Of the current clubs how many will survive financially and in terms of support if they get relegated to playing out of suburban grounds? Us, Adelaide, Wests, Citeh and Tards are the only clubs not to go bankrupt or have their licenses cancelled. Relegation would destroy Perth, Newy, CCM, Roar and Nix either financially or in terms or fans.
Beside relegation being a stupid idea in an independent HAL turkeys won’t vote for Xmas. MLS is fine without relegation.
Seriously guys promotion and relegation will not happen until there is a strong enough second division. By strong enough I mean of similar strength and organisation to the first division.
This will not happen by just putting 10 to 20 new clubs in a comp and calling it the 2nd Division. If you do that and then have P & R you will just get all the disasters alluded to above.
By all means start a national second tier completion and then use it to promote teams to the A-League when they show they are ready. Probably a much better way of doing things than building clubs from nothing.
If you want to have a 2nd Division for P & R purposes you do not use this second tier comp as a 2nd division you wait until you have enough teams in the A-League (20 at least) and then you divide it into a first and second division. That way you will have two divisions of similar standard, that are not separated by a massive gap.
Being realistic I strongly doubt I will still be here when something like this can happen.
No, my point - which is the consensus of every single commentator, insiders and outsiders, about the state of Australia’s development - is that we suck at youth development because there is a dearth of opportunities for young players to get game-time.
So where did Viduka get his game time? Brett Emerton? Bosnich? Schwarzer? Chipperfield?
The Golden Generation did not have an NSL with promotion and relegation. It didn’t exist. It didn’t happen. It was not there. It was absent.
If you’re argument was expansion for playing opportunities, fine. More teams obviously creates more opportunities. P&R provides an opportunity to bankrupt everyone. This takes away opportunities.
Move on from player development. Park it. Don’t compare overseas football/sport with domestic football/sports.
What is the great thing about P&R that only we know about? Why has the NRL and AFL ignored promotion and relegation. As far as I can tell, two divisions of 12 teams each would be great for the NRL. Yet they don’t do it?
Why don’t they do it?
Why is a fixed membership A-League stale?
Why is a fixed membership AFL not stale?
Why is a fixed membership NRL not stale?
Australia is a unique situation in regard to the P&R question.
The only other countries that compare to us are USA and Brazil.
USA is the most similar - we know all about it and its been discussed to death so I wont go on.
Brazil is similar to us because of their geography, and they actually do not have a long history of a national league. Like Australia, Brazil is a big country and for a long time they did not have a proper football pyramid - rather a national league with state/regional leagues below that. Brazil’s national league dates only from the 1960s or so, and whilst they now have a proper Serie A, B, C & D, this formalised football pyramid was only cemented relatively recently, like only in the past 10-20 years. And we’re talking about BRAZIL for fuck sake.
And neither are great comparisons because whilst America does have a saturated sports market like us both it and Brazil have far far greater populations.
I think only in this thread on this forum, and only a few people on here, have come out NOT in support of P&R. And I’m yet to hear a solid case for it from any of the talking heads or media about why we need it other than it must happen because…football.
Is there any chance anyone of standing or with a platform within the game will solidly challenge the universal opinion that we NEED P&R?
Lets say we DID install P&R… how do we ensure that after a few years the 1st division doesn’t consist solely of rich Sydney & Melbourne teams?
The cream will always rise to the top. And the Sydney/Melb teams in particular will always have an advantage.
How do we ensure that say, Perth or CCM or Newcastle don’t end up permanently stuck in the 2nd division? For all those who complain the current league is boring - that scenario is even worse.
If Perth Glory got relegated and there was no WA team in the top flight for a few years, that would be catastrophic for football in WA. Same for Adelaide United & SA.
The way I see it, there are actually more downsides to P&R than positives for Australia. I’m all for a 2nd division of some kind, but it has to be viable. In the short term, maybe instead of the current NPL finals knockout format, it could be expanded into some kind of round robin with the top 2 or 3 teams from each state represented, from which a champion is crowned.
In the medium term we should aim for some kind of closed 2nd division like the USL in the USA, with promotion to the HAL based upon metrics like finances and attendances, so if an NPL team was killing it with big crowds and had financial backers they could force their way into the HAL on merit.
Traditional P&R is a much longer term project which I do not think is anywhere near viable right now.
Good summation JayD.
I think the above is the most (only) viable option. Let the 2nd tier prove their merits for inclusion.
Exactly. The MLS were able to find Atlanta (metro pop larger than Sydney’s or Melbourne’s) down the back of the couch after TWENTY years; meanwhile we’ve been reduced to discussing the merits of Syd/Melb 3rd teams or regional cities with < 300k Pop since the first decade of HAL.
Speaking for myself, I am in support of P&R. I just don’t think it’s achievable in the way that’s been talked about due to the market basically being too small, particularly once other sports and distance come into the equation. “Because…football” can be a valid pro argument. Unfortunately, "there just isn’t the money or model with the nonexistent money" are cold hard counterarguments much in the way that “it’d be cool to jump off the top of a building and fly like a bird” (a pretty awesome idea I think) is ruined by “you don’t have the physical apparatus to fly and will die, splattered on the pavement.”
Incidentally, I think I recall Ned Zelic being of similar opinion regarding the cold hard truth, and Joe Gorman was also similarly realistic, before disappearing from the face off the earth (i.e. from social media).
