BB

I am not saying to many people are playing I am saying the lack of connection from the 1.8 million to professional Football in Australia is the main issue...

We have had professional Football in Australia for maybe 100 years... 

The problem over the past 80 odd years is the disconnect between the playing base and professional Football...

I humbly suggest the answer to the connection issue is far far far more complex than many assume ....... further those that  assume the answer is both easy and simply needs Australian professional Football to better get its act together are missing or maybe not missing but under estimating certain issues and over estimating other issues...

While it will be a critical aspect of Football moving forward ... moving to a full FIFA model will be of huge benefit ... even if only when we do this we can do that....

Before that we need to generate interest in Australian Football and then respect for our Football... the full FIFA model will help with the respect but is only part of the solution...

To work and maybe this best summaries my thoughts... For Australian professional Football to gain respect from the grassroots.... Australian Professional Football needs to give respect to the grassroots and involve them in the process... 

@Midfielder, I think you are confused

You are basically saying that too many people are playing the game but not watching the A League, due to a perceived lack of quality, and the solution is to get more people playing the game

And this 80 year long running problem has to be prioritised over removing the salary cap, the purpose of which will only serve to improve the quality of the A League

The other thing is that the FFA and league have been separated so we can walk and chew gum at the same time. The role of the independent league body is purely to improve the quality of the league, not sit idle until the FFA have connected more people with local clubs

A bottom up approach will be an escalator to nowhere. Without an elite professional league the closes the gap between the highest level in Australia and the next step, players will simply be playing local football until 16 or 17 and then joining an AFL / NRL club (especially when they can get paid 3 times as much)

There are definitely things the independent body can be doing to improve the quality and reputation of the league so we can get wins on the board now, instead of trying to tackle the biggest issue our game has faced where we can't even be sure there is a viable solution

BB
Your reply about the salary cap is an example of simple solutions that don’t really solve anything… yes something needs to be done but its not a first order issue as I see it… its like P & R much more about slogans than solving issues.

Let me explain, in any business analysis you list many many many issues, and then look at your core business and see how the issues or rank the issues to solve your core business problems.

Football biggest core issue is the lack of connection between the playing / participation base and their extended relationships and Football… and has been the case from the mid 50’s.

Three times now we have tried to reinvent the wheel and destroy what was there before and its never worked. The last time it was working was pre and the immediate post WWII. That’s when we had regional association teams similar to the rest of the world.

The biggest by light years squared issue in Football is connecting to the player / participation base. As a guide AFL, NRL & Union the connection rate is around 87%.

Recently, it was announced Football had 36% of the player / participation base interested in Football with 34% of the 36% watching Hal. [BTW the 34 & 36 %’s could be the other way around.

So with almost 1.8 million participations we have roughly 12% watch Hal.

1.8 million @ 36% is 648 K of which 34% watch Hal which is 220 K.

220k as a % of 1.8 million is 12.2 %.

So we have 648 Interested in Football less 220 who watch Hal so 428 K who say they like Football.

Plus another 1.8 million less 648 K or 1, 152 at this stage not interested.

Research indicates the main reasons why the 428 K who like Football don’t watch Hal is prevised quality or lack there of … safety … over policing …

Of the 1, 152 who are unattached at this point in time, quality and respect for Australian professional Football as well as being aliened to more traditional Australian codes are the main issues.

Connecting to these two groups ie the 428 K already Football fans and the 1, 152 K is where we need to look… and as I have been saying for yonks now it via the regional associations and their local park teams were the solutions lie…. Its group dynamics to create player / participant  behavioural change that is the answer and all issues need to be ranked to this end.

So how does the salary cap or P & R, at Woy Woy park change the group dynamics of the kids and their parents to create a behavioural change in viewing patterns…

For me the biggest issue is the prevised quality of the Hal… and Australian Football in general

Top down won’t work and has failed for 70 years… the answer is complex and the solution is more so… but without doubt the answer will come from the bottom up and just making random changes to look like Europe will fail…

You mean like the salary cap. The default standard template approach applied to every national league without thought or reason

Its only been the last 2-3 years that people on here are giving serious thought to how P/R can work. Before then it was a pipe dream. Hardly a simple answer most will believe

An inconvenient truth for many ... especially people who think by announcing P & R, all issues will go away...

