I reckon the way to do the split is to only play each other once (post-split) and reduce the finals proper to 1v4 and 2v3. You’d then try to market the whole final round robin as ‘the finals’.
I think the split is the best way to manage anything less than 3 complete home and away rounds - way better than playing some teams twice and others three times at random - but it’s certainly true that there’d be nothing for the bottom teams to play for.
No finals?
No Grand Final?
It would be easier and simpler to just pull the plug on the league now instead of watching it die over two seasons.
Is that directed at my post? Obviously the 1v4 and 2v3 semis would be followed by a grand final. I thought that was pretty clear.
You can always slap that post season cup shit over whatever happens before. If you can win 3 games and finish In front of a team that beat you by 23 points over the season, then feel free to add whatever final format you wish. The proposal was for something different to the current widely popular A League fornat, and in particular which could work for 12 teams without pro/rel which like it or not, is decades away if at all possible.
Why do you want something different?
Smacks of the same Eurosnobbery that cries about finals to start with and has existential angst over the lack of promotion and relegation.
How does the Belgium/Scottish model provide the interest, attendance and grand finale that a finals system brings? You still provide the opportunity for a bunch of meaningless dead rubbers the last couple of weeks of the season. A Grand Finals means that interest is maintained to the very last game. And yes, sometimes that means you streak the home and away system and fuck up in the finals.
And the 2nd last season of the NSL did this. It sucked.
The way things are going, we’re going to have a lot more last rounds like this in the near future. A few teams that really get themselves together, the next lot who moderately get themselves together, and the rest who cannot get themselves together at all. Not interesting. I don’t see much happening next season in that regard.
I guess another problem with doing a split league is booking for stadiums not exactly being set in stone for the final 5 weeks or so of the regular season. I’d imagine most clubs in the top flights of Scotland and Belgium own their own stadiums, so this is not a problem for them.
Because as I mentioned several times, playing each other twice is not enough with so few teams, and doing so three times (and so 33 rounds) seems to be pushing what the broadcasters, stadia, and even fans want to put up with.
And the whole thing has been on the nose for a while, with this season’s ludicrously staggered ladder being a case in point. It needs…something.
Ludicrously staggered ladder?
Hard cap.
It requires at least six clubs, probably to get their head out of their arses and really step up in their recruitment, on and off the field. The fact the likes of Vince Lia (among many others) are still running around the league despite never really being that good is fucking nonsense. The fact we could be so average and still come second is a damning indictment of the current state of affairs.
The problem is that with the independent A-League coming, we still literally have no idea of what to expect for next season. Not good for stability.
In fairness, you can’t really do worse than the current FFA…
This season has had shades of when FFA dropped the ball because they were consumed with the WC bid. With an independent league on the horizon it appears they don’t give a shit about the HAL and are focusing their energies where they’ll benefit in future. Honourable mention to Stajgate and everyone at HQ keeping their head down since.
AT least there is one step of progress in the right direction - expansion. No matter how we try and dress it, the 10 team league has stuck around far too long and is a major contributor towards the indifference.
Unfortunately, expansion, means there will continue to be a bit more of this…
… but it should also mean we get greater influx of young players into the comp, just to make up numbers. Some will work out, and others won’t, but it will at least be a breath of fresh air.
Maybe. Where it is at the moment is no good to anyone. We need to either go full laissez-faire or tighten it back up. Maybe the latter is still more where we are at, though it costs our top clubs in international competitiveness, if we care all that much about it.
Yep, they have been Godawful. Buckley was the worst, but Gallop is the worst.
Genuinely not sure what they have done this last year beyond expansion.
While I agree with that, the truth is that a lot of players’ contracts are expiring in a few weeks, and I don’t see a lot of renewals taking place (unless I’m completely blind and simply haven’t kept up with contract news). This uncertainty cannot be healthy at all for any stakeholder in the game, particularly the players who have families of their own.
Doesn’t look like there’s an E-League thread, so putting it here…
We are Champions, oh yes we are!
And everyone laughed when we signed Mitch Austin…
Yeah, we still don’t care.
PFA TEAM OF THE SEASON
Goalkeeper: Filip Kurto
Defenders: Jason Davidson, Shane Lowry, Bart Schenkeveld, Rhyan Grant
Midfielders: Neil Kilkenny, Brandon O’Neill, Diego Castro
Forwards: Chris Ikonomidis, Ola Toivonen, Roy Krishna
Substitutes: Liam Reddy, Michael Jakobsen, Isaias, Milos Ninkovic, Adam Le Fondre
Coach: Tony Popovic
Can’t really argue with that.
Davidson would get destroyed in a back four but. 
Also I’d have Kosta up top instead of Ikon, who was quality but missed nearly half the season.