ya gotta luv Simon

The ABC is a the worst the way they worship the AFL and anything to do with the AFL is a credit to how they have used their influence to have most major decision makers in ABC sport coming from an AFL background or very pro AFL...

AS for the commercial networks almost non existent and again huge credit to both the AFL & NRL, having almost all senior sport decision makers either AFL or NRL, with there second sport cricket very similar to the ABC.

When Gallop, F......ed up the SBS relationship with Football he made arguably his biggest mistake...its a long list but IMO its a toss up between not standing up to the media  when they attacked Football culture and the SBS F... up... for his two biggest stuff uppppps

Having said all this, we don't do half a bad job job ourselves .... the civil war resulted in 3 years of toxic media from within... combine our internal attacks with the general MS media and its interesting that we are still on our feet...

As for Fairfax & News well both are welded to the major codes in broadcast contracts and its not in their interest to have a successful, Football or Basketball for that matter... 

That SBS episode must just about be close to the worst thing that ever happened in the whole history of the A-League.
I mean seriously, we're on the traditional home of football.
They were paying $7 mill per annum for just one game!
They are the very, very best ratings we have ever received in the history of the game.  Period.
And he got stuck into them and poisoned the relationship.  Why??
That's the big question which remains to this day, there did not appear to be a reason to act in that manner, unless it was part of an ongoing push to be more mainstream and distance the game from the "wogs".

He was a NRL plant who came to destroy us from within 

The AL is in dire need of a big name marquee as a circuit breaker. It will bring the crowds back, media will need to report on it, and if the returning fans can be shown that on the pitch the quality is more exciting and off the pitch they will be treated fairly then it may longer term have an impact. Even if the growth in numbers is for one season, it will be the best way to show things have changed.  If the fan treatment is going to be the same however it will be a wasted exercise

Nope.  Marquees are a short term sugar hit.  Have pro rel and you'll have all the drama you'll ever need.

There is no media interest because, we as supporters, show no interest :- crowds. Get 15 to 25 thousand to games, like NRL and AFL, and watch the media interest.

I reckon there would be a bit of a circular component to this.
Football fans typically acquire their football news from football specific sources. Why? Maybe, because general news media doesn't provide much football related content. As a result, general news websites would see very low traffic on football related content. As a result general news websites don't prioritize producing football related news content. Then football fans don't visit general news sites for football content.
The circle continues.

A fair bit of truth in that.

When the people at the top are AFL or NRL supporters,its very difficult to break those old boy networks.
Its why the  Australian tv channel in asia broadcast AFL continuously,not even NRL and definitely not soccer, which asians generally play and watch.
Lowy had a fair crack but blew it.
Now it feels that the driver for change has to come from outside Australia.

Pro rel isnt something that can be just implemented next season, and no point in having drama if no one is invested enough to watch the drama in the first place. The whole point of the short term sugar hit is to get people to revisit the idea of the AL. Im not talking about generic sports fans too, im talking about football fans who have no faith in the AL and are disengaged, You need to incentivise them to come back. All the marketing, discounts, pro rel, etc in the world wont attract them back because they have no faith in the product. We need something to get them through the door first. Essentially we need to take a step backwards to go forwards, and that means getting people through the gates to show this time things are different. Then once they are there you can better their experience by things such as pro rel, etc

The argument could be made that the whole marquee thing is one of the numerous reasons many people abandoned the A-League to begin with. Many people would much rather see the cap gone and plans for P&R put in place. Yes, P&R can't be setup next season, but plans and some sort of roadmap could be announced. That's the kind of thing people want to see. Progress.

And exactly when is the right time?  Next year, the year after that, 2034?  When the league is successful enough to sustain a 2nd division?  Never?

And these marquees that can go to India or China for 5 to 10 million dollars a season.  Why would they come here and how or who could afford them? 

And the 'disengaged' fans you talk about from 'old soccer' that have been shafted from ever being able to compete at the highest level are going to come to the A-league because a 39 year old Zlatan turns up?  I don't think so.

Nope. The step backward is the initial shakeup and rinse of existing and ambitious clubs by introducing an ambitious, forward thinking plan. 

Introduce a 2nd division.  Set criteria.  Invite bidders. Have league.
Years 1 to 4.  Winner of second division goes up.  (Subject to set criteria for admission to A-league.) No relegation from the A-league.
Repeat 4 times to get 16 teams.
Full pro rel after that.  Either 1 up, 1 down or 2 up , 2 down with a playoff.  

Done.  The drama will write itself.

If Somalia and Ethiopia can have pro / rel what makes you think we can't do it?  

nup

i remember years ago, week after week after week --- you cheered David Galop when he criticised SBS.  you bashed SBS for not showing AL on its main channel.  you blamed the HALs poor ratings on david basheer's boring commentary. 

and now you describe Gallop's treatment of SBS as arguably "his biggest mistake"??? 

people are confused about what is wrong with football in this country.  i wonder why

I follow the league. But it’s boring asf atm. Seriously wondering what is exciting this season? 