A quote I read and forget how it goes exactly.. but was directed at talk back radio and one line slogans in election campaigns...  

It goes something like this and IMO this applies to many Football folk in Australia.

For every  Complex Problem.

There is a very simple answer most will believe.

That not only does not solve the complex problem but makes it worse.

"Reverse finals". Play-off series to determine the worst team in the league.

That'll draw the punters in!

Thank goodness you detailed what you meant because I was completely lost until then haha

I take it back, not a stupid idea at all.

seems to work well in the NBA. they even have a form of it in the AFL.

the money returned to the HAL via a luxury tax can be split evenly between all of the clubs. this will increase the revenue of the clubs with less money and will give them more money to spend on players for the next season. So if a few clubs decide to spend big, it pushes everyone else up. over time, this will increase the quality of the league as everyone will have more money to spend on bringing in better quality players.

Let me paint a scenario for you: Imagine the salary cap is $5 million with no floor and a 50% luxury tax. lets imagine City and Sydney spend $8 million on players and Victory, Brisbane, WSW, WU and MacArthur spend 6.5 million on players. and the other teams are under the cap. 

That’s $13.5 million paid over the cap taxed at 50%. that means these teams would pay a combined luxury tax of $6.75 million. Split this figure between all 12 clubs and you get a dividend of $562.500 each. 

so a team like CCM who might have spent $3.5 million on player salaries that year, would have over $4 million to play with the season after.  

I understand why there was a salary cap and a minimum spend as it was introduced at the beginning. The problem now is that there is in essence an incredible amount of flexibility in the salary cap with exemptions from the cap and of course marquees outside of the cap.

If the point of the cap is equalization of the league then it is not working. If it is to stop clubs from overspending then it is not working. If it is not fulfilling its purpose then there is no need for it.

If people are paid what they are worth - and that could be minimum wage - then that is what they should be paid. To my mind many HAL players are overpaid - others are incredibly under-rated and underpaid. 

Agreed, but it is about understanding the environment and finding specific solutions to the particular issues the environment poses.

This is true both at the macro and micro level. Yes - Australia is different from many other environments around the world and we have to find our own solutions. However, a HAL wide solution where all the marketing is about Sydney and Melbourne does nothing for the other clubs. What works for Victory or Sydney does not work for Adelaide, the Jets or the Mariners. We need to have specific solutions for specific clubs / regions. Hopefully as we go away from everything being dictated by the FFA and the owners take control then stategies can be developed that better suit each club.     

Our physical size is a major consideration in how we should structure football here.  The costs are not just transport costs, there are land costs as well that are borne by the clubs that are greater than the transport costs picked up by the FFA.  Additionally the FFA funds transport for 17 (19?) which is quite low for a club treating its players professionally.  Rounding figures up the FFA might spend $4m pa on transport but the clubs spend another $1-2 on transport and say $5-6m between them on land costs so the real cost might be nearly triple what you mentioned.

As you increase the size of the league you add to both the land and transport costs.  As you add more leagues the cost multiplies.

With limited funds can we afford another national league or is there another way to achieve the same at less cost or is there something else that is more important that the funds should be used for?  These are the sorts of questions that come in to play when funds are extremely tight as they are here.

This returns to the problem of absolutism. We can never have a system that is future proof and we shouldn't try to. What was right in 2004 may not be right in 2020. Any system in place needs the mechanism to be able to evolve to accommodate any number of internal and external factors. This is where regular reviews and audits of systems, rules and processes are invaluable. Jack Reilly proposed conducting such a review of the HAL at the 10 year mark but the FFA refuses to conduct the review and gave him the boot. Without a proper mechanism for change, things can fall over very quickly. It's like if you ran a retail store and never reviewed your prices. Eventually the business is going to fail.

Agreed, but it is about understanding the environment and finding specific solutions to the particular issues the environment poses

The salary cap was thrown into the league in the same way guaranteeing a semi final spot for a state league was thrown into the FFA cup. This is about pandering towards myths instead of any real challenges we face

If we were solving actual problems we wouldnt be in our 5th consecutive year of increasing neglect from our own fan base. Instead we have decided what the problems are based on other codes and those are the issues we are trying to solve. Its not just every football country that is unique, but also every football league. So why are we looking towards the AFL / NRL for answers when we are not a stand alone league with a monopoly on elite teams and players?

