Like I've said a hundred times if your an aspiring Footballer who wants to be a professional and you have a European Passport get out of this country NOW.
Do yourself a favour.

Technically 2 have.. but it's Lewis Italiano & Mitchell Oxborrow

The Wanderers have trialled a defender from NSW NPL and a forward from Vic NPL. The Vic NPL pkayer scored a goal and gave an assist but no signing announced. Would be a mature age rookie outside the cap if it happens.

Wasnt the a league meant to promote young aspiring talent. What a fucking joke that was. 

This article is proof football will bitch about anything ffs

I don't think this article is about bitching. I think it raises a genuine concern, especially if you are a player in the NPL aspiring to play in the A-league. 

Obviously the pro/semi pro gap is increasing. Needs to be addressed asap

There's basically no chance becoming a professional footballer in australia. its pretty much impossible. f--k the a-league the second division will be far more important.  

The NPL teams, particularly in NSW, is full of players that have been given a go but didn't quite make it for one reason or another. Some of it is talent. Others it is because they have other things in their life apart from a professional football career.

Playing in the HAL unless you are a major player is not lucrative. Many players are happy to play semi-pro, relying on their talent and less on training, while committing to a full time job. Getting paid $1000 a week to play semi-pro while holding down a P.E teacher role appeals to many that don't think they would progress further than the HAL. It also means they have an after football life sorted while they are still playing.

the one and only problem here is the lack of opportunities 100%... A 2nd Division is a must for the game to improve in Australia.

Yep, have a friend who's boy did just that. Had enough of the bullshit yo-yoing between A-League and NPL and just trialled in Europe until he got a club instead. 

 The system here is fucked and you have a far better chance of making it if you have the resources to get out.

I think the gap between NPL and A-League is overstated. I mean look at Mileusnic, he was a good NPL player don't get me wrong but I have seen better and he is doing just fine in the A-League. Not enough coaches with the balls to give a kid a chance unless they come from their academy. Even Leckie back in the day was straight out of NPL 2 in Victoria and lit the A-League up.

Seems to me that the problem lies within the NPL and not HAL. If your players are not being selected then you need to produce better players. Either that or shut up. It couldn't be more simple.

Every A league club knows that your 5 visa players and how good they are will ultimately decide your fate every season, the aussie players are just there to round out the team and most of those spots will go to blokes already in the league cartel. 

Npl players are pretty much screwed, the latest trend is to get a few young players from npl and slot them into the respective youth teams..they domt get a run in seniors and then get turfed..look at andy brennan back in the npl..isnt even half the player he was before he got signed up to move to the kiddies league for the jets.

It really is the worst era to be a state league player..i discovered youtube footage of the 1992 nth geelong warriors team under branko culina in the grand final..kid you not within 2 years half those players were winning nsl titles with melb knights..those days are dead.

There's an awful lot of misunderstanding being played out here, but it fits the narrative of "f*ck the A-League" with posters lining up to put the boot in. This is not a well researched or well thought through article, and (imo) nor are several of the comments that follow.

There is an alternative position which is this:

The talent in the NPL is not good enough, so why not?

If the talent exists in the NPL why would A League clubs willingly ignore it? You might have one or two of them ignore it but all 9? Impossible, especially someone like Mariners in recent years - it's inconceivable that HAL owners would deliberately ignore talent when they know good players can be developed and sold.

And if the talent is there why isn't it being picked up by international teams? Not just in Europe but in Asia? If the players were good enough they'd be getting picked up by even minor Asian nations at least. But they're not, so are we expected to believe that in addition to the 9 HAL clubs ignoring the NPL the rest of the world is too?

And looking at the talent pathways that lead players in to the NPL - most of the very best players in the country go to the AIS which has a good track record of turning kids out. I don't know the stats but most of the graduates find a home in the HAL youth systems.

The next best in the country are left to State development systems or clubs underneath the A League. How is talent identified here? It's a simple system that asks two questions - is the kid good enough? And can the kids parents afford to pay ~$2k/year in fees?

It's the answer to that second question that dictates the quality of the youth players coming through and ultimately the quality in the NPL .... and the quality in the NPL is dictated at aged 12 when parents decide can we afford $2k fur the next 4-5 years?

Invariable what we are getting coming through is not the best players but children of middle class parents who can afford to put their kids in to development programs. Some of these kids are good enough but most aren't and the more talented players drop to Division 1, 2 or 3 where they're coached by dad n mum coaches on a best effort basis.

None of this is the A leagues fault.

There are some things that can be done to change this:

1. All development programs should be free of charge and select participating kids on ability only.

2. Where this is not possible, a large percentage of development programs should be free (say 50%) and based solely on ability.

3. Development programs should continuously scout their own junior teams and promote takented kids based on ability to play not ability to PAY.

