If we don’t let fans decide because they are bias who do you hand it to? I’ll bet the current MRP members are also ‘fans’ and have a club they support or lean toward so they must be bias as well.

But Horto, Broxham received two yellows and the rules are that you can’t rescind a yellow card so there is no vote to be taken. See what I did there? It’s easy to limit extremism. Thanks for your comments though. P

Maybe, maybe not … there are enough total other fans to balance the numbers. And not all fans of one club are so biased that they would vote to suit their club. The statistics would be interesting to see.

It could also mean a larger crowd because the club don’t have to hold seats and limit walk up attendees just in case MVFC members turn up. Members have to get a ticket which hopefully means they are definitely coming.

Thank jb, I’m not saying ADP didn’t put bums on seats for individual matches – I’m saying he didn’t put bums on seats long term or benefit the A-league beyond dragging in some theater goers hoping for a little magic that never really arrived. As some have said above, yeah, the team was crap… yes, they were… and an aging ADP can’t fix that basic problem… and every now and then his thinking was faster that those around him… but it didn’t work. Is that what we want to see?

If Syd had spent their money on a “Broich / Berisha” paring, and strengthened the spine, and won the league three times in four years, I am sure The Cove would have been much happier …. even if the star gazers had nothing good to write about and couldn’t see the quality on the park because their eyes are stuck staring at the next aging player about to finish a career in Europe.

I’m sure CCM would jump at your Messi idea… and pay him a fortune… and get great short term crowds…. and (if they were 2014/15 vintage CCM) they would still be crap to watch and they would not achieve anything.

We’ll agree to disagree but I prefer my marquees to fit into a team structure… Berisha style – jam in a donut… not ADP style – ice cream on a cheap chop.

Cheers, Philip

This is the worst article I have seen for a long time and for me it’s summed up in Tony’s line “it’s little wonder a sense of pessimism prevails ahead of the season.”

I don’t sense pessimism at all among the fans who know football or from what I’ve seen recently on TV…. we are all hanging out with baited breath waiting for kick off tonight.

Sure the FFA have issues – plenty of them, no doubt about it – but it doesn’t fill me with a sense of pessimism. How about:

* Parramatta stadium is being rebuilt to provide greater capacity for the growth of WSW,
* MVFC just passed the 25,000 members barrier
* Sydney have the best squad they have ever had – excellent imports – and don’t have a Del Piero type noose around their necks
* Melb City look great on paper compared to prior years (can JVS deliver)
* In fact, every team looks better on paper than last year – squad and coaches alike
* The Victory / City derby in round 2 is an all ticket match at Etihad (i think it’s the first time an Etihad derby has been all ticket)
* Mariners have realized the error of their ways last year and have promised much more fan consultation and entertaining football
* Several thousand Victory fans are expected in Adelaide for Sat night’s fixture
* Merrick is talking about Wellington surpassing last years excellent performance
* SBS round table discussion was mostly positive about how clubs have improved their rosters this year
* Foxsport round table was very upbeat about the upcoming season

There is probably more but that will do for now.

And finally, when it comes to marque players the A doesn’t stand for austerity, it stands for Awakening – the teams have realized the way to put bums on seats long terms is to win things – I’ll take Berisha (and any one of a dozen current imports) ahead of dreary Del Piero any day.

I’ll even go further; i think a Del Piero type marque is a huge dis-advantage for the growth of the game. The press hype them up – the theater goers come and watch – the ‘superstars’ never deliver what is promised – and the theater goers walk away saying well, that was disappointing. With the possible exception of Dwight Yorke no ‘superstar’ marque has delivered.

Your list of things is not what the PFA want so they wouldn’t negotiate with you either.

Seriously Paul, I was going to respond to all this and then i saw the old furfy at the end about FFA reducing fees on grassroots children. If you’ve been conned by those who blame the FFA for registration fees then you do not have much hope of understanding a complex CBA negotiation.

The FFA registration fee in NSW for U/9’s is only $12.60 per annum. There are plenty of articles on-line and fee schedules that will tell you this. The fees each player pays then also includes NSW rego, what the club charges their players, in what association you play in, and how much the local council charges to use the grounds, is it an elite program or just basic, etc etc. Don’t blame the FFA for your child’s registration fee – talk to your club about where the money goes.

I also have to say that this “player pay freeze” really shirts me.

Even if the clubs have a frozen total player spend (which they don’t) but lets say they do, every year the club roster changes…. some players leave, new players come, junior players are promoted to the senior list, some players stay, some players take pay cuts to stay on leaving more money for other players (eg Archie Thompson – from what I have been told he has dropped salary 2 years in a row to stay on with MVFC) …

The result of player movements is that ANY individual player CAN ACHIEVE A PAY RISE if they negotiate one and there is always the opportunity to negotiate an increase if you deserve it eg Ben Khalfallah got a significant pay rise. No individual player has had a pay freeze even if the salary cap is frozen. The PFA are lying when they say the “players” have had a salary freeze as if they are arguing on behalf of an individual.

