A revamped FFA Cup could help keep players ticking over during an eight-month break between A-League seasons, as football transitions to winter and provides a test run for a direct-to-consumer streaming model being planned by the sport.While the next A-League season has been locked in to start on December 27 and will finish with a grand final in June 2021
there are still huge question marks over what domestic football looks like after that point and how the planned shift from a summer to winter calendar is managed.

An early announcement for a new Canberra side, hopefully before this upcoming season, will allow proper preparation. The new Canberra side should be participating in any late 2021 FFA Cup and pre-season Cup for 2022 so really, an announcement is required now.

Anyone supporting group stages in the FFA Cup can get in the fucking bin. If you want more national level club games than stop the comprimised draw and play every team three times again until we get to 16 teams. 

I don't mind a "league Cup" though as long as it doesn't doesn't stay as some pre season Cup thing in the future. I could see having a cup competition for A-League and NPL teams working whilst the rest of the country is playing FFA cup qualifiers. Play the final in May before the international call ups and the round of 32 for the FFA Cup starts. 

Think not of lost footballing time but rather of the extended opportunity for league bashing and internal conflict.

Surely we could host a comp with some sort of ‘shortened format’ of the game with bigger goals, no goalkeepers, 3 pts for a goal and one for a corner ... and lots of fireworks?

Gaelic football?

So it’s the Victorian clubs that are reluctant to shift to winter, because of competition from AFL and possible reduced crowds. Presumably that means Victory oppose the move to winter because neither City or WU have crowds to be concerned about? 

I love the sarcasm ... sadly some idiots are probably planning for something just like this.

Group stages for the FFA Cup qualifies surely? 

A preseason cup that combined A league and 2nd division teams in the same competition would be interesting. If it only involved A league teams it would be boring due to the monotony of the same teams playing each other over and over throughout  the year.

Good idea MT regarding the future running of an A league/2nd division cup in parallel with lower league teams competing in the early stages of the FFA cup. Complete alignment of the calender.

They got to fill in something, so hopefully this is just a temporary thing before they make the 2022 winter switch.

There is a gap that needs to be filled post July next year.

It would be tolerable as a one-off thing to tide over the season break and test the water for streaming platforms. But it should never ever be repeated. From 2021 the FFA Cup must go back to straight knockout without the rigged draw.

But I like the idea of a League Cup across both AL and NSD (should it come to fruition), with a group stage to the start of the season to give clubs some structured pre-season matches, and then a knockout phase in the early months of the season, before AL clubs join the FFA Cup. In the short-term it could incorporate the national finalists of the NPL (if you add the top four of the NPL to the AL teams, you get a nice Round of 16).

Anyway, it's good see the winter season is all but confirmed. I was worried with the proposed December-June season that they were chickening it and laying the ground for an October re-start, but this looks like it won't be the case

Impossibly now that Lowy is gone and have a new FFA 😐 

Waz

Thanks for the post still reading thu it and links... great pick up...

Ignoring the influence of AFL, NRL etc in reducing crowds during winter for the moment, wouldn't playing the A-league during winter reduce the amount of football people going to games as they would have their own matches on the weekend to attend?

Perhaps, but it's clear that we're not getting that major group of potential fans in summer anyway.

The rest of the world seems to cope with local leagues and professional leagues having some overlap, as does the machines that are the AFL and NRL. Gotta try something different, so that shouldn't be the thing that holds us back.

Yes it would. Roar have stats that prove this (I think the drop off was 10-25% depending upon opponent). 

It shouldn't be much of a problem for any cities that have a stand alone club representing the whole city. 

Let's use Brisbane Roar as an example. Wouldn't it be possible to play all home state league games for Brisbane clubs one day before or after Brisbane Roar play a home game?

It'll be much harder for Melbourne and Sydney, but even then they could try to have all state league games wrapped up by 4pm, and the first A-league game starting no earlier than 6pm. 

It'll never be perfect but there are ways of making it work with minimal impact if all parties work together ( something they've never been able to do unfortunately ).

I'm wondering what the drop off would be in Sydney where there are 6 times the number of players in Brisbane but spread over 3 clubs.

The rest of the world have developed football cultures.  We don't.

I think this is worth a try.

I believe that we actually do have an organic, genuine, rich, and storied football culture stretching back 140+ years that currently includes several million Australians, but unfortunately we've never quite managed to tailor the organizational infrastructure around it to make the most efficient use out of it.

since we're moving to winter we should be doing more club-wise with our ASEAN & OFC counterparts in the way of separate tours in the pre and post season
for example an having all  A-League sides do a tour of Indonesia vs Liga 1 clubs and vice verse each year

Having the next two or three clubs that don't make ACL go to the ASEAN Club Championship taking the place of the AFC Cup in our region would be ideal, but as you say if we all line up our calendars and had joint preseason competition with AFF partners or something like that that would be cool.