I'll turn this on it's head and ask you why you think  it is boring. Once I know what your problem is I can respond.

Offsider has a AFL puppet as a host... what does one expect ? she is paid to promote AFL.

Newscorp has little interest in our game... I had a look at our local sports rag ( the advertiser ) and their sports twitter feed... nothing on AUFC in their twitter feed for weeks...
so looks like they are trying to drive down the value of the A league , and then come in as the only bid...
( this relates also to the broadcast  deal )

We have seen this pattern before with Channel 7 and the way they screwed over the NSL , and set our game back years

and yes , sometimes we as supporters are own worst enemy... but when it comes to attendance/promotion / tv coverage , its a chicken/egg scenario.
it needs promotion and coverage but also viewers and attendance

do you follow an A-league club and if so which one, or are you just a casual observer?

Sorry what's their league revenue and what sort of standard of facilities- and even standard of living for their players- does that provide? 

yup the media narrative is managed by interests in protecting their investment nationally in the respective oval ball games

greater discussion in the general media ie tv,newspaper,radio would generate greater interest in the game and hence greater growth

when you consider that we get " a fraction " of the general media compared to afl in sa then we are doing as well as we can

you could not imagine where our game would be if we shared the media 50/50 with the afl ( same up north re nrl )

And as for Zlatan if you watch any of Serie A you'd know the camera seems to follow him quite a bit..maybe because he's scored 25 goals in 35 games for one of the biggest clubs in Europe who's now second on the table in their domestic league, not to mention his call up for Sweden..

So 1. we couldn't afford him and 2. he wouldn't come.

How do you explain the EPL getting more coverage than the A-League on Nine/Fairfax?

Perhaps because the EPL is not a threat to them as it's not played in Australia and people can't attend the pl

Probably 3rd world which is  kind of the point isn't it?  If they can manage it what makes you think that we can't?

I’m talking about disengaged a league fans not former nsl fans. The fact that you don’t see that there are disengaged a league fans is exactly why just putting in pro rel won’t work anymore. We have deteriorated past that point and need to first get back to where we were in the 2012-2014 mark

Time to roll out the Big Guns, surely Media attention will shine on the ALeague when APL trott out 'Billy Idol' at the Grand Fiinal!
Why the Football hierarchy choose to take on their rival codes with one arm tied behind their back intrigues me abit. They have fans that are 
dis-enfranchised from the NSL era, who also have families that would continue to support various clubs. It is obvious that a 2nd division, with eventual pro/rel would be inclusive to all supporters of football and generate more interest than right now. The FFA Cup is a positive but is only a blip as it is Not the major competition. The FA/APL must continue to look for ways to generate more interest, get the Media's attention as the Major Codes do like rule changes, expansion, marketing and advertising. Football also does has another dimension to it that the others do not have, that is the ability to introduce a 2nd division.
This will ultimately grow the game to it's rightful place, not at the rear end in the pecking order.

Yeah fair enough but there'd be orders of magnitude more disengaged 'old soccer' fans (NSL + average football loving public) then 'disengaged A-league fans.  What are crowds averaging now?  9-10 thousand a match when it used to be  13-15 thousand.  A drop in the bucket between what's happened and what's possible.

Here's what I don't understand.  When they said 'let's get to the moon by the end of the decade' did they say 'it can't be done' or did they sit down, work out the problems and got it done.  Spoiler alert.  They went.

Your marquee solution. besides being completely unaffordable so it's practically moot, would provide only a short term sugar hit.

How about this?  The money the FFA kicked in for Tim Cahill could have funded the travel for an entire NSD for a whole season.  Tell me what you'd rather have seen?

ba boom in bold agreed.
As much as its great to see a good Import in the league it is only short term goal as we all know.
What we keep lacking is long term goals - I can't point the finger to the current FA but No Thanks to the ol governers have screwed us so much its worse than the NSL debacles now.
The NSD is the only long term HOPE period for our game to evolve and slowly bring some Unity amongst supporters past and present and build up the Clubs involved for the better or worse.
This is our games ACE to play compared to the other codes imo.

Highlights here.  https://www.facebook.com/prestonlionsfc/videos/503905740633192

What an awesome little ground.  Why wouldn't a ground like that work in the NSD or the A-league for that matter?

This obsession with state of the art facilities is misguided.  Provided the surfaces are good who cares if there's a grass hill behind the goals?.

....we can manage it  but our the broader fanbase, players. sponsors, and broadcasters expectations are for first world standards.

Tthe most common misconception surrounding the marquee concept is that a marquee should leave some sort of "legacy" after they are gone.  In fact the purpose of the marquee is to provide a ROI by way of increasing ratings, media attention, attendances, merchandising when they are here.

Few fans returned to watch say Matt Simon just because Del Piero played last season...

When the marquee leaves, another takes his spot.  Some of the ROI is re-invested towards the cost of getting a new marquee who then builds on the ratings etc that the  previous one added.