So Catalans Dragons show Rugby Australia how easy it is to respect all people.
Good on Catalans dragons for supporting LGBTQIP people whilst also supporting people with religious faith.

“It’s not often that a top-tier sporting competition can claim such parity as the A-League achieved on the weekend just passed.”

Actually Stuart, top tier football around the world is pretty competitive and exhibits remarkable evenness.

Take a look at the leagues in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico etc and you’ll see there is a really tight race for most titles and throughout most of the league table.

To me, it seems like most leagues a re becoming more even, with the exception of the few mega teams dominating the top few European leagues.

Our federal government actually discriminated against its own citizens based on their sexual orientation, but that doesn’t seem to be of any concern to the author of this article.
Israel Folau on the other hand plays alongside and works with people of different sexual orientations, but has a deeply held religious belief and the author compares him to men who have committed and been convicted of acts of violence against innocent people.
If we want to promote tolerance, equality and freedom of belief and speech, we should allow Israel Folau to play.
Of course we can still pressure our government to stop discriminating against Australians on the basis of our sexual orientation.

@ Fadida, VAR fails its whole miserable life. It needs to go away.

The concerning thing is that they have not yet even lodged an application for planning permission.
They need to start the formal planning permission process soon if they want to achieve permission by the end of this year.

I do remember when Lineker went there, thinking they sounded like a cool team. They were nagoya grampus eight then though weren’t they?

By its very nature, VAR for offside has an inherent flaw that means it is not and cannot be 100% accurate. Unless there is a sensor within the ball that measures the exact milisecond that it leaves contact with the player passing, you cannot know the exact moment that the ball leaves the foot/head/whatever. the only thing you can tell is when you see a ‘gap’ between the ball and contact point of the passing player on the screen. this may take 1,2,3 or whatever miliseconds and 1,2,3 or whatever ‘frames’ of film or whatever they use to record the vision. the receiving player may have been onside but moved 1, 2, 3 cm or whatever in this intervening period of delay between ball leaving contact with passing player and gap being visible on t.v screen monitor.
If VAR is to be retained for offside calls, then there must be research/measurement work done in the off season to find out the actual average margin of error that is inherent in every VAR analysis, and then build that margin of error in to the measurement tool.

Ridiculous suggestion by Wenger.
The change to the offside law he is proposing is a change that is not able to be adjudicated by a human being on the sideline.
The current law allows that a linesman can judge what he/she CAN SEE. the change proposed by Wenger is asking someone to judge what they CAN’T SEE.
It is a theoretical impossibility.

Wenger is saying in effect, linesman cannot ever make another offside call, and only VAR can be used to judge offside.

I like watching the J league, as it’s a good standard of football, but I can’t bring myself to choose a team to follow, especially as I’d hate to see that team then play against Victory in the ACL. Although i must admit I did enjoy seeing Bali United come here and play against Victory after I chose them and managed to get a few of their kits from street vendors when I was over there. PS. They have won the Indonesian League for the first time this past season, so I’m claiming I’m their good luck charm.

Yokohama look scary good. That was one of the most impressive performances I’ve ever seen in an ACL match.

