Three times key stakeholders in Australian Football have applied a scorched earth policy and destroyed what was there and set up a new.

In 1955 in the Sydney competition,
The NSL in the 70’s
Hal in the 00’s

Frank Lowy was a key player in each revolution, all started with a bang and ended badly. Well Hal has not ended but declining.

It leaves two questions, do we want to destroy Hal and start again ? or Do we develop and change Hal ?

Personally for me I think the various fractions if Hal fell over would have trouble putting in place a commonly agreed format… So for me I would prefer to develop and change Hal for whats needed and with the new governance model, clubs now in charge of Hal, a second division forming, new CEO of FFA seemly coming from Football.... Change is happening the speed can be argued but you can't argue change is not happening.

 Open question , scorched earth and destroy Hal… or Develop and change Hal

Good luck with this one Mid ... 

Yer.... there are some on here who seem to believe we should be rid of Hal and start afresh again... be interesting to hear their arguments and any counter arguments... 

Despite other codes and limited interest, there is enough money in our game to make it viable

WU paid over $15m for a licence just recently and are looking at building a venue (and they were one of 16 bidders). We also have international interest as seen with CFG. We have global sources of revenue other codes can only dream of, and a global audience others can only dream of


Yet our league has been painted into a corner by the way we have to do things. Myths of Australian sports fans and culture that see a standard template applied to everything we do. How to balance the playing field (do we even know what sport is?), how to make things more entertaining, how to maximise metrics, etc...

To me this is the biggest killer of the game. The only way forward is to ask FIFA and the AFC for help. Get them to do for us what every other league except for MLS has done. And the decent amount of revenue and interest will ensure it is a success. Not the most popular, not sold out venues every week, but enough to be viable and internationally competitive

Until then we'll just see this continual loop of failure and arguments over which handful of entities gets the money

I don’t think the HAL is that bad that we need to blow it up and start again.

a few slaps in the face should do it

Well said.

HAL needs to get to 16 teams and play Home and Away for a season or two (until HAL 2 is sorted)
The top of the ladder is Champion
Bottom 4 team should play off - (Home team drawn at random) to select bottom team
They then go into  promotion and relegation game with top team from HAL 2 home n away.

You have missed the point.... to get to where you want Football to get too...

Do we develop and modify / change Hal... or do we blow Hal up and start a fourth attempt to start again... 

It is a question that can’t be answered in isolation imo. 

HAL
Championship (NSD) 
NPL
Capital/City/Regional Leagues 

should form the four layers of our pyramid climbing from amateurs to semi-pro to elite professional levels of the game. 

The HAL has to exist within that framework and, even if it’s not automatic, promotion between layers needs to happen 

(it’s comical to hear NPL sides argue for pro/rel in QLD when they themselves don’t allow the Queensland pyramid to connect) 

There is no starting again.
We have to make this work somehow.

I said it on another thread, but the first thing that needs to happen is to fix the salary cap issues. and it needs to happen now or else it will be too late for next season. 

No salary cap will keep 6 teams in the top 6 and you will end up with 10 teams (If we get to 16 target) fighting for the minors.
With no cap you will need a minimum number  locals in each squad.
It could end with all clubs foreign owned.

Waz

I am all for two div's with 16 teams each...

That means adding 20 teams... 

The first say dozen almost pick themselves... but the next 8 hhhmmm... anywho... for me you are right Hal needs to merge into the top level of Australian Football... in part Team 11 & Campbelltown both have formed close alliances with local associations... I still think the answer lies with the associations... making both Hal & NPL teams extensions of regional associations... 

The NPL + HAL teams must be separate and funded without  Regional Association time or money. These Regional Association will find it easier to fund from within football than go out and find independent sponsors -  which would cripple grass roots football with levies 

It all comes down to planning. That means actually having a plan and not just bumbling along and hoping things change. We have seen the Asian leagues improve steadily while we stagnate as a direct result of them planning for their future. We need to do the same. Goals need to be set so they can be worked towards. If P&R is in our future, then they need to set it as a firm goal and work towards it. We always seem to have this attitude of 'we'll talk about X when we are ready for X' and then 'ready' never comes. We need to be saying 'we want to achieve X, what steps do we need to take to be ready for X'. There also needs to be some proper analysis of the league to date, just like Jack Reilly proposed to do when he was at the FFA before they gave him the boot.