I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned yet, but the reason why people want P&R yet don’t have a ‘good’ reason why is because it is about football romanticism, which can’t be measured and isn’t an objectively good reason.
It taps in to that romantic notion that your local club, no matter how shit, could progress through the football pyramid and make it big one day. That romantic notion that the semi pro yet objectively shit team you play in could rise up through the ranks. We all know deep down we aren’t good enough to play professionally but still hold just a little bit of hope we can make those incremental jumps and get to the big time. It works the other way as well and feeds every football fan’s dream of seeing their rivals relegated, or teams that don’t care as much as yours punished for poor performance.
It’s the reason why we start football manager or fifa with a team from League 2 and dream of winning the champions league. It’s the reason why promotion play off games and teams fighting for survival are the most entertaining and heart-on-sleeve matches as you see those romantic dreams those players have about to be fulfilled or ripped away from them.
Every reason given above against P&R is 100% right and I agree with. Some alone are enough to lay the P&R coffin to rest. But in spite of it all I still want P&R.
Read “Mr Cleansheets” and believe.
Seriously though it is well worth the read. Great page turner and ripping yarn.
No I am not close friends with Adrian.
There is a very strong argument that Australian football would benefit from a second division of some kind, and I think that should be a high priority objective in the short to medium term.
Whether the architecture of that second-tier involves P&R or not is a separate question, and definitely not a necessity.
I would make the point, though, that should we proceed with a second-tier, its architecture will significantly influence the evolution of the professional level of our game in all sorts of ways, raising various questions about what sort of future people would want to have.
Only way I can see P&R working:
This actually makes sense, Micky mouse, but it makes sense.
It’s definitely not perfect and a lot of screwing around, but it ensures current teams don’t get relegated and lose their licences and it allows for smaller teams to get that cash injection, while at the same time, allowing them to prove themselves as being legitimate contenders for the a-league.
As an aside, new teams that have 2-3 years to enter the league, can get teams together much earlier and compete in the second division to allow them to have a decent effort in creating a good squad, rather than throwing themselves into a major competition after playing a handful of games against shit teams or second rate a-league squads.
Did someone actually suggest this?
10 players earning $19k/year and 10 on $43k gives a total salary bill of $620k
So, 2nd div is part time?
This means a club has to go from a part time player bill of $620k to a full time player bill of ~$3mill in one off season if promoted?
I think some people support a mixed professional/ semi-pro model, but realistically I think the whole division has to be professional to deliver the benefits to young players which would be a big reason for having the division. Otherwise it would just be making the existing NPL a national comp and that’s probably not good enough.
I would expect wage bills around $1m once you bring a couple of imports on board in addition to some ex-A-League players.
There has been quite a bit of friction between AAFC and PFA about what exactly a second division would involve.
PFA is adamant that full professionalism is an absolute necessity, while the AAFC is pushing for something which seems like it would be (at least somewhat) semi-pro.
The AAFC’s original ‘Championship’ model, released in 2017, required that clubs were capable of an annual budget of $2.5 million. PFA went public at around the same time with their own modelling, which put the number at $5.5 million.
By way of comparison, A-League clubs seem to be in the $10m-15m range, with the bigger clubs (SFC, MVC) “probably closer to 20 than to 10” (Lyall Gorman in an interview about 2nd-div at the time, which is the most recent source I can find).
Assuming a second-division was somehow made viable according to PFA’s specifications, then it seems reasonable that its clubs would be able to make the step up financially (though, as an aside, whether the reverse is true is a whole other unknown).
A couple of million in broadcast revenue (HAL clubs currently get $3.??m/year), an extra 20-30k at the gate across a HAL season and an extra $5/ticket from their existing crowds, plus increased sponsorship and corporates, would bridge the gap between a stronger 2nd-tier side (lets say $6m) and the bottom of the 1st-tier (lets say $10m).
The AAFC’s model, obviously, not so. The gap is way too wide, it would really need to be wildly successful beyond their expectations, and remain so beyond the novelty/honeymoon stage. At best, if a few of those teams were individually successful, then hopefully it makes the expansion process easier for them, which then drives more expansion hopefulls to invest in building up their ‘Championship’ clubs.
I don’t know what planet they think a tv deal will be worth anything for this.
Games will be on 10 peach at midnight.
I have had a bit of a think about it and they way I would do it is as follows
We have 2 conferences
Conference A is made of of the 10 current HAL teams
Conference B is made up of the 2 new HAL teams and the 8 best placed state league teams ( in terms of numbers of fans, finances, stadium etc)
Teams in each conference play each other home and away and play the teams in the other conference just once
The key is both conferences need to be televised but it would make the season far more interesting if we (SFC) get to play the usual teams but also have some new matches against South Melb, Syd United, whoever.
The state League teams involved would also benefit financially and with more publicity
The lowest placed team in Conf 1 lets say CCM:) will go down to the second conference and the highest from the second conference will be promoted
This has the added benefit of not totally destroying a teams finances if they get relegated to Conf 2 as they are still getting TV revenue and ticket sales from visiting Conf 1 teams
There would need to be a system for teams getting relegated from Conf 2 back to state level and also promoted up but that can come years later
Only Conf A teams can play in Asia or the finals series
Prize money would be distributed based on league position as well as TV revenue. Enough of a difference to make teams want to get promoted to Conf A
Last but not least the 2 conferences need to have a better name than A and B or 1 and 2. Sort of like Premier league and championship but more original