I have yet to see or hear of any real issues inside of grounds that you would not find in any other code in Australia, apart from letting off flares.

Yes European grounds are now segregated, but home and away ends existed long before those policies were put in place.

It is the pre-game violence that is the real issue, and as a long term football fan, I am disgusted by it.

As said in the article though, this is a social issue, that just happens to have currently found an outlet in football, and needs to be stoped before it gets any worse.

Sorry, but why do we need to model ourselves on any other league?

The MLS started in 1994 with 17,424 average attendance. After 8 seasons their attendance was 14,898, or 85% of their first year. In their last season they had 18,594 or 107% of their starting attendance. They have 19 clubs for 317 million people at 1 person out of 1794 attending games on any given weekend.

The J-League started in 1993 with an average attendance of 17,976. After 8 seasons their attendance had dwindled to 11,065. After 21 years, their attendance has climbed back to 16,659, or still only 93% of their first year. They have 18 clubs for 126 million people, so get 1 person out of 844 along to a game.

The A-League started in 2005-06 with average attendance of 10,955. After 8 seasons we have 12,556 fans at every game, a 15% increase on start-up, and one person out of every 370 regularly attending a match.

We have a far better growth rate than either competition, and almost 5 times the market penetration of the sport in the USA. Perhaps they should be looking to Australia rather than the other way around.

Cracking game.

As a neutral, I can ignore the two (really) bad decisions, and instead focus on the exciting football on display, though it was Pain, not Nichols, who had the goal dissallowed.

Both teams look set to entertain this season.

Adelaide was rocking, good job by the supporters.

If every Friday night match is that good, the popularity of the A-League will sky rocket.

Yeah baby!

We’re going to Rio!

Didin’t sit down for the last 30 minutes.

Go you good things!

Oh woe is me! My club has won the Premiership and the FA Cup numerous times, and the Champions League since our no good owner took over, but I just can’t cope with it any more.

Try supporting Luton Town for 30 years for no better resaon than I happened to pick them out in a club raffle as an 18 year old.

How I wish we had your problem!

On the bright side, one less Chelsea fan is always a good thing. Now if we can only get the Man U fans to start giving up as well 😉

Sorry but I can’t really agree with either the author or Franko.

Any weekend, you can go to any number of local clubs to watch players who play simply for the passion, supported by fans who are there for the same reason. These clubs play on suburban fields where you are often lucky to find any seating. and can stand or sit as you chose. These clubs do provide valuable support to the young men and women of the local community, and act as a focus for it.

These clubs rarely even have doctors, and the food you get is usually cooked by the volunteers in the canteen.

I live in a regional area where I can choose to go to any one of a dozen clubs on any Sunday showing the types of values Franko is talking about. They would all welcome your support with open arms.

The issue is that sport, by it’s very definition, is competition, not just friendly physical exercise of the type supported by the author.

The best players and teams want to challenge themselves against the best. It is competition that drives us forward and leads to innovation and improvement. The dirty players and negative tactics are part of the challenge that makes the reward of overcoming them so worthwhile.

Clubs and sport in general did not become what it is because the clubs chose to be like that. They are that way because at the end of the day most of us primarily want our team to be successfull and all that other stuff really is only secondary to that goal.

I adamantly oppose drugs in sport, but appart from that, professional sport is the way it is because we shell out our hard earned dollars in the understanding that that money will go towards helping our team be better. Professional clubs have evolved naturally, because of competition, to be as efficient in earning and using their dollars as possible ot make them as successfull on the field as they can be.

If you don’t like it, go back and support your local amature club.

Boy, are we a tough bunch to please.

For years all I have heard is, “we want free to air coverage”.

Well now we are getting it, and what do I hear? SBS is not broadcasting the right games! I don’t want football on channel 7!

Stop whinging and whineing folks.

Regardless of what a handfull of football fans think, we have non-competition Australian club games that are going to be broadcast live to the entire country and are being paid $2m for the privelage.

Yes, 7 are the pettiest TV station in the country, quick to find fault with anything that is in competition with them, and not just football.

But the fact that a commercial station is prepared to pay millions for a couple of off-season club games sets a precedent that has never been seen in this country before.

It shows that commercial stations are aware there is a market for football in this country.

It keeps the sport in the forefront of the national consciousness during a long off-season, and at State of Origin time no less.

It also makes it more likely that we can afford to aggressively try and bring more big name clubs to this country.

I see no down side anywhere!

Ben Williams 111 Games, 481 Yellow, 31 Red, 4.61 cards/game, 20 penalties.

Interestingly Williams is one of the quickest referees to pull out a card, but one of the least likely to award a penalty, make of that what you will.

FA Cup night used to be the second biggest nigh of the year to me (after the local grand final), Our soccer club had a party every year, and they were always huge nights. Playing 3rd grade at 11.00am the next morning was always a problem.

For literally the first time in 30 years I forgot to watch. Not having a real interest in either team certainly didn’t help, aided by the latter kick-off.

