If you keep looking for racism you'll always find it. I would hardly have chosen a Greek club to support if I was racist regarding Greeks. I loved the atmos at the games including all the (to me in the 80s) exotic cooking smells and chanting I couldn't understand, but if I tried to be part of it... I wouldn't call it hostility, but definitely suspicion. I probably needed someone to introduce me I guess (I used to go with two other skips).

A skip mate of mine is a passionate South fan - you might know him. (Ian S - Australianised pom in fact)

In regards to your experience with the "effniks" I'm sorry you feel that way. I can't pretend to speak for the Olympic boys but perhaps it was equal parts them being weary of you as it was you being slightly uncomfortable around them??? I know it was meant to be a joke  but assuming  Greek Australians would be wary of ASIO is the sort of low level racism that allowed Lowy to  enact his own white Australia policy....Fear of what you don't understand or relate too is a powerful tool used by those who want to get their own way... 17 years later and I'm still being told by kids, who weren't even born in  2005, that they would never feel welcome at a soccer club where people spoke a foreign language, and then they go off and fire up FIFA to play RM or PSG. The Aleague is pretty crappy they say but at least it better than those old scray monster ethnic NSL days... lol
Im  not dismissing how you felt BTW, I know the old NSL clubs could have seemed fairly hard to swallow for those not willing to put up with young, loud, raucous young blokes looking to make themselves feel alittle better about themselves after being treated like foreigners in their own country all week but I have plenty of skip mates down at Lakeside that would find your comments very very hard to relate too.  Personally I swear to you I have never told anyone to leave a Hellas match for not having the right DNA..... :) 

No issues with Fraser Park, as they not in top tier.
Also massive respect with what ethics (60s,70s, 80s) did for football in this country.
I look at the names of the Aussies making headlines around the football world Postecoglou, Hrustic, Kerr & Garang Krul, shows we are a very multi national culture & richer for it.
As for aspiring, I'm talking about all the way down in grassroots football, all these players even before they got to Manly United, played for their local clubs, this is where the thousand of kids are, use the marketing of this.
 

No issues with Fraser Park, as they not in top tier.
Also massive respect with what ethics (60s,70s, 80s) did for football in this country.
I look at the names of the Aussies making headlines around the football world Postecoglou, Hrustic, Kerr & Garang Krul, shows we are a very multi national culture & richer for it.
As for aspiring, I'm talking about all the way down in grassroots football, all these players even before they got to Manly United, played for their local clubs, this is where the thousand of kids are, use the marketing of this.
 

ah misunderstood........
May I say we have Fraser Park (Portugese background) in PL4 at present, were higher sometime ago I'm sure you know them.
Everything round the ground is Portugese colours like their strip, the food, there isn't any Australian culture amongst it at all no diff to the PL1 ol Clubs - some supporters would sing out Port u gal or whatever else in Port u gese for the heck who cares....others would sing out Fraser. Not a big deal everyone knows we're all Aussie in any case.
I think I've mentioned before my better half is Maderian.
Yes no mono culture in top leagues due to long time established clubs whereas we being such a young country and afl/nrl etc having the grips of the culture here long before wogball did its own thing for typically unique Australia being ostirsized sockah like many migrants enclaves became, what else could they do.
Yet due to that kids went from Jnrs to Snrs/Div1 experience or furthered their careers with their family and friends following/attending.
I'm dieing for that change for our game bringing it all together.

Yep thats the biggest prob for a long time, capitilising in your own backyard, I'm sure Manlyfc promote their top flight name players in their socials, do you know IF they visit any Jnr training for eg, you said NO above, thats not good if so.
All that should be going on - heck I'm friends of James Georgkalis parents and my son playing with his younger bros earlier on, why we have seen some of Manlys games.
Its always that you know someone's somone link considering going to games right.
Why kids love being ball boys, why the Jnrs are asked to attend the Snr game for support or HT kickabout on the main pitch.
I was at SpiritFC WSW game on Saturday night, heaps of Jnrs there knowing Spirit had put word out through the socials to attend and support their top team, they were chanting along most of the game.
I'm sure some aspire to be like one of their fav Snr players.
The prob for the APL and its biggest question is why people are not going to games, there is NO likeable/link connect below them.
They have pilidged the lower clubs, taken Clubs identity to be in PL, they have done whatever they like yes with the support of those above in the past.
This is the cancer set long ago, I hope this NSD can prove many wrong.

edit - hehe I purposely didn't wish to mention Celtic/Rangers bugga you Mono lol

You are misunderstanding me as the FA or the previous FFA. I have No issues with flags being brought into the stadiums to support the players playing for a certain club.
My heritage is Portuguese, If Man U (Ronaldo Bruno) or Man City (Cancelo, Dias & B Silva) played the Allstars game, yes I would take my parents & proudly wear a Portugal shirt. I did the same when I flew to Melbourne with my parents to see Real Madrid & Ronnie play a few years ago.
Do I want a Portuguese team in the A-League, bringing my Portuguese flag & chanting Port u Gal!!! No not in Australia, no way, not for me.
However, show me a club in top tier football in the top competitions in the world that has a mono culture different to the country they are in?
I live in the Manly Warringah Association area & we have several players coming from clubs in the area playing in either the A-League or W-League, do you think these people are marketed at grassroots level, NO!!!! You have to ask why? Do you see these young players at grass root levels aspiring to be like these players & hence asking their parents to go to games. This is the biggest question.