(I have lived and coached football at an ameteur level in 4 different countries, Australia is the only country to adopt such a system. What we do here is "unique").

Changing that "unique" development pathway would improve the quality of young player coming in to the NPL level.

Then we get to the next challenge - the quality of competition at State level is not that good. Watch the national play offs over the next few weekends and you'll see a marked improvement over your average NPL game. there are some things that would help:

1. A national semi-pro Second division, with relegation, needs to be introduced now. Entry should be on a clubs ability not history or facilities or political clout. Just how good is their team!

2. A national third division should be established underneath that, again on the same basis of how good the first team is and nothing else.

3. If a national third division is not feasible then regional conferences should be established eg QLD/NSW/ACT, VIC/TAS/SA etc. again, all teams are selected on ability only.

4. Relegation from and promotion to these divisions should be open - the bottom 3 or 4 clubs should be relegated each year forcing a focus on quality of play on the pitch.

5. Investment funds need to be found for grounds, facilities and academies. This is crucial especially outside of VIC/NSWs. Nationally we need 50+ financially capable clubs not just 4-5 in two SE states.

then the HAL needs to change.

1. Expansion needs to occurs from 10 to 12 and then 12 to 16 teams. This creates another 108 Australians playing professional football. It's doubtful we can feed that number today but we can in the next ten years.

2. The kiwis have to go. That's 18 more.

3. Pro/Rel has to be introduced as soon as it can be. This will mean convincing Fox Sports on the merit. They pay for professional football so they need to be convinced to back this.

The situation we find ourselves in today is the result of 40 years of mistakes. We missed the boat that AFL and NRL caught; had we have kicked in from that first national pro league many years ago we would be a football powerhouse. But we didn't. Yet we have all the pieces of the jigsaw we just need to connect them.

The A League produced Mooy and Maclaren after they'd gone overseas and failed - that's a great credit to our own pro league and a damning statement on overseas development. If Australia wants talented young kids coming through then we have to do the hard work and not outsource it to Europe

There's a lot wrong with our youth development but it ain't the HALs fault.

Why do you want the semi-pro environment to continue. This is one of the reasons that the NPL players are not up to it. You need players to be training full time to close the gap and get better. 
I understand everyone is looking at it from an affordablility point of view, but there is still a cost. The cost in this case is an inferior player. We want more professional players not the same or less.

@ RBB

"Why do you want the semi-pro environment to continue" .... I don't, I'm sorry if I gave you that impression.

I want the number of professional players to increase by around 150 through expansion of the HAL (I'd also add but I didn't mention I support a move to 3+1 on the visa side).

I'd like to see three professional and national leagues at the top of our pyramid not just one. I don't know how that would get funded but growth in the game can be achieved

We have 620,000 registered players, at an average of $400/year in fees that's still only $250m but the answer lies in leveraging that. Sometime last year someone posted an article written suggesting the playing base should be leveraged to develop a "football future fund" where as little as $25/registered player would deliver $15m/year. But us that enough to do something meaningful?

My absoloute loathing for the FFA and State Federations comes from a belief that they're not thinking about this stuff; they're happy with the status quo.

The best thing that could happen imo is that the AAFC, AAPFC and PFA get their heads together and drive this sport forward, because the States/FFA are unable or unwilling to do it.

The issue I took with the article and some of the comments that followed is that none of this is the HALs fault - they just happen to exist because of the muddled thinking by the suits. But the HAL is not the problem and I say that not as a Roar fan but as a junior coach and parent.

10 teams are awesome but....

I agree that we need a professional Div 2 but finances dictate that this is not viable yet.  The next move should be a semi-pro National division of the NPL where some clubs prove up their financial capability so they can move into a professional Div 2 along with targeted start up clubs that can demonstrate their viability to operate professionally.  I also think that the state based NPL structure needs to be strengthened over time with the aim for 3 tiers in each state, at the semi professional level, of 16 clubs operating with p/r through to the National NPL division via the annual NPL championship which might need to become a home and away tournament to decide the promoted club/s.

I would say one problem with the A-League is the example of Liam Reddy:

Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
2000–2003	Parramatta Power	39	(1)
2003–2005	Sydney United	24	(0)
2005–2006	Newcastle Jets !Newcastle Jets	23	(0)
2006–2009	Brisbane Roar !Brisbane Roar	66	(0)
2009–2010	Wellington Phoenix !Wellington Phoenix	12	(0)
2010–2012	Sydney FC !Sydney FC	37	(0)
2012–2013	Esteghlal	0	(0)
2013	Sydney United	19	(0)
2013–2015	Central Coast Mariners !Central Coast Mariners	52	(0)
2015–2016	Western Sydney Wanderers !Western Sydney Wanderers	6	(0)
2016–	Perth Glory	28	(0)

36yo 2xNSL Clubs 7xHAL Franchises 1xIranian  Club and 1 NPL Club

SERIOUSLY!