My reading of the Tea Leaf’s and Taro cards, is some don’t laugh, but some significance research has been under gone and the move to winter is the result.

Despite what AFL trolls say the move to summer [way back in the NSL] was not to get away from AFL, it was because games were played in the afternoon and it was assumed that all age players could not get to matches as they were playing… thus move to summer…

Today we play at night so attendance because of all age players playing while some effect, no longer the same issue.

Why winter is the bigger question?????

Again, its my reasoning not inside information… FFA want a second division and noises have been made about expanding the league… with possible and I repeat possible P & R in a mid-term future…

I think the clubs see ratings as their future, and I think they see improved ratings if they play when people are playing.

If you look to the past this make no sense at all given our best ratings have been in that small window between end of AFL / NRL and before cricket…. However, cricket is starting earlier, and the NRL in particular are expanding into end of season extensions especially with Pacific Nations & NZ Vrs Australia test matches and maybe a SOS as well…

Again, don’t laugh, but if we look at the owners of the A-League as a collective there are some smart business folk there….. they can see and hear the same issues we can…. That they say little and to date do little does not mean they don’t understand.

The Tea Leaf’s tell me the move to winter is a strategic one, its such a mega move when recent logic says stay in summer…. There must be closely held to the chest research / analysis / accompanied by or supported by modelling.

Dollars are tight, our biggest asset is our playing base…

The various articles and timing over the next two years as detailed in Waz’s first post is simply exploring the best methods to get to operating in winter…

I could be wrong, but this is a mega to the multi mega power move and given those involved and their back grounds I can only assume the research has been done, the plans especially for marketing are being developed but won’t be reviled until the last as they don’t want the AFL & NRL understanding what they plan.
              

They have groups in Sweden and it is shit. They use rankings from previous season and highest and lowest in group of 4 get 2 home games and the others 1. Top 2 go through.

Its still the the fastest path to Europe (Europa League).

is it too much to have state cups and FFA Cup? That way AL clubs could enter last 3 rounds in their local fed. Just seed them not to play each other in NSW and Vic.

Groups will guarantee 3 games per AL club but these are not knockout and don’t feel like cup games. Only the last game if you don’t beat the lower opponents in the first 2 games.

As an NPL member I will be strongly urging my club to abstain from this farce. Docherty cup is awesome and if we do get to the quarter final stage (which means entry to this abomination)  I would hope that we just pull out of FFA cup contention and just continue with the league and Docherty (vic state) cup.  Playing a group stage malarkey as a preseason warm up for the franchises, knowing that over 4 or 6 games or whatever an NPL club has no remote chance to progress is balls. So this JJ is a football person huh? 

Wouldn't you be interested to see how your club would fare in a round-robin group against A-League + other NPL clubs to test the waters for how thye might fare in an NSD? Or are you worried that it would show just how big the gulf in quality is (remember Sydney United is close to the best NPL side in the country, and they lost 7-1 to an ordinary Wanderers side last year).

A couple of points to go with what Midfielder said:

- clashing with grassroots football. I imagine A-League games will be spread over six separate weekend slots (something like Fri 7:30, Sat 3:00, 5:15, 7:30, Sun 3:00, 5:15). If you're playing grassroots you usually play at a reasonably set slot every week, with the season usually lasting 22-26 weeks. Let's say you play 24 weeks at Sat 3:00, then you will only have a direct clash once in every six A-League home games, and a tight squeeze another once every six home games. Which means you miss a grand total of two home A-League games per season (out of 13-14 at present, and hopefully going up to more like 16-17), or four in a worst case scenario. That's not too bad.

- the winter calendar. At the moment the only real clear window in the professional sporting calendar is October-November (which is also when A-League attendances and ratings tend to be highest). Surely it would be better to have the end of the season at this stage, rather than the beginning? Then the final rounds of the season, FFA Cup final, play-offs and grand final will all be on when there's not much competition from other sports going on.

Also: Waz, you say Brisbane attendances go down significantly in the March-May period. This is not my experience at Sydney. Could it just be that the attendance decline is related to the team's performance, rather than any clash with grassroots football?

It's pretty much how the Scottish league Cup works these days. It starts very early in July with teams in UEFA qualifiers given a bye to the knockouts. There is a 8 groups of 5 with each team getting 2 home and 2 away games and it's OK. I think having a cup final moved to November at least has been fairly popular amongst fans.