same size as Phoenix despite being in a city more than TEN times larger. Like the Nix they are stable though. AS long as the owner keeps putting the money in.

In NSW both Newcastle & CCM are struggling to stay alive, despite being just a daily commute from the country’s biggest city..

How can you possibly advocate extra teams in those two cities?

“…apparently NZ wants the HAL but it doesn’t act like it”
Can you please explain that? I’m not sure what you are referring to.

Around about the same time Melbourne City did, Matt.

I was referring to coverage of the league, not coverage on tv specifically. There is a market of 4 million in NZ. There is a market of 23 million in Australia, yes?

Do you think Hyundai like the fact that there is a New Zealand team in the league? of course they do!

That comment actually shows that you are way out of touch with reality, Midfielder.

It actually isn’t a “sense of entitlement”. It is a sense of injustice that Wellington are being targeted when both on and off the field they are performing better than others.

What they get from having Phoenix is a number of things.

Firstly they get stability. Wellington have never been in doubt as a going concern yet last season there were issues around Brisbane Newcastle & Central Coast.

Secondly, they get market exposure. Wellingtons attendances may be relatively low (though they are the BEST in the league per capita) but having Wellington in the league adds a market of 4 million to the coverage. That repays itself in advertising in merchandise in attraction to sponsors etc etc. replacing Nix with an Australian club loses that market but doesnt replace it with anything.

Crowds? I don’t know about Wollongong, but Phoenix’s crowds are higher than you would get in Geelong or Canberra after the initial burst.

FFA says that Phoenix’s “metrics” aren’t good enough. Really? what about Central Coast? Newcastle Jets? how are their metrics? and what about the most underachieving club in the HAL – Melbourne City? Six years in and an average crowd of under 7,500 in a catchment area of 4.5 million!!! Have a look at Sydney they play NINE local derbies a season what are their crowds like?

Having said all that, I do agree that for a sustainable professional national competition Wellington’s crowds aren’t good enough, and the same can be said for every club with an average under 10,000. But to expect a crowd of 10,000 from a city of about 400,000 week in week out is unrealistic. The equivalent is Victory pulling a crowd of 100,000 every week.

Not sure how your comment relates to mine, but I will say this… if the FFA were about maximising value, and yes they should be, then Wellington would have been about 4th in order to be threatened, not first.

You are new to the A League aren’t you? maybe middle of last season?

Go look up Ifil, Paul one of the best 3 players to ever grace the A League
Go look up Smeltz, Shane one of the two top strikers
Go look up Barbarouses, Kosta; Rojas, Marco; Cortes, Daniel; Riera, Albert; Sigmund, Ben; Moss Glen…the list goes on.

I’d say probably every club can name a team of good quality players like that. You are a fool if you think that Bonavacia & Burns are the only two – or even the best two – quality Phoenix players.

Reading the article and through the comments already posted i get the impression that the licence extension debacle has been thoroughly underestimated by football followers.

Make no mistake the FFA’s treatment of Wellington this season was a disgrace and something they should be absolutely ashamed of. It absolutely defined Wellingtons season. When injuries hit – and Wellington had a worse run than most this season – replacement players were unable to be signed because who wants to sign for a club for just 3 months with no future? When the issue arose Wellington were well placed in the top 6. The uncertainty obviously had an effect on the players, however much they denied it, because from there on they rarely won a game.

And the FFA just happened to decide to give the Nix the extension the week after the transfer window closed…… just a coincidence? Yeah, right.

The only “un Australian” fans in the league are the Phoenix fans. Phoenix were playing in Sydney this week and i would venture that i was probably only Phoenix fan at AAMI Park for the derby match.

I am “unAustralan” and i can assure you my behaviour was perfect.

Why dont you skulk off back to your little suburban no one cares bogan game and keep your illiterate (look it up) comments to yourself.

Whilst not condoning the use of flares or the yobs that are the RBB, I cannot agree that the WSW team should be deducted points because of the behaviour of their fans.

It would be a far better option to make the club play home matches behind closed doors. That way the club are punished – loss of revenue & support – and the fans are punished by not being able to attend the match. The team however are only punished by the loss of vocal support, which is something some other clubs already miss.

New Zealand would have won here had it not been for Australia’s lucky 12th men – the umpires. There is no question that at least two of the tests swung on incompetent decisions favouring Australia. It went far far beyond the “that was controversial” or “australia got the benefit of the doubt with that one”. Australia ALWAYS gets the benefit of the doubt, even when no doubt exists. It has now gone beyond the joke though. That series was simply cheating.

Impartial umpires will see the best team win in New Zealand. And that team is unlikely to be Australia.

1. Born in Wellington.(thats New Zealand!)
2.Plays for New Zealand
3. if Wikipedia says he’s Greek he MUST be, right? 🙂

It is obvious he has Greek ancestry but he is a Kiwi. He isn’t Greek-New Zealand any more than Finkler is Brazil-Australian. (or Brazilian-Greek for that matter!)

Perhaps too clever for you. The boy is a Kiwi. He’s no more Greek than Guy Finkler

absolutely spot on.

The fouling is a tactic which WSW has used consistently whilst being in the HAL. In themselves, few of the fouls are worthy of bookings which means that WSW can foul continuously and disrupt the rhythm of the game, reorganise and prevent opponents from creating momentum. It also has the side effect of frustrating opponents to the point where they lash out and receive justified bookings. Barbarouses booking last night is a classic example

I refer you to Sydney v Phoenix 2-3 weeks ago where Arnolds side adopted the exact same tactics in what resulted in a sterile 0-0 draw. Arnold even had the audacity to complain that they should have had a penalty too. In that match Bonavacia received an unarguable booking …shortly after a stat came up showing he had been fouled 5 times. This was in the first half!
The only way to counter these tactics is to have a strong referee who understands the game and will give out bookings for “persistent fouling”, ignoring that the fouls are soft. You wont find any such ref in the A League unfortunately.

I find this an oddtime to raise this question.

I have only watched Adeliade 3 times ths season but by far the best performance of those 3 was v Victory on the weekend. They were clearly the better team until Victory scored, then Victory dominated until half time. At half time I thought the game was as good as over but in the second half Adelaide absolutely slaughtered Victory anddeserved at least one, if not all 3, points.

It is Amors team not Gumbaus. Give him time to impose his mark. They will make finals come seasons end.

No loyal supporter ever walks out on his team. The real fans are the ones that stayed behind to watch and cheer on their team.

What is most disappointing is how so many football fans showed their stupidity yesterday and walked out on their team. That is exactly what hacks like Wilson et al want.

Explain to me how walking out on their team achieved anything last night? All it did was deny their team their support, and for the last half hour they could really have used that support as they hung on for the 3 points.

And the Victory fans that applauded the walkouts? Lol…. You applaud them for walking out but werent prepared to do the same. Is that not hypocritical?

I dont think anyone would argue that Canberra SHOULD have an A League presence. But it comes down to money. 19000 there tonight but would anywhere near that turn up every 2nd week? We certainly dont need a third Sydney team.

Canberra couldnt do worse than city….