Roar Rookie
Joined April 2019
14.1k
Views
12
Published
203
Comments
Canberra-based Football fan
Published
Comments
At the time that the A-League was unbundled from Football Australia’s control, much was made about the freedom it would give clubs to control…
It’s pretty boring for part-time fans who are used to the overseas leagues.
Dedicated, year-round facilities for football have long been a discussion point for our community and the situation is improving. Work is progressing swiftly on…
The A-League is living through a credibility crisis. Or maybe a whole era of diminished credibility in the eyes of the football community in…
Johnny Warren’s legacy as a bureaucratic warrior for football may been forgotten, but his legacy lives on in ways we can still see today.…
Football in this country is at a low ebb right now. The Matildas crashed out of a tournament that we expected them to win.…
Somewhat overlooked among the announcements regarding Silver Lake’s $130 million investment in the Australian Professional Leagues were two proclamations with far-reaching ramifications regarding competition…
The biggest issue the A-Leagues have, contributing to poor viewing figures and the missed opportunity of growing crowds, is the unimaginative broadcasting arrangements. On…
Mike Tuckerman’s excellent recent article contains a short list of some of the silliest, most tin-eared decisions A-League clubs and league organisers have made…
Earlier this week the Association of Australian Football Clubs chairman Nick Galatas gave an update on how things are tracking on the Championship, the…
In Episode 3 of the Soccer Doctors podcast Andy Harper floated an idea that private schools should step up and invest in licenses to…
We have the biggest amateur and semi-professional sport in the country, not just counted through official Football Australia stats but also through the large…
woah woah woah. Mate, no-one in charge of professional football in Australia has ever stooped to do market research. Find out what people want to pay for? Perish the thought. And why change tradition? It’s always not worked for us in the past, and will always not work for us in the future.
The APL is doomed to fail until it starts focusing on football
Lowy had already been replaced by Chris Nikou when work on bidding for the WWC began.
Every sport on the planet was riding a wave of massive increase in TV value. A drover’s dog would have achieved the same.
S.Lowy’s record is one of inaction. Persistent failure to reform governance, invest in footballing quality (in stark contrast to what FA is now doing under JJ).
The one thing that he does deserve a pat on the back for is establishing the Australia/FFA Cup. (After about a decade of begging by clubs across the country).
In fact, the more we look at what FA is doing now, the better the leadership looks in contrast to the recent past.
A-Leagues confirm brutal staff purge as game's bold $40m vision goes up in smoke
Would have been a credible statement coming from anyone else but S.Lowy. His decision-making was consistently poor as well
A-Leagues confirm brutal staff purge as game's bold $40m vision goes up in smoke
Let’s not confuse two different things.
The A-League as a competition will survive one way or another indefinitely. There will always be a national league.
The APL is a corporation owned by investors who are now having one last roll of the dice. It may or may not survive.
But football will carry on regardless of the poor decision making of a clique of investors
A-Leagues confirm brutal staff purge as game's bold $40m vision goes up in smoke
All articles are written by volunteers. Looks like it’s your turn 👍
A 12 team NST? Why Australian football needs to trust the process, and what four more teams could look like
See I would agree with you on the quality of the coverage but Channel 10 isn’t looking to have much of a future tbh. We don’t good ratings with them, and some of that has to do with how small their audience is across the board, which gives them little ability to leverage big audiences for the Socceroos and A-Leagues.
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/peter-van-onselen-claims-channel-10-is-on-verge-of-disaster-as-paramount-stock-plummets/news-story/916ad2a0a127e42d5e67e6ca292ba050
The Roar's A-League Men tips and predictions: Round 5
Sunshine Coast have today posted on social media that they are still in the hunt for 2025. Meeting with FA soon to keep working on their bid.
A 12 team NST? Why Australian football needs to trust the process, and what four more teams could look like
A bit off topic but Football Australia released its Annual Report yesterday. Record non-A-League revenue (and expenditure). If you’re like me and follow as many of the NTs as possible, it’s been very noticeable how many extra tournaments and friendlies the junior NTs have been playing recently, and it’s all due to the extra funding
also coming out of the AGM, Anter Isaac is the new FA Chair, replacing Chris Nikou
https://www.footballaustralia.com.au/news/football-australia-hosts-20th-agm-elects-new-chair-anter-isaac
The Roar's A-League Men tips and predictions: Round 5
Stuart, I don’t want Gina the Hutt anywhere near football
Cut the crap, money talks and Bill Foley’s new Auckland licence is exactly what the A-League needs
wise words for every sports club in the country
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
NSD isn’t supposed to be another A-League. It’s a low cost model, semi-professional. The existing 8 clubs already spend upwards of $500k playing in their respective NPLs, and that’s with little fan interest. There’s way more fan interest for those clubs going into a national championship. They’ll make more money. No vast riches. Just a few million more per year.
And they give much better competition for 16-21 year old players to develop in than what they currently get with the NPL. If they’re a future Socceroo, they’ll get blooded in the NSD at a younger age, then move up to the AL much better prepared, and then a big league o/s. It’s a talent pipeline.
Just imagine RL was a legit international sport and the ARLC decided that Australia needed to compete better in international games. They realised that the NRL was a bit lousy at developing talent compared to world’s best practice. They identify that the transition from amateur grassroots football to the NRL was broken, so they want to establish a new, semi-pro national comp below the NRL to concentrate the best young talent that is currently spread across 8 state leagues, into 1 elite comp.
