In more than 750 rounds of NSL matches from 1977 to 2003/04, where up to 12 matches were played per round, the highest aggregate attendance for a round was 58,800 over eight matches in round 2, 2000/01, which included 14,000-plus home crowds for Newcastle United and Perth Glory.

It was a different story at Melbourne's Bob Jane Stadium that weekend however, where a mere 1400 watched Archie Thompson score for Carlton in its 2-2 draw with Wollongong Wolves.
But let's go back to those 12-match NSL rounds. Yes, that's right, at one stage the old national league had a whopping 24 teams up against each other each weekend.

This was from 1984 to 1986, when the league was split into two conferences, based loosely on a north-south breakdown of teams.

It was a bold move by the authorities, expanding from a single tier competition of 16 teams in 1983 – the theory for the struggling league at the time being that more local derbies (the north division consisted mostly of Sydney teams, the south division was mostly Melbourne teams) would stimulate increased interest in the terraces.

After registering an average 4,200 crowd per game in its first three seasons 1977-1979, the NSL’s average attendance had dropped to 2,700 in the 1983 season.

However the two-conference format didn't really work – in its first year (1984) the regular season average dropped to 2,300, then down to an all-time low of 2,200 per game in 1985.

It's amazing looking back at media match reports from the 1985 NSL season and seeing crowds such as 125 for a Green Gully home game, 150 watching four-time NSL Champions Sydney City at inner-Sydney Wentworth Park, and 202 at Penrith Park to see Penrith City take on Canberra City.

After reverting back to a single conference system in 1987, then to "summer soccer" in 1989/90, the trend in national league average crowds was upwards.

But nothing comes close to the increase between the last NSL season (2003/04) and first edition of the A-league (2005/06), when the season average skyrocketed from 4,050 to 10,955 per game and then 12,927 and 14,610 for the next 2 years.
The last 2 seasons have been 13,041 (12-13) & 12,500 (14-15) doesn’t include finals

The NSL had more EFFNIKS

Clearly need more Sydney teams!

I'd say that the A-League clubs are a lot more inclusive nowadays (esp. in a geographical sense) ... for example growing up in Sydney I didn't really identify with any of the teams until Northern Spirit came along. If I lived in Sydney still I'd probably be a Sydney FC or CCM fan.

Although Canberra had a huge football playing community when I lived there, yet the Cosmos games were near on empty (I think a summer league definitely suits Canberra fans better ... although you may lose a huge portion of the university population during that time).

If you look at the NPL teams (at least here in WA anyway) I similarly wouldn't go for any of them because geographically they are so narrow (e.g. Floreat, Bayswater, Joondalup etc.) Perth SC are about the only real generic team to support. But my local team is only in NPL2 here. I think that is why going for a team like Perth Glory is so "easy" ... it encompasses a much larger area (geographically), and they have always tried to be inclusive of all WA (even if a token effort most the time).

the next step in order for a-league crowds to rise is by introducing more sydney and melbourne teams. local rivalries and away support is how we pull a crowd.

](*,)

Where is the HAL more inclusive geographically?

The NSL.....

Qld - they had a team and up to two in the capital city
NSW - they had more Sydney teams spread out and clubs starting from far south as Wollongong to far North as Newcastle
and even had Canberra at one stage
Vic - had more melb teams and clubs as far east as Morewell / Gippsland
Adeleaide - they had two teams in the city
Perth - they had one

If anything the NSL were better geographically spread so that's not the reason for the A-Leagues climb in support.

Simply the HAL is a not a league that harbours mono ethnic community clubs that in the main catered for themselves. They were exclusive.



Edited by paulc: 5/11/2015 02:00:39 PM

I think his point is don't add more teams in Sydney and Melbourne because the nsl did that and it failed.

I don't think our situation and the nsl's is at all comparable though

Edited by tbitm: 5/11/2015 02:45:40 PM

Just a add on to this the NSW State League 1971-76 generally averaged 1,500 per game 10,000 total for 6 games, I remember one weekend when Pan Hellanic v st George at Wentworth park and the Itailian Derby Marconi v Apia both drew 6,000 each in 1976 and I thought wow we going to overtake Rugby League

I'll join the dots.

The opening post compares crowds with the A-League overwhelmingly higher attendances and I respond to a poster that says it's because the HAL is mainly more geographically inclusive.

My points.

1. No it's not. The NSL was just as much geographically established if not more.
2. The A-League set up however is inclusive to all communities, NSL set up was not.

Interesting OP Roberts.

Your averages are exclusive of finals?

You should do an exercise on finals and compare crowds to broad based clubs paling each other vs mono ethnic clubs playing each other and the difference is even more staggering.

Except it doesn't take into account the differences of the leagues at the time.

Aka tv coverage, media coverage, the internet.