This has libel written all over it lol

-PB

Reform is likely required but it will be more structural/model based, not a destroy and rebuild approach. 

If we blew up the A League the starting point will be a stand alone league with one team per city and strategic regions represented. There would be a salary cap to avoid a Scotland type situation with two regions having significantly more buying power than the other regions

In other words we would end up with the A League again

The A League is a necessary starting point but once you take the product out of the box, you throw the box away. This is where the FFA went wrong

The FFA not only lacked the ability to take the A League to the next step, but the later half of the FFA even showed resistance. Even lecturing us about why we had to keep things the way they were and the next step would be catastrophic

Whether you want to fly to Hobart or England, you still have to go to the airport first. Sadly for our sport, our destination was the airport itself

That though process is kinda contrary to how football works generally, which is typically club based and tribal. 

In areas with low low populations it might work eg townsville but in areas with large football populations eg Football Brisbane you already have half a dozen teams with A League ambitions and under the NPL another dozen teams wanting promotion. 

The key to expansion though is timing.  It need not all happen in ten years although I do believe if we can put growth in to club football then we can expand quicker than where we are now. 

The most logical thing to do is develop the HAL, however, as history has shown, the inherent self interest means that no real change will occur anytime soon so it may blow itself up anyway. Wether anything would be able to come out of those ashes is a big question.

I would develop, What we need to do is a period of reconciliation

Firstly I would re-introduce the Melbourne knights as the team of West Melbourne and have WU develop as a Western Victoria team based in Geelong.

Secondly bring back in Sth Melbourne, Brisbane Strikers, Wollongong Wolves and Adelaide City. (Sydney O, Sydney U and Marconi miss out until P+R comes in) 

Thirdly head hunt Auckland City, Sth Hobart 

Fourthly reserect dead clubs Canberra Cosmos Perth Kangaroos, Eastern Pride 

Finally  this takes us to 22 clubs have one season where there is a top 10 finals with the bottom 12 forming the 2nd division 

I actually think much of the blame does go back to the FFA loosing focus on the HAL around the World Cup bid.

There was expansion around that time that seemed to be badly executed, but as it didn’t have its eye on the game it lost control of things and it has struggled to get it back since.

No point blowing it up, it's not a video game when you can just press pause or replay.

Million and millions of dollars have been spent from the owners, whom in 2005 started on a piece of paper and a little handout by John Howard as a gift to Frank Lowy.

Now they finally have their investment into their hands and it's up to them to upturn the fortunes of the league's overall interest.

This season is always seen as a transitional season, but the next one i suspect a bigger input from the independent league group.

We can't afford another period where there was no league for about 2 years, it would be a big set back.

In the end for the FFA, running the game's best interests along with the a-league was too much to handle as both need attention.

At the start till 2010 it made sense to run both but after that we started to see some flaws in that theory and we know the rest from the congress era.

You forgot fifthly, invent a magic money tree that pays for all of this stuff.

Also resurrecting dead clubs with tiny fan bases and terrible stadiums like Knights and Eastern Pride (omg) is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

Going back to the dreary NSL days is not going to save the A league.  There must be a lot of young people in here, who simply don’t understand how bad the NSL, when a 5k turnout was applauded and something to be proud of rather than ridiculed.  

So what you’re proposing is the Lowy model on steroids where we select the teams based on some arbitrary criteria or other preference rather than allow the notion of footballing merit and relevant other factors to decide. 

We have to remember Lowy's achievement in getting the A-League off the ground (also getting us into Asia, etc).

I doubt there's another Lowy waiting in the wings with that kind of pull with the Government.

You just have to look at our new Chair, or the senior members of the new board.

There is no one who could re-do what Lowy achieved if we had to start from scratch.

There is no option but to grow the league from what exists now.  Hopefully the separation document covers the interests of football adequately so its up to the clubs what to do now.

Whatever is the shortest path to two divisions.
The top division in hindsight should have had two teams for Brisbane,Adelaide and Perth and three in Melb and Syd.
Add in Canberra,Newcastle,Woolongong and Hobart.

Any other teams should have been in the second division and earnt the right to be promoted.

It didnt happen that way.So the best way to proceed from here is to start a second division and promote teams until we have 16 in the top division.