As an entertainment business for you, to be entertained, all of this is keeping you on the edge of the seat.
Hence your questions and suspense.
Not Hollywood, but as we all love this game, all this keeps us amused and keeps our everyday stable.
Sara, we’re lucky to have the human element in our choice of enjoyment of entertainment.
That’s football, and i’m glad we’re getting it here in Australia.
Get the popcorn, chair of the AAFC has been going hard on the “only NSL clubs have roots” line
https://www.reddit.com/r/Aleague/s/ku7QVsPN2q
Not to police metaphors, but plants don’t start from roots (usually), they start from a seed, which grows roots…
If you have a period of 10 years between 2nd division starting and relegation from the A-League being possible, I can’t see why you can’t have promotion.
If a side wins the league, and meets a set criteria of say a minimum amount of funding to buy an A-League License (work out a cost based on how many years left before the current licenses expire, so they would be paying an equal percentage as current A-League teams), stadium up to standard, certain crowd/membership figures etc then why not? I think it needs a minimum of 12 sides in the 2nd tier to do this though.
It is a good incentive for clubs willing to set up in the 2nd tier and run themselves well. It’s not much motivation to fund a 2nd tier side if you know you can’t get promoted in the first 10 years.
Ideally for me, we will have a 14-16 team A-League and a 12-14 team 2nd tier when promotion and relegation can be done properly, playing home and away seasons. With 1 automatic relegation and then 1 relegation play off spot. Bottom side gets relegated, next bottom 4 play off, losing side of those 4 then play off over 2 legs against the winner of the playoffs in tier 2 (2nd place - 5th play in tier 2 playoffs). So you essentially have 1 definite promotion and relegation spot and then 1 potential extra.
Need to create a way for the season not to have lots of dead rubbers by the end of it and I think the above would help with that, also would give most of the sides in the 2nd tier a chance to make those playoffs until late in the season, leaving only some potential dead rubbers at the bottom of that division.
The A-League side in most cases would also win a 2 leg play-off, unless there is a really exceptional 2nd tier side.
Okay, I know I’ve beat this point to death, but looking at the NSL crowds throughout, compared to AL crowds throughout, not even close. Even an increased population doesn’t account for the major difference.
In the later seasons of the NSL, by far the higher crowds were “franchise” turned A-league clubs, Glory and Adelaide United. Lots of the major old “ethnic clubs” by the end were getting crowds of 2000. South Melbourne was the big outlier of those clubs, sometimes getting 10k. Knights occasionally with a larger crowd too.
If the A-league is underperforming it’s that it hasn’t grown as fast as it should. The suggestion that it struggles to draw people in compared to the NSL is beyond BS. As well as any suggestion that aforementioned post-WWII-era ethnic clubs have a better potential for growth of fanbase. Yeah, you have a “real identity”, but the identity doesn’t apply to lots of other people in these cities.
FA is struggling to herd together 8 teams that can guarantee having $500k in their bank.
APL expansion is asking for $20m paid upfront, and announced an owner today.
It’s orders of magnitude apart, not even worth thinking about at this stage.
Plus you also run the huge risk of clubs going to the wall chasing the promotion carrot that never comes.
The promotion/relegation works ok in countries where soccer is the dominant sport, and has a big following. In that case, people will continue to follow their team if relegated, and continue to follow the top league as well.
In Australia, if Perth and Adelaide got relegated would people in those cities really stick by their team in the B-League? Would they spend money to watch them play? More likely they would just lose interest and the League loses a big chunk of the market.
If APIA and Marconi got promoted instead of the two teams above, we’d get the East-Coast centric complaints that we already have with the second tier.
The difference in scale of $ is massive between second tier and A-League. For that to narrow it would need the B-League to consistently generate similar amounts of interest - ie. fans that want to pay money to watch them and buy merchandise - where are those people? I live close to Lambert and no one I know around here follows APIA or do I ever see anyone wearing their kit other than kids that play (pay to play?) NPL…
Pro/rel nice in principle, but can’t see it happening in its purest form here
I wouldnt have a problem if perth and Adelaide got religated (probably brisbane too) and the nsw and Victoria teams promoted to a comp based between Newcastle and Melbourne.
If the teams from those pissant cities die so be it. Pro rel is just natural selection of finding where the talent, money and real support is and that is in nsw and vivtoria.
If there wasnt so much money in the ground in WA, I’d suggest kicking them out of the federation too.
That doesn’t really do much for the sport nationally, or identifying and nurturing talent in those states.
How many current socceroos don’t get discovered if teams in those pissant cities die?
How short sighted.
6 of the Socceroos that went to the last world cup played for junior clubs outside of Victoria and NSW, and that’s not counting the others that were born overseas…
People need not panic. This 2nd division will simply be Australia’s version of the USL which is the USA’s 2nd tier below MLS.
The USL is a closed league with no pro/rel however teams can apply to join the MLS as long as they meet certain criteria such a finances etc.
I imagine our NST will be much the same. And the only way any of our NST teams will ever be able to stump up $20m to join the ALM would be if they got their affairs in order and have managed to attract a fanbase outside of their ethnic enclaves, which means they’re probably suitable for an ALM licence anyway. I wouldn’t expect pro/rel to be on the table for a few years yet.
I dont know the first thing about running a football league on a shoestring budget but I feel that having a competition so spread out it causes teams to fly squads and coach staff thousands of kms each week make it more difficult to enter new teams into a competition or expand the amount of fixtures each season.
It’d be nice to have a competition where the away day trips could be completed by most fans and families. Im hardly about to take my family to the next perth or wellington fixture but cenno coast, newy, the gong or Macarthur is generally a lock.
Towns like Adelaide can have all the teams they want. Ideally, the bigger eastern clubs would be scoutting and signing talent from them.
Maybe conferences. I dont know? But Auckland and Wellington can get in the sea.
Yeah, I suspect this also works because they have over 300m population, and lots of large cities that can sustain enough interest in their teams to pay their players. Although their focus is on NFL basketball and baseball, still enough to maintain two leagues
Then the NSWPL is for you!!
Not really
I think, if this manages to end up in a stable A league with 14 teams and a stable second div with 8+ teams in two years time, we will officially be the largest professional sport in the country on any metric other than broadcast audience, to go with being the biggest grassroots sport…
On a similar train of thinking, I’m surprised the AFL hasn’t tried to do some sort of FA cup to try to steal our hit to be honest. I mean sure, it would be shit, but I’m surprised they haven’t tried.
Or maybe they have idk, I actively avoid anything AFL going into my brain
Or a rugby league for that matter. Maybe with the extra players and squads needed for these sports the gulf in class is way too big.
Also you are far less likely to get upsets in AFL and League than football.
I mean biggest sport in terms of money, general level of media interest, etc… might be heaps of participants in grass roots, but how many pay money to watch the game at the stadium or on pay tv
I did say broadcast numbers, and “General media interest” is another thing, but quite suddenly we will have more clubs, each stumping up cash to invest, than AFL or NRL with their top down models thanks to broadcasting deals. It’s a step change in terms of our sport being taken as seriously as theirs are, if it all comes off.