-PB

I just had a good look again at the the crowd figures the NSL got between the 90's and early 2000's, and there was definitely a big disparity between some clubs and others.

The club that stood out the most for me was Adelaide United, who averaged the same if not more than what they get today. Perth I already knew about and were strong back in the day, at east stronger than they are today.

For the rest, it was pretty embarrassing, most below 5k and in many cases closer to 2-3k per game.

There may have been more teams in Sydney but their support base was limited. Marconi had a small catchment, Sydney United, Sydney Olympic etc. all in the same boat. Same in Melbourne, they only appealed to small communities (irrelevant if they were ethnic based or not). They diluted the pool if anything, and were too exclusive. Hence why I used the WA NPL example ... who outside of Bayswater would support them? Or Joondalup? So NPL clubs excluded people geographically (without even considering any ethnic exclusion that may or may not have existed).

Geographically multiple A-Leagues (now and into the future) in the same city need to find a point of difference IMO. E.g. in Perth there is a rivalry between north of the river and south of the river (this fact splits many Docker and Eagles fans). Sydney has a few distinct divides they can work on, etc. but they clubs needs to be inclusive of a larger catchment than NSL (and many NPL) clubs were (are). Otherwise they just won't be "attractive" to the FFA, or crowds for that matter.

They've tried on 2 or 3 occasions. It failed. Sponsors and advertisers were not interested.

5K average was at the NSL's peak.

You reminded me about Adelaide and this could help Sokorny. But I'm going by memory.

Adelaide had two NSL teams, both had poor crowds except when there was a derby but even then low compared to today's HAL.

First West Adelaide Hellas (Greek) left the NSL which left Adelaide City (Juventus / Italalian). City did not reap the advantage of being a one city club at all.

Until Adelaide United came along as a broad based club whilst still in the NSL who from memory achieved notably bigger attendance that would stand up today in the HAL.

Generally broad based clubs big crowds. Mono ethnic clubs small crowd. No matter the geography.

Hard to compare for Adelaide United - they had only one year in the NSL...

Definitely, and I can't imagine anyone thinking that mono ethnic clubs would be good in any sort of way in the A-league today, even if they have a reasonable support base, they would never grow into anything larger, as it would alienate everyone else.

The best rivalries are one's that split the city socio economically imo, the whole white collar vs blue collar. That's why the Sydney Derby works so well. obviously you want geographical separation but it needs to be more than that.

Obviously political differences can help raise the passion of a derby, but really just like with religion, it can cause massive tension which frequently leads to violence etc. Obviously we would want to avoid this, and luckily we don't really have these issues.

The Sydney divide between FC and WSW is great, but I am starting to get the impression that we're slowly turning it into a anglo vs wogs type relationship which is not good imo.

Happy to fight it out based on socio economic reasons but not based on peoples race which can quickly get very nasty. The media certainly isn't helping in this department and either is the police imo.

There'd be little doubt the NSL crowds were full of real football fans

With HAL it's hard to tell

Too many mums and kids!

-PB

Not really, they throw flares!

That's right with HAL you get more football fans from all places coming together, mixed in nicely with a few casuals too. Nothing wrong with that.

With the NSL at most games you could count the number of supporters in the space of 30 seconds..

A major difference is in the 70s 90% of the crowd were 50 years old and older--- Europeans, of which the majority were Greek Italian and Yugoslav

Today it has totally changed a high % of young adults attend

True but don't call a Croat a Yugoslav because he'll cut your balls.

Last team in the NSL I recall as being Yugoslav was Footscray J.U.S.T.

But in the 70's they were Yugoslav. Croatia wasn't formed until 91..

This bodes well for football moving forward then, as we we'll be able to reach a full cycle once the young generation of today age and slowly get to raise kids of their own who will also follow football.

Correct and there were two types of clubs that set themselves apart apart even then but whilst technically correct they hated been call Jugos.

There were many violent battles on the field between the two sides. Late sixties Croatia Soccer Club was disqualified from all competition by the VSF and didn't return until mid 70's under a different name but soon changed back. It was trhat serious.

The people still identified themselves as Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, etc. before they gained independence though (the country Yugoslavia came about after WWI and was a merging of these cultures/people).

I worked in a workplace with a particularly racist arsehole boss who goaded the Cro every day calling him a Jugo. He belted him in such a poignant, succinct manner that charges weren't laid. Had some serious wog pride that day.

Your state is not your ethnicity. Places like Australia and the USA are outliers where people actually claim their statehood as their nationality.

Edited by bohemia: 5/11/2015 06:51:53 PM

Season 98/99 south only had 1 or 2 games under 8k from memory, crowds were also very young as well, we had years we would get a bigger crowd against Perth as opposed to the derby against knights which is strange.