The biggest loss of interest for me though is my growing focus on the A-League. Let the Poms have their competition. I’m counting the days till Season 9 kicks off.

Sorry Fuss, but I think your sentiment is a little isolationist.

I watched most of Roars A-League campaign last season, and was impressed with the overall standard of all the Asian teams.

It was obvious that the level of the Austrlian players needed to improve substantially. Some of them did, especially Franjic, and I don’t think his fantastic performances at the end of this season were a coincidence.

Any opportunity that any Australian team gets to play at this level should be grasped with both hands, and at this point in time, seen as a learning experience. Positive results are just a bonus.

The tradgedy of Australia’s reduced participation this season was not that we had a reduced chance to do well, but that we had a reduced chance to learn and improve.

I have no doubt that one day, Australian teams will be able to compete and expect to do well, but I also think we will deservedly be underdogs for some time to come.

All that being said, there certainly is no reason why CCM can’t do the country proud, and I’ll be checking out the match with interest.

I am against the ethnic based clubs like South Melbourne and Marconi joining the A-League. This is becasue I beleive their ethinic base, and their exisitng competitive relationship against other exisiting clubs, limits their ability to engage with the wider footballing community.

Why would you want to support South Melbourne in the A-League if you are a Melbourne club likely to be playing against them at some stage during your own season? Anything that limits the potential growth of any club in the League, limits the growth of league and is a bad idea in my books.

Their participation in a national FA cup style competition is something else entirely. I see no reason why any club should be excluded from what should be a celebration of the sport in this country. Every club should at least, in theory, have the potential to play against a professional national league side.

It will play a vital part in helping all grassroots teams grow and, also to recoupe some of the vast sums of money that currently goes to the A-League.

I have seen many clubs, and not just ethnic ones, cause trouble. The solution is simple. They are immediatley kicked out, regardless of results, and banned from the Cup for five years.

Everything else is simply a matter of logistics and cash. Build a regional framework that allows clubs to feed into a top 32 system, which is where the A-League teams would be introduced.

It’s not hard, I’ve organised such regional competitions before.

The only real problem is the apathy of larger clubs having to travel to play smaller regioanl teams. My experience is that this applies at all levels of the sport, but the carrot of progressing in a nationally recognised competition should go some way to minimising that.

Thanks for the pickup on the poor spelling. My bad. I knew it looked wrong but was too lazy to check it.

I still beleive it’s David troting out the line “Best summed up by the old, but true, saying – play rugby and see the world.” and then runs down League by stating “League’s world is limited to New Zealand and England, as the only three nations who can play the game”

I will admit my point has nothing to do with Folau and the rest of the article, I just found the suggestion that Rugby is much better than league because it is played in more of the world amusing when compared to soccer.

I beleive Rugby has around 120 international unions, most of them semi-pro or amature, compared to the 207 members of FIFA most of which do run professional leagues.

Given the one-off natue of the match, I expect Ange atleast to favour players he is familiar with, so probably a leaning towards the Roar/Victory players.

Regardless,I think it’s a fairly predictable selection so far, and certainly most of the best available.

I’m starting to look forward to this quite a bit.

Fair enough Moonshine.

Australian footballers currently plaing oversees are in Austria, Belgium, China, Croatia, Denmark, England, Fiji, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Myanmar, Netherlands, New Zealand, Phillipines, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Swirzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, USA, and Vanuata. That’s 37 countries.

How many countries are currently home to professional aussie League, Union and AFL players?

And to Mike, Folau has played League, AFL, and now Union. AFL certainly has a quite different skill set than the other two.

It was David Lord sprooking the advantages of Union over the others. I’m simply pointing out the advantage of Football over Union.

Play football, see the world.

In the past 3 years, the Socceroos have played against UAE, India, South Korea, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Japan,
Germany, New Zealand, Serbia, Wales, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Oman, Scotland, Lebanon, Jordan, Hong Kong, DPR Korea, Guam, Chinese Taipei and Romania. That is 22 countries in the 3 years between world cups.

The Wallabies, Kangaroos, and any AFL team you care to mention, have played internationals against how many countries?

Ever?

Dave,

To me, part of your third point is the crux of the matter.

Is the HAL here for the overall growth of the game?

There is definately a bias by the FFA to use the HAL as a tool to help develop the sport, but is this best business practice for the HAL clubs, and league as a whole?

While the HAL is tied to the FFA there will always be a certain amount of doubt over the real commercial value of the A-League. For example, the TV deal comes as a package deal that includes Soccerroos coverage. If the HAL was independant and able to negotiate on it’s own, would it be able to get more money than that currently allocated by the FFA? The same applies to other sponsorships like Hyundai.

There are also issues like the FFA rejecting certain club sponsorships becasue of conflicts of interest with other FFA sponsors that have nothing to do with the A-League.

There are two sides to this argument. One is that the HAL should be there to assist in the promotion and development of the sport. The other is that with the FFA controling everything, the development of the league is being compromised.

