Sorry to be a Johnny come lately to the debate, but I’m a little confused as to why the change of venue has had any effect on the Wanderers results. They have the fourth worst home win ratio of any team in the comp, and actually have a worse ratio than the now defunct Gold Coast United. At 44% they are well behind Victory who win 52% of the time at home, and Roar and Adelaide 49%.

While it’s true that every team wins more games at home than they do away, Parramatta is not quite the fortress that many people seem to think.

What a surprise, Sydney FC upset by an FFA decision, and Sydney journos dirty the game isn’t in their town. We all know football in Australia revolves around Sydney, just ask anyone from that city!

Does anyone have any indication that any significant part of the football community in Brisbane wants a second team? All I hear is lots of people saying it might be a good idea, and that it hopefully will draw a big derby crowd. I have yet to hear any real support for the concept from the general public.

Can you run a club on 1 1/2 good attendances per year?

There might be business people out there prepared to stump up the cash for a second club, but I have yet to see anything more than a “build it and they will come” plan.

Unless you divide Brisbane into north and south (and why would Roar agree to that?), a new Brissie team will just become another Heart, without the likelyhood of a City group savior.

“As Roar have only ever drawn more than 20,000 to Grand Finals”.

Not entirely true JB. Roar have 9 20k+ regular season attendances, including 2 x 32k fixtures, though most of those were in the first three years, and the last was about 22k in late 2013.

Personally, I think 25k for Perry Park would be a good number. Gives potential for regular season games, or at least a great venue for semi-finals or exhibition games to help recoup costs.

As for the Strikers using it, I don’t see how they would significantly add to the annual turnover as a joint tenant. Not suggesting they shouldn’t play there, just don’t see them making a significant contribution to financial viability.

J Binnie, I appreciate your comments as always, and I am fully aware of the effect of derby gates on averages, but this is not a simple rehash of home crowds.

I want to know why Brisbane (10,895) draws less people to games when they travel away than Newcastle (11,148), Adelaide (12,868), Perth (11,059), Mariners (12,010), and Melbourne City (12,942). Granted, the away figures for City are skewed by their derby, but even so I find the rest hard to understand.

I am not suggesting that Roar has a divine right to attract fans of other clubs to games, but I would have thought that the most successful club of the past six years, regardless of who they are, would be a big ticket item that would draw in crowds.

I believe that the focus of both the national footballing press and the FFA on the Sydney/Melbourne derbies/clubs is subtly devaluing the rest of the competition, and that this is a symptom of that. I further believe that this is a problem for the league as a whole, and is hindering the national growth of the sport.

Yes it is important to have strong, high profile teams in our two biggest cities, but if the rest of the competition is viewed as inferior as a consequence, then the entire competition is devalued for every club.

If the league can’t successfully promote its best teams across the whole of the competition, what hope is there for the rest?

This piece is not about Brisbane home crowds, it is about Roar away crowds. Why is one of the most successful clubs in the league one of the worst at drawing fans when they play away from home?

I am a football fan first, and I just don’t understand why more people go to see a visit from Perth or Newcastle than a team that has won two premierships and three grand finals in the past six years and played some pretty good football doing it.

My belief is that it is a symptom of a larger perception problem within the league itself.

It’s an issue that I’d really like to understand better.

My favourite Ambrose memory was at a regional match in Queensland. Ambrose was fielding on the boundary as usual, and one lad of about 12 was calling out “Curtly, Curtly” from the boundary fence for an autograph.

Curtly turns around, “That’s Mr Ambrose to you son!”

Of course he signed the autograph with a big smile on his face and patted the kids head afterwards.

I think the football so far this round, and the lack of atmosphere at every match, proves that the vast majority of supporters are far more important to how the game is perceived, than a tiny minority of “troublemakers”.

The disrespect the FFA have shown to fans in general has caused far greater problems than ridiculous media reports that started the issue in the first place.

Hopefully, the FFA will finally step up and start giving fans the support and respect we deserve, rather than treating us as some sort of necessary inconvenience.

John,

I have few issues with the way the FFA is running the league. As you say they generally do a good job, and are reasonably open to the public, though that could at times be better.

I have no issue with the FFA having a list of banned spectators.

As an Australian, I object to the manner in which the banning process is handled, but that is beside the point.

As a football fan, who, like the vast majority, has never caused a moments trouble at a game, I am offended that the FFA continually fails to step forward to defend all of us.

When a nationally broadcast radio personality makes claims that football supporters are like Paris terrorists, I expect the national body to step up and defend me.

Yet instead all I hear is weak willed knee jerk defense of the policies the FFA has in place.