Last season of nsl we got 12k against Perth, 10k against para power and 9k against Adelaide united, that's pretty staggering considering the comp was in shut down mode. Also interesting these crowds were against a league type clubs. So close to breaking into the mainstream at the time.

Every time we played White Eagles I would remind them that my boss (who played in midfield) was a Croat. Loved watching them smash him.

Difficult to compare really. One is a semi pro league with little marketing and funding. The other is a professional league with marketing and money never seen in australian football.

Top thread. Now let's do a comparison of superstars the shitty old NSL produced in the 90's by all those woggo clubs averaging 1,500 old ethnic men compared to all the bright new shinny HAL franchisers have produced over the past decade.
Viduka, Tiatto, Simunic, Zelic, Okon, Bresiano, Kalac, Emerton, Chipperfield, Horvat, Kewell, Neil, Cahill, Bosnich, Lazaridis etc......all these players played consistently in some of the big leagues at big clubs. The only 'HAL' product that can be compared to those mentioned is Matt Ryan. I suppose Rogic is finally doing OK in an average league but still miles away. Most others have gone over with an inflated sense of worth and ability, never to be heard off and/or sit on the bench and eventually return with their tales between their legs.....Oar, Burns, Rojas, Taggart, Theoklitos, Leijer, Djite etc. This is probably a more relevant discussion than crowd numbers and composition between a fully professional league in the modern world and a league that was basically volunteer based and had no favours form anyone at all. Why can't our professional franchisers produce world class players anymore?

Three pages tops.

this thread is taking a predictable course...

I swear this thread was about crowds.

Attendances for 98-99 for South Melb were very high during the regular season, they got 15,000 in their home grand final win over Sydney United, interesting nNorthern spirt got 17,200 in a home semi against Marconi
Sadly for South Melb in the final year they dropped to 3,500 average and across the league it was really poor

Wollongong averaged a solid 2-3,000 in their final 2 nsl years. It's a wonder they they didn't enter the a-league whilst the Central Coast with no nsl history did

:lol:

Violence is ok as long as it's the silverspoons vs the fibros.

But the moment you realise one bloke is Greek and the other is a Croat then it becomes bad.

Sound logic.

Wollongong suffered financially when the world club championship they qualified for was cancelled, combined with the NSL being completely taken off TV in 2001 that was pretty much it, absolutely no way a Wollongong based team now would draw that low, in the championship years they were getting crowds around 8k.

My memory when I was young is that many of the NSL venues were small. My knowledge is mainly based on Melbourne teams but grounds like sunshine George cross could only fit 3,000....Preston was about 6,000 from memory, these grounds would often look packed.

When people go back and look at NSL crowd averages and mock them it feels like they believe these games were being played in huge empty footy stadiums, it wasn't like that, the grounds were small, compact and often reasonably full, you certainly could not count the crowd in 30 seconds and these games looked good on TV.

Last season of NSL average was 7,000, our lowest crowd was 3,750 against Newcastle, we had 12k against Perth, 10k against parra power, 8.5k against Adelaide United and 7k against Wollongong. We were clearly 3rd highest attendance behind Adelaide and Perth and daylight between the rest. Our last NSL match in Melbourne against Marconi in the elimination final was about 9k.

I think the fact we were still pulling in crowds then meant it was an easy transition for a lot of our fan base to move over to victory the following year, the vibe I got at the time was that most south supporters were ready to follow a professional competition...either with or without Souths involvement, unfortunately we know how it went:lol:

As for the grand final in 1999, the tickets South were allocated sold out in one day. It's a shame Etihad stadium didn't exist then cos those grand finals could have hit 30,000.

Edited by southmelb: 6/11/2015 08:13:43 AM

Interesting questions - I'd say the reason is partly due to the fact that the A-League is only in its 11th season. The clubs have focussed their resources on trying to be viable, rather than youth development. Most clubs now have a youth team and an academy team in the local comp.

Add in the overhaul of the coaching framework and the whole of football plan and I'd say youth development has only been focussed on again in the last 5 years or so at a club level.

So I think it will be another 5-10 years before our clubs are good at developing youth talent at a comparable level to the NSL.

The other thing to remember is that the 1990s was our golden age for talent - abnormally strong. I don't think it is fair to use that generation as the baseline.

The two most successful clubs in the NSL

So your crowds were great in the final year what happened to the money. of course there was no government financial lifeline to fund the club, but you had the phones cut off.
At that point in time there was no team with the money to secure an A-league spot.
Victory had some money but the FFA had to get otherts to join in and provided a million themselves.
SOuth Melbourne didn't bid because they didn't have two pennies to rub together.
if they had money at that point they would have been straight in.

:lol: They couldn't even fill Olympic Park...........

1998–99   South Melbourne   Sydney United   3–2   Olympic Park   15,194

Yet the year later...........