@There's a lot wrong with our youth development but it ain't the HALs fault.

I hope you say that about the NSL too!

And your right its not the HAL's fault! Again and again it comes down to our administration stacked with people who don't understand Football Culture, who have no love for the cause its just a job or a status issue (Being on the Board).
Crawford offered the light at the end of the tunnel but Lowey wanted to keep control of the game.

And we are suffering for this due to an ecosystem that cannot advance player development.

@The Frenchman "Seems to me that the problem lies within the NPL and not HAL. If your players are not being selected then you need to produce better players. Either that or shut up. It couldn't be more simple."

Only simple if you think like simple Simon!
There are over 300 Australian Players in Europe as I type this. The vast majority without HAL experience.
Good enough for the hotbed of lower league football in Europe.
Not good enough for HAL.
But from a country (Australia) that lacks the infrastructure to accommodate them.

We have more depth in talent than what people think.
We lack the infrastructure to develop and progress this talent.
This what is causing the pain in our game.           

As an example    http://joeys.footballaustralia.com.au/article/peter-cklamovski-names-australia-u-16-squad-for-mongolia-mission/1dpdqbkmpnrw11nmmi5nlbtnj2

The last boy on the list plays with      https://www.gleneirafc.com.au/

The most Community of Community Clubs in Melbourne. Well done to them and well done to the boy>                                     

@ Arthur

Liam Reddy - why can't the NPL system produce players who are clearly better than Liam Reddy? That's not an A League problem that's an NPL development problem.

If you're playing NPL today you're more likely to be there because mummy n daddy could pay and not because you were better than the other kids.

Only when we have a development system that is based on playing ability not financial ability to pay fees will the system start to our pressure on the likes of Reddy (who by the way is not short on ability it's what goes on outside of playing that seems to have caused his frequent movements)

There are better players than Liam Reddy in the NPL System

@ Arthur

Your second post gets close to it - we are not building a football system as we should because we have suits and non-football people at the top of our game. But that's not the HALs fault.

But in 2004 there were about 140 Australians playing football overseas, today there are about 190 playing overseas plus we have about 180 playing domestically on full time contracts and a further 200 or so on full time youth contracts. That's about 600 professional Australian footballers in the world which is about a 4-fold increase on 2004 - thats genuine growth.

What unfortunately is happening now is - having put the HAL in place and then the NPL and then the FFA Cup - no further thought seems to have been given to what's next. Not through expanding the HAL or through a second tier.

@ Arthur

"There are better players than Reddy in the NPL system" ... well none of the A League coaches agree with that statement. And while I can agree their scouting network leaves a lot to be desired so they may have missed some potential players, your statement though missed the point that Reddy is actually a bloody good goalkeeper - it's not footballing ability that's seen him move on regularly.

I'm not sure how this turned into a discussion about the structure of Australian football, but I'll add my 2c.

This is something I've shared previously showing what I think the Australian football pyramid could and should look like:


The A2 League is fully professional from the start, and the A3 League is semi-pro initially, with clubs deciding for themselves what level of professionalism is appropriate.  Promotion and relegation is phased in, starting with the link between A3 and NPL, followed by the league above. 

My opinion is that in the formation of the A2 League we give one last chance for new clubs to apply and become fully professional from the start, as well as any existing clubs that are prepared to move into a fully professional league (and meet criteria).  The A3 League should be 100% existing clubs.  And the FFA should accept all bids that meet their professional criteria into the A2.  

Full explanation - http://www.thepeckingorder.com.au/tpovision/
FourFourTwo discussion - http://forum.insidesport.com.au/2504800/The-Future-of-Australian-Football

@Waz - to your point about whether the NPL players are even good enough. I think there are two potential answers.
1. They aren't good enough, in which case a national second division is critical to providing a stepping stone for developing those players to the next level.
2. Scouting these players is either too difficult or not worth the effort for the A-League clubs. A second division helps with this as well, as they only have to keep an eye on ~10 clubs instead of ~100.

@Waz while the figures your quoting are understated you've inadvertently laid out the problem; 600 pro's (By your estimate) don't fit into 60 starting position in the HAL!

@ Arthur

Agreed. You'd need between 30-40 teams to accomodate that number which is arguably two professional divisions. Mind you, if we had that there would still be 100+ players overseas with the likes of Mooy wanting to play in the EPL. But we would grow again if we did have expansion.

But none of this is the HALs problem/fault - expansion is needed as is a Div2 ... the States/FFA have the power to make that happen but they can't or don't do it

(If those numbers are understated I drew them from http://www.ozfootball.net/ark/Abroad/index.shtml which should at least be ballpark)

Its not there isn't any thought.  

Its that Football in this country is like half  dozen people each with their hand on one chicken pulling in different directions.