I’ve also had a go at the broadcast partner requirements:
Any company buying the rights to broadcast the 3 division league must comply with the following requirements:
– A minimum payment of at least $55 million per annum for rights to broadcast/stream on any platform all matches of the 3 divisions. The buyer of the rights can ‘on-sell/offload’ separately the A1, A2 or A3 matches to a different broadcaster, subject to the minimum broadcast requirements below being met. Production costs must be guaranteed by the the winning rights bidder, but they may recoup those costs from whomever they ‘on-sell’ the rights to.
– Obligation to either broadcast/stream in HD all A1 division matches, with at least 3 matches live per round (one of which must be in Saturday night prime time) and a weekly highlights package of at least 1 hour per round containing content from all A1 matches. Each live broadcast match must be covered by at least 4 cameras, 2 commentators and 1 pitch side interviewer at the ground.
– Obligation to either broadcast/stream in HD all A2 division matches, with at least 1 match live per round and a weekly highlights package of at least 1 hour per round containing content from all A2 matches. Each live broadcast match must be covered by at least 4 cameras, 1 commentator and 1 pitch side interviewer at the ground.
-Obligation to either broadcast/stream either in SD or HD all A3 division matches, with at least 1 match live per round and a weekly highlights package of at least 1 hour per round containing content from all A3 matches. Each live broadcast match must be covered by at least 2 cameras and 1 commentator.
Obviously, the goal is for all matches to have full coverage, and these are only the minimum standards.
TV/Stream requirements.
Matches shown live must be broadcast in full. Banner ads may be shown across the bottom of the screen taking up no more than 20% of the total area of the screen and generally not obscure the ball in play. 5 banner ads per half are allowed for a maximum of 35 seconds per banner ad. Cut aways to full screen advertisements may occur at specified events, which are : scoring of a goal; any injury break where a player requires treatment on pitch; scheduled drinks breaks in play. The half time break must include at least 3 minutes of football content by way of commentators/pundits discussing the match being shown in A1 broadcasts, or in A2 and A3, 3 minutes of discussion on any match in the league (eg. an A3 might show highlights of a match the night before).

@Samuel Power.

The application for planning permission has not even been lodged yet. This is another ‘nothing but puff piece’ article.

In fact, technically, they are probably less advanced than the Team 11 stadium proposal, and that Team 11 bid didn’t even get a licence. Actually, technically they are less advanced in the process than the Melbourne victory Footscray Park project, which can still run through the appeals and legal process.

Now, I want the Tarneit stadium to get built, but I know the system and I know where they are at in the process, and I know that it is not even at the starting gate.

The proposal will require planning approval. Technically the planning approval at a bare minimum will require a minimum of a 2 week public consultation period before the application is being reported to a Council meeting for a decision, at least a month after the consultation period ends.

Given that a crappy little two unit proposal ordinarily takes longer than those timeframes, I don’t see this taking any less than 3 months in the best case scenario. That is of course if everyone in the public agrees and no-one objects.

Once the approval is granted, they will need to start tendering and programming the construction timetable.

Put it this way, i will be amazed if they get this stadium approved and start construction before the end of this year.

@ Roberto,
The ‘basics, fundamentals and non-negotiables’ as you put them are not basics, fundamentals or non-negotiable.
They are things you want. However, the proposal I have outlined is compatible with all of them, except that the season avoids the winter when grounds are worst and most used by other codes, and the pyramid is split between this league and any lower leagues. Those matters are in fact not unusual in the world of football.

@ Roberto, Well if you stopped reading at the words “three divisions”, you missed the parts of the article where I explained how to achieve that format.
The model I’ve outlined is for 24 teams, and financially it is very achievable.
The structure of the model for the league itself is actually very simple and is nothing new. All I’ve done is limit each division to 8 teams rather than say, 18 as you’d see overseas.

@Redondo, interested to hear your thoughts.
I’ve intentionally designed a league system that includes a high degree of promotion and relegation activity, albeit in a closed league overall, as I’m hoping that this would sustain interest for the length of the season for more fans, even of other teams.

eg In this 3 division set up, the second division has 2 teams going up at the end of the year, 2 teams going down, and only 4 teams staying put for the next season. Virtually the whole division will be involved in a promotion or relegation battle for the season.

Thanks @Brian, I toyed with $13 million!

The licence fee payment is an ‘upfront’ risk, but I reckon any serious potential A League licence holder will be willing to pay $12 million. This is my assessment, based on the last round of expansion bids, and the conjecture about what was on offer and what was paid in the end, I reckon a $12 million fee fits the bill. It brings in the serious players and commits them to working to both hold on and improve the value of the licence and grow it. You’ve got to set the value high enough that buyers have ‘skin in the game’ to potentially lose, but not too expensive that you won’t get any takers.

