SUTHERLAND Shire Football Association is the No. 1 organisation of its kind in the southern hemisphere, now topping more than 19,000 registered players.

That is the official word from Eddie Moore, general manager of the state governing body, Football NSW.

"It is a phenomenal effort from everyone involved in the sport in what is an ever growing region for football," Moore said.

"This equates to more than 1570 teams using 61 football fields. We are up 1400 players from registrations in 2014.

"These numbers alone exceed the entire rugby league and rugby union population in the shire, headlining football as the No. 1 sport."

Association general manager Jeff Stewart said the code was getting bigger.

"We have had to turn players away," he said.

"It's a great sense of achievement for the many volunteers to know they deliver a community-based sport to shire residents, with all money ploughed back into the local game without the need to make a profit for the shareholders.

"Almost one third of our players are female which shows the wide appeal of football."
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Chris Ikonomidis. Picture: by Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images

Chris Ikonomidis. Picture: by Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images

The association has been a production line fortop players and coaches such as:

■ A-league, Sydney FC coach and Socceroos former player, Graham Arnold who came from Gwawley Bay;

■ Sydney FC youngsters Alex Gersbach and Chris Naumoff;

■ Dean Bouzanis at Western Sydney Wanderers;

■ goalkeeper Jack Duncan, at Perth Glory;

■ Socceroo Chris Ikonomidis (pictured above) who came from Cronulla RSL.

I know what this is about. No, you can't have a team, that would be a stupid idea and would fail.

sydney fc can cater for the city, inner west and eastern suburbs. a southern sydney club can cater for the shire, the airport, st george and bankstown. time to bring them in. will be a fun away day travelling to kogarah. if a-league is to be a strong 16 team competition we need more big city clubs. than having only 4 from our 2 biggest cities.

Wollongong should get a team in before the shire does, and they can form some kind of partnership if that suits..

But a team based in the shire and playing out of Kogarah or Cronulla....nope.

Sharks for A2-League, if only for talent pathway reasons.

This is more along the lines that I think. Instead of creating a new, sterile franchise based out of 'Southern Sydney/Shire', the FFA should be looking at ways of growing the Sutherland Sharks and turning them into a professional outfit. They have an already decent youth system in place, as evidenced by the large number of youth players from them that are playing in the Youth League, and obviously (if this article is anything to go by) an extremely large talent pool to choose from.

I would actually be supportive of a Sutherland Shire/Southern Sydney team if Sutherland Sharks were to have investors come in and look at turning them into a professional club either for the A-League or even the A2 League (if that is to ever become a thing). It could play out of Shark Park, and the smart thing to do would be to also partner up with the Cronulla Sharks. God knows they need a bit of support at the moment, and would definitely help increase the clubs supporter base. Play games out of Shark Park, which is a perfect sized (communuty) ground for the A-League, and all the Youth Teams can play out of Seymour Shaw, which is IIRC was the first NSW Premier League club to move to an artificial surface.

Shark Park is 1000x better stadium than Kogarah, unless Kogarah was to undergo some pretty extensive redeveloping.

Previous attempts to line a football team with a rugby league of afl team has failed. Parra Power, Collingwood Warriors, Olympic Sharks and Carlton spring to mind.

If they wanna get a team up and ready for an A2 comp then they shouldn't start a fresh with a team rather they should start pumping dosh into the Sutherland Sharks (no affiliation with Cronulla Sharks) and like you said, Seymour Shaw is a great oval and would be a great place for them to start.

Previous attempts to line a football team with a rugby league of afl team has failed. Parra Power, Collingwood Warriors, Olympic Sharks and Carlton spring to mind.

If they wanna get a team up and ready for an A2 comp then they shouldn't start a fresh with a team rather they should start pumping dosh into the Sutherland Sharks (no affiliation with Cronulla Sharks) and like you said, Seymour Shaw is a great oval and would be a great place for them to start.

Seymour Shaw isn't big enough for an A-League team. It's fine for the Sharks at the moment because they're playing in the NPL, and get next to no crowds anyway. If they get into the Ro32 for the FFA Cup against an A-League team, that will look great, but for an A-League team Shark Park is the way to go.

Aren't the FFA looking to buy Kogarah Oval?

I know what this is about. No, you can't have a team, that would be a stupid idea and would fail.

Out of interest, I went in to the FNSW Annual Report. Whilst Sutherland dominates overall player registration, I found it interesting that Northern Suburbs (formerly Kuringgai) and Gladesville-Hornsby are the top two Associations for male players, whilst Northern Suburbs (2nd), Manly (3rd) and Gladesville-Hornsby (6th) around 45,000 players. It's a shame no professional has ever been able to really tap in to the North Shore and Beaches. To give a comparison, the whole of Victoria only has about 50k registered players from memory.

Edited by Shatter: 23/4/2015 09:16:11 PM

Out of interest, I went in to the FNSW Annual Report. Whilst Sutherland dominates overall player registration, I found it interesting that Northern Suburbs (formerly Kuringgai) and Gladesville-Hornsby are the top two Associations for male players, whilst Northern Suburbs (2nd), Manly (3rd) and Gladesville-Hornsby (6th) around 45,000 players. It's a shame no professional has ever been able to really tap in to the North Shore and Beaches. To give a comparison, the whole of Victoria only has about 50k registered players from memory.

Edited by Shatter: 23/4/2015 09:16:11 PM

Spot on Shatter, Sutho wins out overall due to 5,000 women players.
Another interesting stat is number of clubs - NSFA/Kuringgai/GHFA both having 34 clubs Sutho 26.

You're not even the biggest Shire in Sydney, f*** off.

Sydney's biggest shire would never have race riots. Scum.

i really think one of the teams north of sydney should have been south really......

like perhaps, SYDFC, WSWFC, Newcastle, wollongong rather than two team up the coast

Out of interest, I went in to the FNSW Annual Report. Whilst Sutherland dominates overall player registration, I found it interesting that Northern Suburbs (formerly Kuringgai) and Gladesville-Hornsby are the top two Associations for male players, whilst Northern Suburbs (2nd), Manly (3rd) and Gladesville-Hornsby (6th) around 45,000 players. It's a shame no professional has ever been able to really tap in to the North Shore and Beaches. To give a comparison, the whole of Victoria only has about 50k registered players from memory.

Edited by Shatter: 23/4/2015 09:16:11 PM

The southwest has to be the next Sydney area to get a HAL side, build up the MacArthur Rams to avoid the stigma of the Campbelltown name. That bastion of truth Wikipedia says their stadium has a 20k capacity, I think they may have slipped an extra zero in there, South Melbourne style.

Edited by crusader: 24/4/2015 09:35:50 AM

The Kuringgai district has no entertainment culture. In fact there's rarely anything happening there. If anyone from the Northern suburbs wishes to get involved in cultural festivities; whether that be in a sporting sense, food, music etc., North Shore isn't the place to be. There's barely any pubs in the North Shore/Kuringgai district and hence everyone from that area just heads into the city on a weekend. Thus, a sports team based in the northern suburbs (even in North Sydney) will never work.

Just my two cents on views of a northern suburbs team.

Edited by helloworld1992: 23/4/2015 11:49:53 PM