While there is a certain truth to the argument that the growth of the sport is good for the A-League and vice-versa, it is also plausible that the A-League might grow and develop faster if it was independant of the FFA.

Yes but if Heart and CCM were doing better we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

On the contrary Fuss, I beleive they will act exactly like people who have British surnames, and put the wants and needs of their own community first.

Persoanlly, I am not of British heritage, and I couldn’t care less if clubs in local leagues are British, Italian, Greek, Korean, or Laplandish.

I beleive that in the A-League at this point in time, the clubs need to be representative of the wider Australian community, and not just small sections of it.

Our growth since the demise of the NSL has surpased my expectaions. Any move that can be seen as returning to the days of ethnic based clubs dominatng the national scene will only serve to stir up the old predjudices, and provide easy ammunition for those commentators who are biased against the sport.

Let SMFC earn their place in the league after promotion and relegation comes in whenever that may be. No one then will be able to argue that they do not deserve to be there.

In the meantime, I say no.

Fuss, what opinion have I expressed about any person. You do not know what racial background I come from. You are meerly assuming that I have some sort of predjudice against non-anglo saxons.

Since Soccer Australia tried more than 20 years ago to make ethnic clubs more inclusive of people from outside their ethnic group, I have seen no evidence that SMFC have made any significant steps to address the issue.

They are, and always have been, a Greek community based club. There is nothing wrong with this. They serve a valuable role in both supporting their own community and exposing their culture to the wider non-greek community.

I have been involved with many other ethnic based groups in my time, and while they are certainly welcoming of others outside their community, they always maintain control of the organisation from within their own ethnic base. As a non-memeber of whichever ethnic group it happens to be, this immediately makes me feel like an outsider, and not totally part of the organisation, regardless of how friendly I am with any other member.

This is my concern with ethnic based clubs, that no matter how much I may like being involved, I will never trully be part of it.

Please explain to me how this is racial profiling!

I don’t have the least care what an AFL club does, and I must say I am a little surprised Fuss that you would use one of them as an exmple, and yes I beleive their is a danger of WSW becoming dominaed by a single ethnic group, but I see no evidence of that happening, nor do I felel that it is likely any time soon.

I won’t list all my reasons why, but I beleive the A-League currently needs all of it’s clubs to be inclusive of all sections of the general community.

I don’t know if SMFC want a broad direction for the club, but this is my point. Looking at the current management of the club, there is no evidence that they do. They can say all they like about being inclusive of the entire community, but actions speak louder than words.

What actions have they taken to demonstrate that?

Would the FFA transfer a licence to SMFC? Any purchase of any existing licence would still need to be ratified by the FFA.

Rightly or wrongly, SMFC are perceived as an ethnic based club. This creates several issues.

First, can they obtain the broad based community support that the FFA rightly expects every club to have? I believe WSW have demonstrated that it is possible to combine the ethnic communities under one banner, but I doubt that South Melbourne can or would really even want to .

Second, crowd control is an issue. Many on this forum are too young to remember, but a number of NSL fixtures were often seen as an excuse for ethnic groups to cause trouble. The greater national exposure currently enjoyed by the A-League would only encourage some to start up such troubles again.

Third, like it or not, much of the general public has an aversion to the idea of ethnic clubs. It is generally accepted that one of the major reasons for the success of the A-League to date is to due to the distancing of the competition from the ethnic based clubs of the NSL. Accepting one of them now would be a backwards step in this process.

It also opens the door to other old ethnic based NSL clubs such as Marconi, and Sydney Olympic pushing for entry to the national league. Such moves at this time would only erode the success enjoyed by WSW this season.

Finally, what would SMFC bring to the competition? In their last table topping season of 2001, they had an average crowd of 8050. In the following three seasons their crowds were 6199, 4963, and 6330. Add into this four home finals in those four seasons with a combined average attendance of 7823, all figures worse than any Heart season.

Heart may not be setting the world alight, but there is no guarantee a take-over by SMFC would do anything to improve the situation.

The issue being highlighed is not how well they can mkae decisions, rather that despite any claims to the contrary, South Melbourne is still an ethnically Greek based club.

Please don’t get on your high horse and shout “discrimination”. That does less than nothing to reslove the debate.

The question is can an enthnically based club gather enough support from the general comunity to be successfull, becase like it or lump it, that is how SMFC are percieved.

Further, will they welcome wide based community support when there is no evidence that they are prepared to accept such participation in their own management.

Nicely written article Mike. I am going through similar trials myself and I do feel for you. Hope things turn out for the best.

The overwhelming consensus seems to be no then.

For my mind, your arguments only add weight to the idea that A-League clubs need to be doing more to identify and nurture youth talent across the country.

Currently, most representative teams, and coaching clinics, rely on parents forking out large sums of cash to enable their child to participate. I firmly beleive A-League clubs, as the recipients of the lions share of cash available for this sport, should be required to support youth development at no cost to particpiants.

I cetainly don’t see how a draft makes it more likely that playing talent will be discovered if it hasn’t been already.