You’ve also got to make it attractive to the current clubs and give them a reason to expand and bring in promotion and relegation.

I’ve also thought of this in the article when I’ve said, if we don’t get 12 buyers, then the model could work with just 4 new buyers coming in and just opening up an A2 division.

@ Towser, I agree with you that we should not be burdened by the salary cap and we should have transfer fees, just like around the world. I wonder though, how do we move forward to get there?
I wonder whether a ‘luxury tax’ soft cap for the first 5 or 10 years might be the way to transition out of the current system? That way, clubs could spend more than the cap, but pay the league an amount equal to the overspend, which is then distributed to the other clubs in the league.

@ Franko, for me, prizemoney per point is a relatively simple and relatively cheap thing that could be implemented pretty much straight away.
It encourages teams to value every point and play accordingly. The ‘downside’ to that may be that it potentially has cowardly coaches not playing youth, but I think that the upside is it raises the intensity of every match. There are always two sides to every coin. I wonder what would our coaches do?

@Franko. The league system itself is actually pretty straightforward and has been used in places like South America.
I’ve just suggested the number of teams and divisions in light of my best guesses as to what I think would work here.

There you go. Constructive discussion about options going forward!

This is the type of thing that needs to be threshed out by the clubs and the discussions need to be, as much as possible, done in the public sphere. this is what drives interest, engagement and investment and energises people in the football economy to look forward and participate and plan to grow the sport.

I’ve tried to devise a proposal that has hopefully the best of both worlds.
The league is a ‘closed league’ in that it is limited to 24 teams, but it doubles the size of our current league and includes promotion and relegation to enable both smaller and bigger clubs to find their place within the closed league.
The closed part of it is important, because it gives confidence to any clubs investing that the value of their investment will be maintained, at least until the 2034-35 season.
Whilst a $12 million licence fee sounds high, it really isn’t when you look at the ten-eleven season time period where you’re guaranteed that no other new competitors will come in.
Having a fee also sets a floor on the value of a spot in the league.
Ideally, licences wouldn’t be sold, but you could also build in a mechanism where licences are able to be ‘on-sold’ but subject to strict criteria, such as meeting the same criteria that the original licence holder had, but potentially with additional criteria such as consent of a majority of other licence holders. That is actually “Back to the Future” type stuff, because of course, 100 years ago (and in fact right up til recently) teams in some systems (eg England) were ‘elected’ to the football league.

@Nemesis, If there was only 1 ACL spot, we could give it to the team with the most points across the two championships, or we could have an “ACL playoff match” between the two champions. It is open to debate.

Glad you like the article. I think it’s good to investigate some of these sort of alternative formats and hopefully it’s seen by those running the league currently and they can probe the options to see what generates interest from NPL clubs and investors who can actually grow the league.

There’s actually a lot more that I didn’t touch on in the article due to space constraints and just trying to get something down on paper (well screen anyway). eg all the usual matters, salary cap, likely total amount of broadcast revenue, likely size of distribution to each club, allowance of transfer fees, whether licences would be transferable or able to be sold etc.

Those other matters are important, but primarily, I’d like to know what people think of the outline of the system I’ve given above.

If there are any NPL club administrators or potential consortium backers out there, I’d like to know what you’d think of the system and whether it would be worth investing in?

Thanks Waz.
My goal was to try to devise a league product where ambitious NPL clubs can buy in and where there is real opportunity for progression. That’s one of the reasons why there’s so much movement allowed between the 3 divisions.

Thanks Nemesis.
I just thought 3 divisions worked better to deliver more interest for more teams across the length of the year. In this model I’ve proposed, out of 24 teams, fully one third of the teams are either promoted or relegated, which should mean that at least half the 24 teams overall will be involved in either a promotion or relegation battle. Hopefully this will keep the interest high for a long length of the year.