NPL Club Association new player in critical FFA power battle

 

• Michael Lynch

   
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I support this only if they look out for ALL NPL clubs not just to establish a 2nd division. That should be only one of the issues they confront. 

If clubs want to start a 2nd division on their own i am not against that but they shouldnt be using the NPL to do it if it will be a closed league, even to begin with. 

The key to all this is if the FFA can strike a deal with the state federations - the clubs can agitate as much as they like but the ffa will gamble it can keep control via back-door deals.

I honestly don't think that will be enough.  If the association of A-League clubs AND the association of NPL clubs are unhappy and saying the same things, how can they be ignored?  

If they don't feel like FFA is listening to their issues and coming to the table to find solutions, I think we could see this get ugly. 

We have to remember that at the end of the day the FFA is there to serve us (football).  If the majority of people who are impacted by FFA's decisions are saying it's not working, there's a major problem.

Excellent move ...just bypass ffa and take it straight to fifa and afc. They are listening.... The current ffa bureaucrats will need to be compelled. Just dont get the importance of pro rel in football culture.

As far as im concerned they need to act quick. They have a small window. Weak at the top, FIFA on the backdoor, frustrated public, dwindeling support numbers. 

agree with this.  the ffa are currently on the back foot and pressured with deadlines.  there is a very real threat of fifa sactions. the ffa have just admitted they are not able to run a normal functioning league: let alone manage all of football.  now is a golden window of opportunity.

someone needs to step in before the 10 hal clubs take control and butcher the whole thing.

The NPL clubs plight has piqued the interest of AFC, who have apparently informed FIFA of all this. Sanctions may not be so far fetched after all. FFA still stalling, meetings been pushed back again, and i personally cant see them giving up control of jack. Sanctions will be the only thing that gets the message through. They have to be forced. 

@ aussieshorter

back door deals is the FFAs way - wouldn't be surprised if they did a deal with Tasmania to give them a team in the Hal in return for support, SA will support them, so too NT, WA probably will as well. ACT, NSW and VIC will unite against with QLD on the fence. It will be close and easy enough for the ffa to cut desks for support

At the moment we need a leader to emerge, all we've got is factions and that's never good for football.

It seems to be the narrative youre pushing in this thread, that FFA are going to continue to shut out the NPL clubs via unscrupulous tactics involving the state feds.

Lets hope this new association of NPL clubs and AFC & FIFAs attention being drawn to their plight has a bearing on the continuing wanton corruption and manipulation of the sport. 

I agree with aussie shorter,  that all of this can (and should) get really ugly...and it won't be so easy for FFA this time around. 

Waz

"At the moment we need a leader to emerge, all we've got is factions and that's never good for football."

You need a modern day Walter Sternberg  ;) who got the rebellion going that led to the breakaway Federation in NSW in 1957.  Other states followed the lead over the next few years.

Mind you it only took 3 years for FIFA to expel Australia because the clubs kept poaching top European players and internationals, wouldn't pay transfer fees and played the players without clearances.

@ Rimbaud

I think that's a fair assessment of the narrative I'm "pushing". I think the ffa are panicking about all this and normal behaviour is to divide and conquer - or at least divide and control. I hope I'm wrong.

That may be the case, but I'm saying that it doesn't matter if they win the vote.  

With the entire top two/three tiers of football clubs unhappy, the AFC and FIFA will have to take an interest if the FFA doesn't.

@ aussueshorter

Possibly. But I'm not confident - the ffa hierarchy seem to have more lives than cats and an insane desire to retain power. That's not soo easily defeated in my exjerience - but I hope you're right.

NSL giants Adelaide City and West Adelaide invited to join push for united voice

West Adelaide’s Perry Mitris in PSL action. His club has been invited to join a new independent soccer organisation. Picture: Stephen Laffer
West Adelaide’s Perry Mitris in PSL action. His club has been invited to join a new independent soccer organisation. Picture: Stephen Laffer
NSL giants Adelaide City and West Adelaide have been invited to be part of an independent Australian soccer association intent on setting up a national second division.

SA’s national premier league clubs MetroStars, Western Strikers and Para Hills have also responded to being part of a master plan to give all clubs sanctioned by Football Federation SA and Football Federation Australia a relevant voice at board level.

FIFA has demanded FFA change its congress by the end of March to give the game’s stakeholders a say, which hey have not had since 2004.

Other SA NPL clubs have also been approached but are yet to respond.