And this is not a one off occurance. It has been happening regularly since WSW joined the comp, and even before that.

The FFA are missing the big picture.

What most fans are asking for is the FFA to show that they really do believe in their rhetoric that “We Are Football”, and that it is in any way more than just a cheap marketing slogan.

Spot on Philip.

My own 76 year old mother, who has attended games in the past and loved the active support will no longer attend games because of her fear of riots in the stands.

As you say, their are two issues. As an Australian, I find the dictatorial manner of these bans, and the entire process in which they are handled, offensive.

As a football fan though, I couldn’t care less how many people are on the list, assuming they have been justly suspended. I most strongly object to the FFA repeatedly failing to stand up and defend the more than 99% of fans who go to games and cause no trouble whatsoever.

The FFA has repeatedly treated the fans as mere customers, and yet continually fails to accept the idiom that “the customer is always right”.

Is it coincidence that one of the bodies with access to the list, The SCG Trust, has Alan Jones as one of it’s trustees?

David Gallop has done a good job since becoming CEO of the FFA, but once again he has missed the point on this topic.

Two thirds of his response is defending the FFA in even having a list, and their actions in realtion to that.

Only one paragraph vaguely defends the majority of fans.

I am a fan. I want to know that the FFA is standing up to defend my behavior, and the behavior of the vast majority of fans first. I don’t need yet another rehash of what the FFA is doing to curb the actions of literally less than 1% of football supporters.

This response stinks of corporate damage control and spin. Corporates might provide a large chunk of the cash that keeps the A-League going, but without fans there is no league or corporate support.

Focusing on the negatives highlighted by Wilson and Jones only serves to further highlight and reinforce those negatives.

It’s about time the FFA focused on the many positives of fan support and behavior, if for nothing else than for us, the fans. We want to know that we really are more important to them then a handfull of troublemakers.

In their club careers, HK played 515 matches with 124 goals and 90 assists. At his peak, before injury set in, with Leeds and then his first year at Liverpool, he had an amazing 17 goals and 20 assists in 1999-2000.

TC has had 620 appearances for 147 goals, so their conversion rate is fairly similar at club level. Sorry but wiki doesn’t tell me how many assists TC has, but I do know TC has never been the creative player that HK was.

While Tims finishing is not in question and his heading ability must be up there with the best the world has seen, he has mostly relied on the team to get the ball too him. Harry could rip open defences on his own as evidenced by his high assist rate.

The way he played before injury crueled his career was at a level beyond anything that any other Australian has ever produced.

Tim has been to three world cups, Harry two, but it could have been four, and one can only imagine what he might have achieved, especially in France, before injury set in.

As has also been stated, Harry mostly played when Australia was in Oceania, and genuinely competitive national matches were few and far between. As much as their international careers overlapped, comparing one against the other is impossible, and comparing minutes in a handfull of WC games against their entire careers is ridiculous.

Forgot to add, as for Sepp Blatter, he is the same man that guarunteed Australia, before our move to Asia, that Oceania would be granted one direct entry spot into the World Cup.

If ever there was a free ticket to the World Cup that would be it, but funnily enough I don’t seem to recall that ever happening.

Pretty sure, only a few years ago, a group of Victory posters said on this forum that “Berisha was a cheat” and that he was “highly overrated”, and nothing but a goal poacher.

I tried to explain that having watched him first hand week in week out at the Roar, and using factual data of his output, that Berisha would quickly become a fan favourite in Melbourne, but Victory supporters refused to listen.

It’s amazing how people seemed to miss his 100% commitment to playing football, and his work rate off the ball.

Berisha is simply the best forward I’ve ever seen play in the A-League, and the only Australian to match him would be Mark Viduca.

I’ll always be a huge fan, and still can’t get used to seeing him in blue over orange.

We can argue about the relative merits of various sporting events, but I can not recall any other that has been celebrated with a ten year anniversary to the extent of this one.

No one does it for a Grand Final win.

No one does it for a Melbourne Cup, a Davis Cup, an Ashes series, an Olympic medal or any other sporting contest you care to mention.

The only exception is perhaps the Americas Cup win. Both events have a huge amount of historical context related to them, but the Uruguay win carried far more significance than just a one off sporting victory to add to the trophy cabinet.

Hopefully, Australia will never again go through the 32 year world cup drought leading up to 2005, and all the on and off field dramas associated with the sport at that time.

Never again is the sport likely to need a world cup qualification to launch it as a genuine mainstream presence in Australia.