Sounds good? So which clubs do you want in it? You don’t know so you go to market and find out who’s willing and able. And you end up picking North Sydney, Newtown, Toowoomba Clydesdales, South Logan Magpies and other next best clubs to be the next level.
That’s what’s happening here. Don’t get hung up on pro/rel as its not part of the immediate future
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
That would be the ideal scenario but there are some critical reasons why things are being done this way.
The A-League is run by the APL, a separate corporation to Football Australia. APL is partly owned by the A-League clubs, but also by an outside private equity investor called Silverlake. The APL business model is focussed on generating cash, especially to pay dividends to Silverlake. So they’re not really interested in bringing in small clubs that can’t pay the $25m licence fee that the APL wants for new franchises.
Football Australia’s interests are in maximising the talent pool of players, coaches for the national teams. The A-League has done a poor job of that over its history because there are so few professional clubs, a very short season, and little game time available to next generation talents to develop. That’s a serious structural problem with the way the sport is run is this country that holds us back from reaching our potential. If you want to get a sense of how bad things are, COVID’s disruption of the league actually *improved* talent development by forcing clubs to give talented teenagers and early 20s players game time.
Finally the FA board has decided to act after being cowardly for 15 years. So FA wants to have a whole extra national league made up of the next best available clubs. So far they’ve chosen ambitious, well-resourced clubs that already have some combo of owning their stadiums and training grounds, have rich benefactors, licenced clubs, latent fanbases that will get them through the start-up phase. There’s a bunch of other clubs on the cusp of being ready as well.
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
Auckland are officially in the A-League. Bournemouth owner awarded the licence.
My vision for Auckland and Northland in the A-Leagues: A letter from new club owner Bill Foley
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
Football Australia has published short interviews with each of the presidents of the initial 8 clubs: https://www.youtube.com/@footballaustralia/videos
A few quick takeaways:
• All the presidents look stoked to be part of the new comp
• South Melbourne expects to double their revenue and expenses for year 1 (ie/ be much stronger off-field than they are in the NPL. Though probably behind Jets, CCM off-field)
• Avondale’s president looks like Pep Guardiola
• Preston Lions are big on close community engagement (no surprises, they’re probably the best in the country at that even though in NPL2)
• Sydney United is excited but daunted about getting ready for 2025
• APIA strongly advised against a 2024 start because the lead times were too short (see also Sydney United’s feelings).
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
I think the big sticking point will be the non-club investors in the APL who don’t really care about football outcomes like pro/rel. They’re only interested in getting cash out of the sport and into their own pockets
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
A similar system has been in play in NSW since 2018. It effectively makes very junior football (u6, u7) free
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
It’s a good start. There’s lots of things to remember:
– We need more clubs playing serious, high stakes football instead of semi-serious state league. Whatever we get in Year 1 will be a massive improvement for the football ecosystem. Especially, player, coach and administrator career paths and development. This is the entire rationale for the exercise and we should always have that front of mind. The Socceroos will be the biggest beneficiaries out of this because young talent won’t atrophy in the late teen/early 20s age groups like it currently does.
– the ALeague began with 8 clubs. This comp will have 10 – 12 at the outset
– No WA, SA, QLD, TAS, ACT clubs isn’t good. The additional 2 – 4 clubs that are not yet over the line will need to come from those states.
– The NSL didn’t have a club in WA for its first 19 years.
– No immediate pro/rel. I’m an advocate for pro/rel once the 2nd div is stable. And the concept will sell itself when everyone can see with their own eyes that most clubs in NSD are better run than Macarthur.
– Looks like Football Queensland has sabotaged the entry of QLD clubs. The sooner the state feds are stripped of their power to interfere with national policy the better. They should only be subsidiaries of FA with zero influence outside their own borders.
Will East Coast-based National Second Tier sink or swim?
a two leg GF is just a great idea all round. Imagine getting 50k in Melbourne for 1 leg then same again in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane or Sydney for example?
A-League Grand Final u-turn on the cards with potential Magic Round as Sydney replacement
Magic Round is an extra round. No-one sacrifices a home game for this. But some will pick up an extra one
A-League Grand Final u-turn on the cards with potential Magic Round as Sydney replacement
appreciate the nitpicking but it doesn’t change the fact that football is underfunded compared to other sports.
That’s the only point worth making
Queensland to celebrate Matildas' legacy with funding boost - but most of it is already going to Rugby and AFL
There were only a few thousand Irish fans but you could hear them singing fields of Athenry clearly enough
Matildas don’t attract a boisterous crowd. They are “family friendly” (ie/ no atmosphere)
Catley penalty saves Matildas' blushes in front of record crowd as Kerr to miss Nigeria clash
I’ll put on my positivity hat here: it would only take 1 club in Melbourne to get its act together, do the right things and wipe the floor with the others, to change the dynamic city-wide within a few years.
Beautiful game in a beautiful place: Australia on the verge of becoming a real football nation
unrelated to the Roosters or NRL, but the sky blue Easts jersey used in the thumbnail is the colour combo Melbourne City should adopt: sky blue, white and red. (But not the chevron, obvs)
Stick a fork in these Roosters, they are done: Tough run home to seal fate for cooked Chooks
It’s a friction because both factions have sought to exclude the other from national football. The NSL faction had exclusive control of the game, then the newly-created AL faction has kept it for the last 20 years.
At no point have we ever done what every mature country has done: give everyone a seat at the national table, and then let the playing of football decide who the best clubs are, regardless of politics.
The APL is doomed to fail until it starts focusing on football