I have no problem with people using the idiom that they are used to. My beef is with AFL commentators when they are on general sports shows always trying to give an AFL comparison. Caroline Wilson , Eddie Everywhere,  Kelli Underwood and Bruce McAvaney all do it. It annoys me as a general sports fan. If I was an AFL fan I would find it condescending. Shit - Victorian political commentators like Barrie Cassidy do it with politics. 

"handball it off" is a pretty common expression, it never occurred to me that it was an AFL specific expression, we use stacks of expressions day to day that appear to be cricket based, not a a big deal really, in fact, an expression like "letting it through to the keeper" could be viewed as both a football and cricket analogy

They did too..........lol

Nuvo New Dawners are all over the place. A bit like the current Labor Party.

So how long before new licences are handed out? Will it be this year or next?? Just for the sake of Wellington I hope its soon.

Wellington will now be safe. I can’t see the club owners kicking them out.

With the new structure, whether or not the current license structure exists moving forward will be interesting to watch.

I can’t see any new clubs entering for a few years as the owners would want to maximise their returns without having to further split the commercial and broadcaster money across more clubs, this diluting their share. 

One question though, would it be the FFA that runs the 2nd tier?

 The progress beyond Lowe is amazing 

In the 6 months since he has gone the game has moved light years ahead of where it was. 2nd division, independence, NCIP abolished. One of these things would take 5 years to even get spoken about under lowy.

I remember the first six months after Gallop was employed, and everyone was glowing in their praise about how much he had accomplished

In the 6 mths it was a carryover from the Lowe Board.

What's with all the face slapping then?

Carry over between his multis

You are like a broken record....are you still going to reply to every post from a pro-Lowy view point five years from now ?
He is gone and will not be back (thank goodness)
Let it go and move on ...you just may enjoy the ride more 

Ask libel about slap in face but the way the new Board has in many ways (not all) progressed the carry overs and new matters has  has been poor, disunited and weak in leadership. 

You can't see the irony in how anything bad that has happened since Lowy was removed is the fault of the new board... but anything positive was because of Lowys work before he left.... ???
Any Board will stuff up ..(Stajic affair) ...especially when new ...but to be fair none of the progress on independence and/or a second tier would have happened under Lowy ..he was openly scornful of all of it.
As I mentioned to Libel ....move on ..Lowy is gone..stop comparing the new board to Lowy's board ....he is ancient history . 

i know i'm going off on a tangent here, but what makes me shudder more than fingernails on a chalkboard of when an AFL commentator says the phrase "Soccered off the ground." Its shits me no end. and whats's worse is that I heard Brenton Speed say it when commentating an AFL game recently. As a Football person, he should be avoiding that phrase like the plague and setting a better standard.  

Quite convenient to have things swept under the carpet and forgotten. I and others I’m sure will keep highlighting defiencies with the new Board as many others have with the old. Have a few more years to catch up though.

why does that worry you?

I have no problem with that . I think we will all be commenting on board stuff ups ..and they will stuff up ....but some seem to be living in denial of how inept and static the old board were under Lowy.
Our game was in deep trouble and needed change .
No one is suggesting the new board is wonderful (they quite clearly are not !) but they at least are making changes and allowing things to happen that would never have happened under the old regime .
We have a long hard road to get our game going again and I expect stuff ups along the way ....but stuff ups are fine... and expected ..as long as we learn from them.

yeah ..I guess it only affects those who watch AFL ...not a problem for me .
I do watch Rugby league though...and one of my little annoyances is the recent adoption of NFL/Baseball  terms by commentators....."they are O and 4 this season"..apparently referring to losses to wins . I have only started hearing this in the last few seasons.
It is a harmless term but it grates a little as we seem to be adopting more and more Americanisms in our speech.
(off topic a little but have you listened to many teenage girls now  ?....they say "beeby" instead of "baby" ....I am sure in 50 years we will all sound like yanks ..sad really)

good points tbh 

what changes can the new a league make that will make next season the best ever?

i'd say obvious ones would be destory the salary cap, try to fix active area and better marketing 

That aged well.

Trying to fix active areas is something that supporters and the FFA have to fix. It’s not a one side story that one based on quite a few past incidents. 

Salary cap removed would be a significant step, but one likely to be a true game changer without a vastly improved operating model coming into play. 

Brenton Speed and his 'go-ahead goal' is another Americanism.

Marketing, promoting the actual damn product which has been non-existent the last couple of seasons.

Of course ticket prices and repairing the relationship with the fans which will be a hard slog now.

The ticket prices for away fans are ridiculous. Derbies quite often approach $40 for a fairly average seat. With NSW having 4 and soon to be 5 teams within reasonable proximity I think away members should be able to get in for $20. Same with Melbourne where there will be 3 teams next season.

Sage still pushing for Asian A-league sides.

https://twitter.com/joshua_thomas97/status/1149946253628735488?s=21

No. No. No.

One way to fold the league

I can only think his ideas for teams from other countries comes from the isolation of Perth to the rest of the country.

Perth may be relatively close to a few south-east Asian countries, but the rest of the country is a very different story. His main reasoning appears to be that this country is saturated already, which goes against the conventional wisdom of needing more player pathways here in Australia.

There is still room to grow the market here before looking at anything like that. Maybe an ASEAN club cup might appease him, with commercial opportunities by having an ACL style event just for ASEAN member nations. Anything more than that will fail miserably, given the distances and costs involved.

Get the 2nd tier up and running and drive the overall structure forward without letting the imagination run free trying to think of a few short term business deals that he sees this unlocking, likely at the expense of the game as a whole in this country. 

Why would people in Jakarta follow a team in an Australian league when they have their own teams with more history than any a-league side?