Closing the gap between Melbourne, Sydney, and the rest of the league at the death of the NSL in a one team / one city model with limited talent  may have made sense, but it is definitely irrelevant today

I dont think blindly following one model ir smarter than blindly following another, but I'd say we can definitely learn more from leagues like the J league and K League than we can from the AFL / NRL

People seem to make the assumption that because Australia is so large and the cities are so far apart that it creates a massive problem. We live in a 1st world country with very good and affordable air travel. In FY19 the FFA spent $3.8M on travel expenses for the HAL, W-League and Y-League combined. That's not a major expense. Our geographic uniqueness is not the problem people think it is. 

The challenge we face is not the land mass, but the need for a balanced league

Nobody else has looked at a competition that features 600 teams and said "we need to make sure Bentleigh can make the semi final" like we did

We are stuck in this mindset that sport will fail unless every team has a chance of winning the title, and we have the problem that we dont have equally sized population and economic regions on all corners of Australia

Yet look at Wellington. We know there is a substantial talent gap between Australia and New Zealand, and we force them to field mostly Kiwi players. This means it is unlikely they'll ever win the league, which has become more evident the further the gap has become compared to the earlier seasons. Try taking the team away from Wellington. Try telling their owners, sponsors, investors, and region that they can't have a team because they can't win the league so there is no point. Every year we see a strong fight for them to stay in the league

Our mindset is the obstacle, not any real financial limitation or number of other codes. We had 16 teams from all walks of life throw millions at us wanting an elite team for their region. We said "no", not them

Congrats on the job mate ... and miss your blog as well... 

Interesting point Gyfox makes above, that no large land mass on Earth has a full football pyramid.
That might be right, I don't know.
According to Wikipedia, these are the 10 largest land masses.  How do they structure their football??

1.  Russia
2. Canada
3. China
4.  USA
5.  Brazil
6.  Australia
7.  India
8.  Argentina
9.  Kazakhstan
10.  Algeria

Interested in what people know about these countries.
What is the largest land mass which has a full pyramid?

I have been working:( Funny my blog at el got me an opportunity in a completely unrelated field. No, stopped football content once I got some work.

Saw your post. Smiled. Couldn't resist:)

What if I said because football isnt number 1 here our teams need to wear pink socks and their names need to start with Z or X

Can you explain how the cultural difference between us and the rest of the world mean we need to impose an ambiguous limit on what we pay our players, and why our best players cant be in the same team?

Also can you demonstrate that every other league in the world without a salary cap has football as their #1 code and ample funds, and equally leagues of sports that are second in every other country has a salary cap


The salary cap is literally used to regulate the market for player payments. Thats it. We dont control the market, so it is ineffective. Pure and simple

Since we dont control the market we need to look for other means to ensure one or two rich teams dont stack their teams with Brazilians. And the best minds in our game have come up with the 3+1 rule (or similar variations)

This notion of "we are unique so we need a salary cap because... reasons" is a myth. The challenges we have forced ourselves into as a result are real

What I wrote was my understanding from early talks what the purpose of the salary cap was.

The reality is that we aren't like most of the football world.  We have 2 major differences to the majority of the other countries:-
- Football isn't #1 here and never will be which means we don't have the same football culture or available funds as other countries.
- We are significantly larger than most of the rest of the football world.
Both of these mean we need to look for systems, structures and ways of operating that suit our particular football environment but we should by preference look within the global football family to find solutions there for our issues.

I think there are a number of things in the A-League model that could have been done in a more football manner.

With regard to the 2 differences I listed earlier, it is important to consider these when looking for how we could do things differently.  As an example we hear often on here the call for a "full pyramid" but no large football country has one to my knowledge and FIFA doesn't require it.  They have a modified pyramid generally with a barrier between amateur and professional football.  Is it right for us to be trying to model ourselves on a country like Germany which is only 5% of the size of Australia or should we be looking at the football structure in countries like us?  Similarly when the CGWG was looking at how the A-league should relate to the FFA was it right to follow the EPL/FA model or would the model in Denmark where the professional leagues are in house have been better?