A proposed meeting between some of the leading powerbrokers from what were Australia’s most successful clubs before the A-League kicked off in 2005 is due to be held in Melbourne on March 20, with a new national second tier competition potentially on the agenda.

West Adelaide chairman Alex Alexandrou is planning to attend the historic new “Association of NPL clubs” meeting, first fuelled by discontent among Victoria’s leading NPL clubs.

“It’s about NPL getting a voice, we go to meetings with FFSA and a lot of our concerns fall on deaf ears,’’ Alexandrou said on Monday.

“We are relevant, we are stakeholders of the game, we need to be heard — we are the heart of grassroots football and we are the game’s foundations.”

West, which became the first SA club to win a national league championship in any sport when it claimed the now defunct National Soccer League title in 1978, is in the midst of building a multi-million dollar Kilburn Sportsplex.

It’s understood three time NSL winner Adelaide City will not have representatives at the March 20 meeting due to the timing but key directors are keen to be involved in the new association.

Adelaide City directors have also planned a meeting with FFSA president Sam Ciccarello within a fortnight in an effort to discuss the disconnect between FFA, FFSA and grassroots clubs.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/football/nsl-giants-adelaide-city-and-west-adelaide-invited-to-join-push-for-united-voice/news-story/8a0350bd71f0310f0c503e608b395e2a

Good to see all this gaining momentum. 

Exciting times ahead. 

What is the Association of NPL Clubs?
NPL VICTORIA
by Staff Writers March 9, 2017 5:16 pm0


As David Gallop and Steven Lowy jetted off to Zurich in discussions with FIFA regarding the governance structure of football in Australia, much was being made back home about the future of the A-League, including a wide consensus that its current format was becoming stale (and making it increasingly difficult to be competitive in Asia) while plans for future reform – including via expansion or even promotion/relegation in the future – were not forthcoming.

Below that was also growing unease at the second tier model nationwide, established by FFA with a view of facilitating the next generation of professional footballers in Australia, with concerns that it is operating without adequate support via funding for infrastructure, nor an incentive to develop players due to a lack of a transfer system within Australia, leading much of the cost burden to be carried by ballooning junior registration fees, thus decreasing development pathways for Australian footballers – consequently with results at a junior national level suffering, and fewer senior players seemingly succeeding overseas.

Therefore, on March 8, a statement was released detailing the formation of the Association of NPL clubs with the aim of “working constructively with FFA and the state federations to ensure their legitimate concerns are heard … and appropriate outcomes and solutions are achieved, for the benefit of the game both now and in future.”

Thomas Kalas, one of the founders of the association, spoke to TCF about the circumstances leading to the implementation of the association, how its structure will look, and concerns for the game stemming from the nation’s second tier.



***

Can you give a brief summary of the Association of NPL clubs and its aims?

Essentially this is a ‘PFA’ for football clubs. We’ll probably hit 30% of all Australian NPL clubs coming on board in day one. It’s resonated beyond what we thought.

We’re going to be very professional, very measured and very consultative. We support a sustainable A-League that fully integrates the football pyramid.

What prompted the association’s establishment?

The impetus for the Association of NPL clubs was the announcement by the FFA that they have the wrong financial model. We’ve been saying that at club land since 2009 that I’m aware of. It’s unfortunate but we knew it’d be coming. They assumed going mainstream via the entertainment and leisure market will fill stadiums. They realised it’s not working.

People have woken up that the entertainment and leisure market is leaving the A-League product. Because we’ve had all this other entertainment product squeezed into the summer market – Big Bash cricket, the basketball, the netball, the AFLW has taken a lot of air out of the summer period – people are moving to other entertainment vehicles and the A-League entities have suddenly realised that the market is diluting. I doubt the A-League clubs are viable [in the current model] unless they receive support from the FFA.

Underneath that is a massive chasm because it was assumed the model to run with was to build up a top-tier [only] structure. We need to play in boutique stadiums like they do all over the world. You have to do it organically and grow by integrating the football pyramid.

How does this tie in with concerns at NPL level for the future of Australian football?

Many club presidents are exhausted and bereft that they’re doing what they’re doing with no support or future focus [from the FFA].

Unless the A-League clubs integrate with a traditional football pyramid and its structures, I fear for the development of football. We’ve spent litte or no money on resourcing the facilities footprint below the top tier. The lower tiers are all struggling to do it all themsleves, while funds are all basically locked up in the 10 A-League clubs, national teams and running large administrative offices.