1999–00   Wollongong Wolves   Perth Glory   3–3 (7–6 on penalties)   Subiaco Oval   43,242

=d>

15K is almost full for OP 43 is full at subi and it's a much bigger venue completely stupid to directly compare the 2.

Olympic Park was 22,000/23,000 capacity then. Should have been least 95% full capacity like in Perth or in Brisbane 1997.

So 50 years of NSL produced your list - let's see how many players 50 years of HAL will produce.
No doubt it will be a vastly bigger list.

If you took away our broadcast deal, played during the winter, and clubs were semi professional....what would our attendances look like?

Wrong, Olympic park capacity was reduced to 18k in the mid 90s, as I said the tickets allocated to south supporters sold out, a few thousand watched the game back at the club as a result. If you watch the footage of the game on YouTube the empty spots are in the Sydney United end.

The NSL did move to summer.

The problem was we didn't have the platform in those days to promote the game, no social media and Internet was very limited, when the NSL entered the pay TV market in the late 90s very few people had it and and those that did were already split between Optus and Foxtel. You were borderline considered rich if you had pay TV in 1996 lol.

Nowadays I can put it on channel 500 fox sports news and see training footage from every A league club every week, press conferences etc, in the old days sbs would send the cameras out to your clubs training session once in a blue moon. On pay TV all you would get was 3 games a week and a tiny highlights package, you didn't have a sports news channel and football related shows. Everything now globally is at our fingertips via TV and Internet.

Does Heidelberg get almost 12,000 to an ffa cup tie without the fox promotion and the social media build up? No chance, we are fortunate to have these things now, back then we didn't have much to go on.

Very true. The crowd concerns were rarely attributed to the traditional teams, it was start up teams like Northern Spirit, Parramatta Power, Carlton etc. that would get bumper crowds for a few rounds and then quickly those fans would disappear. Sydney United, South Melbourne, Knights, Olympic, Marconi etc. games always looked packed on TV.

Joffa this is your worst comment-- that's the point the FFA have done wonders,

There were so many attempts to lift football - but all failed

The creation of the NSL
AFL adding teams (Carlton, Collingwood)
NRL adding a team (Parramatta)
NSL going to two tiers north/south
Attempts to Australianise teams - (Marconi told to change logo, team name changes)
Stuck in Oceania

We knew the game had a future and finally a FFA Administration delivered

League based on geographical location
Bigger and better confederation ASIA
Great TV rights deal funding 10 teams salary cap
etc etc

Its funny when pundits shitcan the NSL to try and convince themselves/others that the HAL is very successful.

Pretty much, for all the crap that's thrown at the NSL it essentially had 9 teams that were consistently viable until the end (Olympic, Sydney United, Marconi, South Melbourne, Melbourne Knights, Wollongong wolves, Brisbane Strikers, Adelaide City and Perth Glory) and the rest was a churn of different teams that fell over every few years (ironically Newcastle was consistently one of these), so what has really changed?

Positives:
Genuine professional league so players can make a career of it.
Greater market penetration that may pay dividends into the future.

Negatives:
Fewer teams and more foreigners (as we can actually pay them now) means that conservatively (if you assume that three out of five foreigners play each weekend compared to almost zero in the NSL) there's 70 less outfield positions for young players to potentially play in, meaning there's roughly half the opportunities for aussie players that there were in the NSL. That's not taking into consideration the places that are taken by reasonably accomplished players (Mooy, Milligan, Archie etc.) take that they wouldn't have in the past as it simply wasn't viable.Not getting those chances more often, younger could be part of why we aren't seeing as many of our youngsters going on with things.

I really think it's a bit of a mixed bag in terms of outcomes.

NSL splitting into two regional conferences in the mid-eighties wasn't an attempt to "lift football"...

It was a desperate attempt to save the NSL- as attendances were plummeting and the idea was to produce more local derbies and reduce travel costs.

It wasn't a success- the NSL almost died during this period. What saved it was the switch to summer football in 1989.

Bingo.

Good old passive aussie racism.

Another good one... you can ram cyclists with your car, vilify an opponent's mental illness, make train noises as the bowler delivers to a batsman whose sister died in a train accident...

But don't be Nick Kygrios and sledge an opponent about his mrs because that's suddenly against rewl true blue aussie values.

Moral of the story be Warnie, not a wog.

I'm not familiar with cricket, but that was way to specific to be made up.

How many times did the NSL developed players make the World Cup in that 50 year time period?

\:d/ \:d/

Aleague developed players will wipe the floor with NSL on this stat if it has not done already.

But you are completely missing the main benefit of the A-League, which is many more people watch the game (both live and on TV) than ever did during the NSL.

It's not the be all and end all, but that is what drives revenue and secures the viability of the sport.