Like most, I couldn’t actually attend the game, so for me, I’ve never been so tense as I was in the World Cup match against Croatia, so disappointed as I was in the loss to Iran, or so overjoyed as being in the stands for the last five minutes of the Roar v Mariners grand final, but that one Uruguay game carried all those emotions and more in a way I’m never likely to experience again.

It truly was a unique moment in time, and one I’m glad I was able to see.

Just want to point out that Australia is currently engaged in “Round 2” of Asian qualifying.

Australia bypassed the first round of qualifying due to their world ranking.

The top 34 Asian teams and the 6 qualifiers from round 1 have now been divided into 8 pools for round 2, the winner of each pool and the four “best” runners-up advance to round “Round 3”.

Beating Kyrgyzstan does not qualify Australia for the World Cup, it only helps Australia qualify for round 3.

The teams qualifying for round three will be split into two pools, with the top 2 from each pool achieving qualification to the World Cup, and the two third placed teams play off to go into a further qualifying round against other teams from around the world, similar to the Uruguay match now being celebrated.

Obviously in round three, we will be playing against sides like Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia, and I for one am glad for the opportunity that these games in round 2, against some of the “lesser” teams, provides to the team in terms of development and competitive match practice.

Qualification for the 2018 World Cup is still far from assured.

Is football a sport first and business second or is it the other way around?

I fully understand the necessity of having an economically viable league, and with Wellington coming from a catchment area of about 400k, they are always going to struggle to be competitive financially with the bigger centers, but so too do Newcastle and the Mariners. Should they both be cut adrift to make the league more economically viable?

From a purely business point of view, I’d say that at least the Mariners do if not both.

My suggestions is simply that the best future setup for the A-League is to have 16 teams. Those teams would need to come from the largest population centers available to make them as viable as possible. To get 16 teams in Australia would require having 4-5 teams each in Sydney and Melbourne, something I am dead against, or putting teams in places like Wollongong and Sunshine coast, both with populations of less than 300k.

How is that better than having a team in Wellington with a population of 400k?

In this region, Auckland and Wellington are two of the largest population bases available, and having them both would help to make each other more viable.

But regardless of the future, the fact is Wellington has helped to sustain the league for the past eight years.

My understanding is that every other club has been offered a long term extension to their existing license, no questions asked. The Phoenix have not.

The FFA has negotiated a 10 team broadcast deal with Phoenix as part of the mix. I don’t understand that logic that the Nix are costing the FFA anything.

The Nix have been told to ask for a four year extension and to the best of my knowledge have been given no guarantee past that date, or had any benchmark criteria defined as to what they need to do to remain as part of the competition at the end of that time.

Personally I find that morally unacceptable, and from a business point of view, arbitrarily treating one license holder different to every other only undermines the confidence of existing license holders in the value of their own licenses.

As a Roar fan, Nichols has to be the most frustrating player ever to pull on an orange jersey. When he was good, he was fantastic, when he wasn’t he was worst on the pitch. It just seems that something about his mental attitude has never been quite right.
I always thought he was a frustrated striker, always willing to get well forward and shoot whenever he had the mearest sight of goal, and I think Poppa is the first coach to really recognize this. He seems to have Mitch playing in a much more aggressive role.
Remembering the high hopes most Roar fans had for him when he first came on the scene, I sincerely hope Poppa can finally get him consistently playing to his full potential, something a string of other coaches and clubs have so far failed to do.

Re the laws of the game.

Smeltz did not use excessive force when challenging for a ball. He swung his foot in the same manner as anyone would against any other player. The keeper did not have control of the ball and despite claims by many that it “was obvious” that Birighitti would get to the ball first, that does not guarantee the he will effectively control it. Goalkeepers, like everyone else make mistakes and can fumble a ball particularly when in the process of diving. Smeltz is therefore entitled to challenge for the ball.

As I’ve also stated, I’ve seen a keeper break another players leg in this situation. Outfield players can also just as easily destroy their knee or ankle in such a challenge. The danger is not all to the keeper.

Smeltz is entitled to challenge for the ball. If the keeper doesn’t dive, he isn’t in danger, ergo, the actions of the keeper is as much, if not more, to blame for the dangerousness of the situation than those of the striker.

Please show me in the rules where it states a keeper is allowed to create a dangerous situation for which the opposing player gets penalised.

This sort of challenge has been part of football as long as there have been keepers.

Smeltz didn’t attack Birighitti’s head, he challenged for the ball. He is in the motion of striking for the ball long before Brighitti puts his head in the way.