Finally, IF, IF my employer froze my individual salary and I wasn’t happy with it and I had the whole world were I could be employed I would find someone who rated my work at a higher value and go there. Unlike the AFL that ties players to clubs under the draft rules, there is no restriction on trade and players are free to negotiate and move around at their leisure. Pretty bloody simple.

Fan-bloody-tastic … (not the few fans running on the pitch – that’s stupid) … but the crowd noise and support… bring it on!

Yawn. You are right Pat, I couldn’t help myself. And I agree with you, one useless stat was about two decent teams from two foreign lands coming to Australia to profit. Especially when a decent Australian AFL team went overseas to play a decent team from …….. oh, that’s right there are no decent teams from foreign lands so we can stop right there.

And did you miss the Etihad stat … that was Melb v Adelaide

There is no doubt that FIFA corruption is the biggest scandal that needs dealing with. But Aust should stop being sycophants to FIFA … this problem affects all AFC and all African and all Nth American nations. It’s taken the USA (FBI) to finally rattle the FIFA cage and I hope they get more support and keep shaking it. Then they and other like-minded nations might finally get the FIFA noses out of the trough and start to raise these sorts of issues.

Yes, that is why I said you would need to take the last ’40’ matches (regardless of time).

On reflection I’m leaning to keeping friendlies as they are the games usually played outside your own confederation and make the mix of games more diverse.

I would still not weight them as I believe all friendlies are still played on equal terms and I’ve never been sure that the word “friendly” was actually true. If a nations organizes a game against another nation there is normally a motive for it and a desire to win. Did England ever play Scotland in a friendly and not want to win? Did Aust ever play NZ………. If Aust play Germany in a friendly do we not want to win……. bloody oath we do.

Chris,

Your comment “I don’t really agree with Philip’s suggestion of a win is a win no matter who it’s against. Otherwise Australia may well have been one of the top ranked teams on the planet when we were in Oceania simply because all our competitive matches were against such poor opposition,” May seem intuitively correct but it isn’t born out by the facts..

Sure we were Oceana champions, but almost every time we played outside Oceania we lost.

In fact our record for the ten years 1991-2000 (just a random selection that I thought would give a good spread) our record was (including friendlies)
Played 107 Won 54 Drew 21 Lost 33 For 186 Against 94

I dont know where that would place us on the rankings but my guess is we would be quite a long way from “one of the top teams on the planet”.

I disagree slightly. Many of us know intuitively that the rankings are rubbish, but it irks me the way the media report each new release (press and TV) … wow, were up! … crap, were down! … without any understanding of what it actually means.

Here is a little more analysis (if you can bear it) for those not yet convinced, or just for you to store in mind the next time someone says that Australia must be rubbish given their low rank.

This is not hypothetical. This is real.

Finland have played 8 Euro qualifies in their group so far and have won 3, drew 1 and lost 4.

They beat the Faroe Islands twice (picked up 928 points for the last win), they beat Greece once (1158 points for that) and drew with Greece (about 386pts) (note: Greece are rubbish – bottom of the group with 8 played, NIL wins, 1 draw, 7 losses). After eight games Finland have garnered around 3400 points (for just 2 wins against the Faroe Islands and a win and draw against Greece). If that was their annual output they would have achieved 425 ranking points for the 12 month period.

Let’s say Australia beat Jordan on Friday giving us the maximum we can achieve. Firstly, the win against Jordan, in very hostile territory will give us 644 pts – [ it is ridiculous that beating the Faroe Islands gives Finland 44% more points than Australia].

Secondly, we would have four wins – away to Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan (arguable much harder matches to win than Finland’s quick flight north to the Faroe Islands) and home to Bangladesh – and a total of around 1625 points. If we maintain that 100% record on all the return matches we will finish with 8 games, 8 wins and around 3200 points. If that was our annual output we would have 406 ranking points.

If Finland were near us in the rankings they could overtake us with a record of W3, D1, L4 while we have W8, D0, L0.

The football pundits in the media would headline that we had ‘dropped places in the FIFA rankings’ and would probably be wringing their hands about Australia’s dire position (and maybe we should sack the coach). The non-football people just see/hear the headline and say, gee we must be rubbish (and maybe we should sack the coach).

With some factual analysis (here) we can actually understand why the rankings can’t be trusted and I hope (in vain) that it might raise the level of debate/conversation the next time we fall/rise in the rank.

Yes, At Work, if there is any regional bias it should be the other way round as you suggest. However the current system doesn’t need regional bias … if Aust (58) beat Germany (2) our points would include an Opposition Rank weighting of 1.99, if Germany beat Aust their points would only include an Opposition Rank weighting of 1.42 so the weighting for the ‘quality’ of the opposition is already build in regardless of the confederation you play in.

I’m not sure I would even count friendlies … does any other league table count friendlies?

However, as a general rule both teams use friendlies to try new players, formations, warm up for a competition etc and both teams want to win even though it is a friendly. So if it is a legitimate match, played on equal terms then maybe it should be counted.

The current weighting disadvantages teams that play more friendlies by artificially lowering their average score for the year. A coach remunerated for there nations FIFA ranking should never play friendlies because every time they do their ranking points go down.

It doesn’t need to be that complex or have such a high variation in weighting.