We have volunteers struggling to run the engine room of football. We are neglecting the foundational pillars. We need to sit together [with the FFA] and explain that we need to focus on expanding facilities and provide resources to grow the game organically bit by bit. We’ve tried to jump too far ahead too quickly. Football culture takes time and generations to develope.

There are massive fault lines in youth development, pathways, infrastructure development, club development – in fact club development doesn’t exist.

The tier of football below the A-League has been starved and there’s been no focus on it for as long as I can remember. We need to repair, expand, fund, and improve the footprint and facilities of that tier of football club.

What has the state federation reaction been so far?

I’ve had a chat with the Football Federation Victoria CEO Maxwell Gratton and he was very supportive, in fact he is going to be addressing our first official meeting on March 20 at FFV headquarters. We’re going to have club presidents from NSW, Queensland, SA, Canberra, Tasmania in attendance. We havent had a chance to contact clubs in WA & NT yet as we havent the bandwidth currently, but we will.

The $103 million revenue the FFA collects every year stays generally locked up at the top. We need a greater focus on tiers below.

What is the structure of the association at this early point?

I stress this is not a Victorian-centric organisation – it’s a national structure. When we have our meeting on the 20th of March, that’s when the relevant documentation will be drawn up.

Structurally, we’re at embryonic phase. It’s myself and a sub-committee of six people running it. On March 20 the group will elect a president, secretary and so forth. In many ways I wouldn’t mind stepping down once we have the embryonic stuff up and running and we have fresh, capable people running an organisation for the improvement of football at the NPL tier.

http://www.cornerflag.com.au/association-npl-clubs/

hihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihihi

Association of NPL Clubs: Edgeworth accept invite to represent region at landmark meeting

Craig Kerry
13 Mar 2017, 6:30 p.m.

Jeez, its gathering momentum. Genie wont go back in the bottle.

Huge. 

Yep, best thing to happen for years, a bit of proactive thinking involving the grassroots and it seems united, which is great.

He said “if you start talking $300,000 to $500,000 to run a team in this league, no Newcastle club could do that”. However, he said a combined NNSW team could be an option.However, he said a combined NNSW team could be an option.

To be honest this is probably what I would be expecting from some of the smaller NPLs like NNSW, Tassie, Canberra and even Perth(cost of travel reasons).

A club that represents the region and the region can get behind and funnel the better players through to the top tier. A joint effort in competing with the big clubs from the bigger states.

This represents why in other threads I have mentioned changes to the structure of the NPLs where by these smaller leagues feed into the bigger state leagues, so that these smaller leagues always have a representitive playing at a higher standard than the league itself. I have also stressed though it needs to happen naturally as outlined in the article.

So NNSW becomes like npl 2 north for NSW?

Yeah basically, along with ACT into NSW and Tassie into Vic. 

Hypothetically speaking, a NPL 'First Division' is created with pro/rel down but the Tassie NPL clubs opt to have a
'Tasmania' team that represents the whole NPLTAS as opposed to say South Hobart or Zebras, for financial and competitive reasons, in my opinion it would be silly for them to then get relegated from First Division down to NPLTAS as they would be basically competing against themselves, so why not have them relegated to NPLVIC where this 'representitive' team is still playing at a higher standard than the NPLTAS. Having it structured that way also allows for if, for example, South Hobart want to do it alone to see how far they can get, then they still can but would have to go through NPLVIC to get to the First Division. 

I'm not trying to put a damper on any of this because I think it's great but I wonder how a country region like the Mid North Coast with a myriad of teams contributing players would be funded.  

Lets say Mid North Coast get awarded a team. 4 players from Coffs, 3 or 4 from from Port, 1 from Yamba, Dorrigo, Maclean, etc.

I wonder how the team would go cap in hand to all the local teams saying please give us money because we are now competing semi professionally in a national league.  Teams without players represented (there are say 10 teams in Coffs) would be saying what's in it for us and why should we?  Funds are scarce at the best of times for clubs with only a couple of hundred registered players (mostly juniors) in the country so I just wonder where the money is going to come from.

I want it to work but there's a shedload of groundwork required that's for sure.

This is Aussieshorters diagram/pyramid which better outlines what I have just explained. Just pretend the A2 isn't there for now and that A3 is this potential NPL 'First Division' with no pro-rel to HAL.

upload pictures online

Goodbye Old Football, hello New Soccer!

Bitter af