No one forces goalkeepers to put their heads in dangerous positions like this, it is their choice, and strikers have every right to challenge for the ball in the same way they would challenge any other player. There was no guarantee that the keeper was going to take the ball cleanly, and that a touch by Smeltz wouldn’t have put it in the back of the net.

I have seen a similar situation where a player struck a keeper in the forehead with his shin as the keeper dived. The outfield player had his leg broken in two places, the keeper was fine to continue. Should the keeper have been sent off for dangerous play?

Accidents happen.

You can not legislate that a keeper in the motion of diving suddenly prohibits other players for contesting an unclaimed ball.

I think this sentiment is part of the problem. Aboriginal culture is not seen as Australian culture.

If aboriginals are part of Australia, then surely their culture must also be part of Australian culture and shared by all of us.

Understandably, they cling to it as their own, since so much else has been taken from them, but both sides need to embrace each other more.

Of course, as the creator of the aboriginal issues, it needs to be the European part of the community that takes the first and biggest steps.

Great article Leonard.

In the late 70’s, I can remember as a 12 year old touring New Zealand with a youth group and even then being struck by how Maori’s were accepted as part of New Zealand society in a way that Aboriginals are not.

The irony is that Goodes acted in a sport called “Australian Rules Football”, a sport that goes to great lengths to promote the idea that it was in part inspired by Aboriginals playing “Marn Grook”. The AFL has an opportunity here. It can stand up and show the way for Australian society by proudly proclaiming Adam Goodes is a leading example for all Australians, of which the Aboriginal people are a valued part, and that his culture is not just Aboriginal culture, but Australian culture.

Regardless of what the AFL does though, this is an issue for all Australians to contend with.

The solution to this can start with each and every one of us.

If we as individuals decide to make Aboriginals feel welcome as a genuine and valued part of Australian society, as opposed to the prevailing “us and them” mentality, perhaps then we can truly start to work together to overcome the issues facing the Aboriginal community. After all, it will then be an Australian problem rather than just an Aboriginal issue.

From the time the Western Grandstand was built in 1994 through to its closure for redevelopment in 2001, Lang Park hosted 10 SOO games.

The 1997 NSL Grand Final had an official attendance of 40,446

Only two origin games passed that total in that time.

40,665 went to the deciding game 3 in 1994, and 40,447 (only one extra person) went to game 2 in 1998.

Fair enough about the only game in 1997, but what were the mitigating circumstances for the other 7 games, only one of which topped 40,000?

Regardless, this is not a code war debate about the merits of Football versus League. I’m merely pointing out that for the two games I mentioned, Football proved it had the potential to be as popular as any other code in the country.

P_A, I also regularly use the ultimate A-League website, and as far as I can see, that site lists regular season attendance for 2012-13 at 12,347. Regular season attendance so far this year stands at 13,541.

Wiki lists the figure this year at 13,651 and 12,341 for last, so I’m not quite sure where you get your figure of 11,906.

Regardless, as has happened most years in the A-League, end of season average attendances are lower than the early season average, but by any measure, 13,600 (splitting the difference between wikk and UA-L) is an increase on the figure for last season.

A-leage crowds are not in decline. Thay have increased each year from a low of around 8,400 in 2010-11. That is a growth of approximately 60% in 3 years which is phenomenal by any standard.

Obviously that level of growth can not be sustained, and it is mathematically difficult anyway. 60% of 8400 is 5,200. 60% of 13,600 is around 8,200. Regardless, I would consider anything above an annual 5% growth rate to be fantastic.

Rugby league by comparison has dropped from 16,273 to 15,940, and AFL 34,893 to 32,163 in the same time. Realistically, League attendances have not varied substntially since they reached 16,468 in 2005, and AFL since the reached 33,197 in 1997.

In the past 10 years, out of 42 games played in Australia by the Socerroos, Sydney has hosted 18 matches. Thier average crowd size has been 41k. This includes the two massive 80k plus world cup qualifiers against Uruguay and Iraq, two games which would have sold out anywhere in the country.

Take away those two games and they average around 35.5k, while Brisbane averages 36k.

In that time, Perth has had 1, Canberra 2, Adelaide and Brisbane 6 and Melbourne 9.

In the last set of world cup qualifiers, Sydney had 24732, 34603 and 80523 against Oman twice and Iraq while Brisbane had 24540 and 40189 against Thailand and Japan. I’d say those figures stack up fairly well against Sydney.

I’m not suggesting Brisbane should have the match, only that suggesting Sydney somehow regularly pulls bigger crowds is demonstrably incorrect.

And since when is the FFA’s guiding principal commercial gain?

I thought the FFA was here for all soccer fans, not just those within 10km of the Sydney CBD.