All you really need is every game to have a W=3, D=1, L=0 (that is what every league does)
Count every nations last 40 (or 50, whatever) maches (so everyone is one on the table has played 40, w=XX, D=yy. L=zz, GF, GA
If you beat a lower ranked team you get no bonus at all. You win = 3 points.

The only tweak is if you beat or draw with a team between 10-20 places higher you bet a bonus 0.1 point (ie 3.1 pts for the win or 1.1 pts for the draw)
If the team is 20-30 places higher you get 0.2 bonus points (ie 3.2 pts for the win or 1.2 pts for te draw)

It would stop all the wild month to month fluctuations that occur now, but over time a lower ranked team could climb there way up the ladder by beating higher opposition.

As you get higher you have fewer opportunities for bonus points but you simply have to keep winning to stay there,

Correct. It’s a double counting.

It’s time for the PFA to pull their heads in (or maybe just Adam Vivian needs to pull his head in) and rethink the negative impact they are having on football, it’s public image and it’s financial stability.

I just want to make two points. It’s quoted here that “The PFA has been working for 14 months with FFA to reach an agreement for a whole of game CBA,” Vivian said in a statement. It then says that the PFA boss Adam Vivian has called for patience, revealing more talks will unfold later this week focusing on contract security and safety for players at financially unstable A-League clubs. More talks! Did the PFA not know 14 months ago that there was an issue at some unstable A-league clubs?? What the hell have they been doing for 14 months?

Vivian was quoted yesterday as saying, “We need a strong financial foundation off the back of a strong TV agreement…” I only have one question regarding this. Has the PFA’s recent activities worked toward supporting a strong TV agreement, by providing a united front of players and administrators willing to work together even under adverse conditions, or has it weakened footballs bargaining power, showing the FFA under siege from its own players, including placing a spotlight on the possible greed of some players (eg the national team who are one of the best paid national teams in the world despite no major sponsors.)?

The PFA have a role to play in some of the issues faced in the competitive Australian sports market and there are better ways to address the issues than what we have seen from the PFA over recent months.

My message to the PFA and Vivian in particular;
1) Sign the contract now.
2) Let us and the media focus on football.
3) Go back into your board room and rethink what could be done better for the next contract and start work on it immediately behind the scenes working with the FFA and the A-League owners for a better outcome for EVERYONE. That includes us fans who seem to have been forgotten while the PFA/FFA argue about who is up who, and who is not paying!

Kevin, we don’t need to compare with others. The less we say about the other codes the better. Other codes are hardly ever mentioned in my household because I’m just not interested any more. (and I’d like to see less mention of them here)

But, if others codes are raised I just say, did you know the largest attendance at Etihad for a domestic league game of any code was an A-League match… I can now add, did you know the largest crowd at the MCG this year wasn’t the Grand Final but a kick-about friendly soccer game that drew over 99,000 people smack in the middle of AFL season! And many other references…. but I don’t need to.

When people engage with me in sports conversation it’s about football… and there are plenty of us to engage with and the number is growing all the time.

We just have to focus on keeping our own house in order and enjoying the beautiful game.

Nice article Mitchell.

If you are trying to get your rankings up it isn’t as easy as just playing Portugal in a friendly. If we did play Portugal and win our ranking points would rise about 10 points due to that game. That just might move us up one place depending on numerous factors. But a draw or a loss and our ranking points would fall perhaps as much as 20 points due to that one game and there is a higher likelihood we would actually fall in the rankings.

It is possible to manufacture higher rankings by clever scheduling (and winning) but you have to look at the past 4 years results and do some clever maths on where your 12 months running averages (over a 4 year period) are going.

Gallifuoco isn’t in the starting line up because he’s away at the moment, but I have no problem with that back four.

Right back isn’t a problem while Geria is there or if Broxham can step in, but I agree that the back-ups for full back spots – Galloway and Murnane – haven’t yet been convincing as permanent options.

In the UK they were fanatics for football first and then the sport migrated from FTA to pay TV. You should note that there was a huge uproar about it but people paid for pay TV because (a) they had no choice if they wanted to watch football and (b) they had no choice of an alternative popular sport. In Aust we are not mad for football (and we are not EPL quality) so years of exclusivity on pay TV is a huge handicap especially when the two other popular sports AFL and NRL are very much FTA based.

It may be outsourced broadcasting crews but the station could choose a crew and, most importantly, a producer/director that usually covers the races and has no idea about football. If there are a dozen cameras at the ground, it’s the director who decides what camera is going live to air and I’m not interested in tight shots on Ryan Giggs 3 day growth, or a good looking couple in the crowd, when there is a match being played in the background. The stations also decide on the commentators (in this case we seem to have two that are knowledgeable football people so this should be ok), and the stations decide on the ad breaks or the quantity and size of the rolling adverts on screen promoting their next soapy or reality tv show. If Ch7 are not using the usual FoxSport broadcast crew then the coverage could be vastly different to what we are used to seeing.

I’m not whinging, whining or jumping at shadows. I’m just saying that the FTA component has made these important games for the A-League and giving my reasons why I think that to be the case.

Thanks Bondy, my thoughts exactly.