NP

Long time between drinks... where have you been... or are you still running your own site and blog... 

I work on the principle every city and town should be able to have a sustainable professional team right?

Salary cap minimum could be tiered.
If Clubs can operate in cap 1 or cap 2.
The current cap remains, or increases at top end.
2nd Cap or regional cap can have the same maximum, but a significantly lower minimum.

Allowing Mariners, Wollongong and regional towns able to afford a team. And if they are successful, and pull in bigger crowds consistently they can move to higher level.

Regional teams should be able to have a professional team, but they need a sustainable model. Sure they can match Sydney or Victory spend now, but they don't but if they could pay less, in total, they maybe sustainable, and if we need and get 4 new teams, even if they occupy the bottom places, they could be sustainable.

With less money, these clubs could focus on younger players, attracting players from bigger clubs where they can't get game time, and probably gaining substantial transfer fees.

Azani might have played 30 games, not bits of 15 under this model. And the regional club gets the transfer fee.

Go on, shoot ir down:)

How else do we propose increasing the number of professional clubs and keeping them sustainable.

Current model can't work with 16 teams. Hard to see crowd increases for bottom 8 throughout the season. We don't have rusted on habits where people go even if the team is getting relegated in UK etc. 

I disagree, our attitude thinking we are not like the rest is the reason why we continue to go on this unusual route.

To me the salary cap had it's purpose but it needs an serious upgrade into something of a soft cap or needs to be removed entirely.

Even a transfer system between clubs still doesn't exist which is ludicrous in this modern day of age.

Develop or destroy HAL - the brand new sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sorry mate, that is the stupidest idea I have ever read. Its up there with the Democrats in America and Labour in England thinking that you can tax millionaires and billionaires over 100% of their earnings and not expect them to all just fucking leave.

I love how my position that our young footballers should have been trusted in the AMNT for years means that I think they are mediocre. My posting about this has been consistent for, literally, years.

The salary cap promotes mediocrity, no promotion and relegation promotes mediocrity, a lack of transfer fees promotes mediocrity, franchises promotes mediocrity.

The salary cap does not even out the playing field, it does not make the league more exciting, it does not promote competitiveness between the teams.

I can understand why some clubs would have reservations about complete removal of the cap. so to sound like a broken record...
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax
Luxury Tax

As for expansion, its clear they see Victoria as football infrastructure poor. I'm glad they acknowledge it. Hopefully that means Team 11 are next in line here. 

Singh was 15 1/2 years old when he got signed.

Although he didn't say much, it's worth having a listen to yesterday's fox podcast with O'Rouke. https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3Mud2hvb3Noa2FhLmNvbS9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC9pZC8xMDk1&episode=ZTY5NmU4ZGEtY2YxOC00NGZmLTlmOTAtMGFjMzExZGIzMjE5

For those that can't be bothered, below is a rough summary. 
The independent league is not finalised yet. The clubs currently have control of day to day operations only. Financial and legal stuff is still in negotiations and is expected to be finalised within the next 3 months or so. Once that is completed the clubs will become proper owners of the league and be able to make changes how they see fit.
Once clubs have control they will be able to make major changes (eg salary cap) via a majority vote. So if 8 clubs decide they want the cap gone, it's gone. Currently there is a bit of a split, with some clubs want it gone and others want it to stay but with changes. The FFA will have no say in this. However, the FFA may have some say in regards to future expansion. Especially if there is proposed expansion from another country or confederation. He indicated that there are two bids from the last process that would be front runners for the next round of expansion. Didn't specify which ones though. 
They new WU would have rubbish crowds, but wanted the stadium in Vic so that is why they won. 
Marketing spend will be increased with a focus on social and digital platforms rather than traditional media like FTA or radio.
The security at the WU v SFC game did not follow protocols by dealing with SFC fan marshalls. Fans were ejected, but no charges or bans were placed.
Fan bans have dramatically reduced and they have adjusted what behaviours will result in a ban. Pretty much only instances when police charge a person. The ban appeals process will change under the new league and will be far easier for a person to defend the self. 

Develop. What does destroy even mean?

Look how NBL changed over the years!