You are misunderstanding me as the FA or the previous FFA. I have No issues with flags being brought into the stadiums to support the players playing for a certain club.
My heritage is Portuguese, If Man U (Ronaldo Bruno) or Man City (Cancelo, Dias & B Silva) played the Allstars game, yes I would take my parents & proudly wear a Portugal shirt. I did the same when I flew to Melbourne with my parents to see Real Madrid & Ronnie play a few years ago.
Do I want a Portuguese team in the A-League, bringing my Portuguese flag & chanting Port u Gal!!! No not in Australia, no way, not for me.
However, show me a club in top tier football in the top competitions in the world that has a mono culture different to the country they are in?
I live in the Manly Warringah Association area & we have several players coming from clubs in the area playing in either the A-League or W-League, do you think these people are marketed at grassroots level, NO!!!! You have to ask why? Do you see these young players at grass root levels aspiring to be like these players & hence asking their parents to go to games. This is the biggest question.

haha would be funny picturing that......
mono ethnic team in a comp, our comp for eg.
Isn't that occuring in many leagues round the world.
Oh I get it it doesn't suit a Franchise system maybe or have people here been schooled on this by the past governace's pushing their barrow keeping the big bad wolf ethnics out.
How about these type of occurances happenning in other leagues - how many times do you see many Brazilian/French/ be it any nationality of a player supporters from their country flying their national flag, waving it etc and singing away whilst playing for their respective Club.
Korean Son for Spurs when fellow Koreans are in the crowd, Brazilians at Anfield for Bobby/Fabs/Alli, the list goes on and on its not a big deal nor made out of anything in the press.
Seriously this is a ridiculous senario played out here.
We want Football not the way it is everyone else in the world barring 2/3 Franchise leagues yet want growth.
We are not populated like the USA, they also are used to Franchise sporting systems we are NOT.
The Barca game showed once again how many football supporters are out there not engaged with our top tier but I bet many are involved weekly at their grass roots levels.
What is going to change, how long are you gonna wait for a fruitful exciting competition, till hell freezes over.

   

It's all good & well, most Aussies have roots from elsewhere & are proud of it. However, do you need a mono ethnic team in the top tier competition in this country?
Imagine the SFC fans chanting SCOT-land.

Went to a couple of matches back in the day when I lived in Sydney (30+ years ago) and felt like I was in a foreign country.  Bit of a weird experience for a lad that grew up in a country town. 

Stopped going.

That was the reality for me. I doubt I was alone.

(Wasn't made to feel unwelcome though. Wasn't for me.)

Small point for the effniks... Sydney Olympic have always been my NPL club but as a skip I was always made to feel unwelcome when I went to matches. 

that true we're all Aussies but be it anglo background or whatever from wherever type of blood nothing is wrong being passionate of your combined roots, thats human Sutho just like scots/irish/and mad englishmen they have done similar as you know.
Its a double edged sword played by many no big deal but some make it a big deal.

I have been told more times than I care to remember.

People of non ethnic background ( Anglo if you like) don’t really get people who were born here preferring to be something else or some made up hybrid nationality. If you are born and bred here, you are Australian, that’s it.

I have been told more times than I care to remember.

People of non ethnic background ( Anglo if you like) don’t really get people who were born here preferring to be something else or some made up hybrid nationality. If you are born and bred here, you are Australian, that’s it.

Not really the right thread (and I note Mono always seems to bring this argument to any thread) but we really need to be looking forward rather than backwards.

Also, it does my head in that football fans in this country don't unite around our code. That's always been the main problem - too many competing visions of what football ought to be or look like.

Of course, it hasn't been helped by some terrible decisions in the past and the creation of a working pyramid MUST be the number one goal. We're going nowhere until that happens.

I see so much promise and have no doubt that, by the end of the C21, football will be the number one game in Oz, but I don't want to wait that long.

Small point for the effniks... Sydney Olympic have always been my NPL club but as a skip I was always made to feel unwelcome when I went to matches. I loved Jimmy Patikas and Mark Koussas but not being Greek made everyone suspicious of me in those days. The fans probably thought I was ASIO. So I stopped going.

I live on the Central Coast these days and am overjoyed to have a local club to support but what I most want is for football to find its rightful place in Oz, and that means the pyramid and establishing a national game that is utterly unlike all other Australian sports with promotion and relegation from grassroots all the way to the top.

Bet nobody ever told you to "fuck off back to your own country" did they my Scottish pal,,, even though I'm born and bred and sound a lot more Aussie than you...... ( I assume :)) And as for how we acted back then, we acted like Greek Australians, or Croatian Australians or Italian Australians... or whatever.... I know its this Anglo arrogance to believe that all tru blue Aussies eat  meat pies, are C of E and have convict ancestors however, in this wonderful country of ours we have the freedom and privilege to see ourselves as whatever we want regardless of how uncomfortable it makes the racist pigs of this world.

They were only treated like foreigners because they acted like foreigners. Most banging a drum about a country that they had never stepped foot in. You know that to be the case, as you were one of them.

Well done to APL for taking a gamble on this but it has payed off in some way! 

Thats right. I turned my back on the league, not the game. I do aspire to one day again watch football in this country. The irony is the Barcelona fans got to experience more from our game this year than I did

Well, my well meaning goalkeeper,  you will note that in this particular thread my contribution was to praise the Aleague Allstars And heap even more praise on a young player... You"ll find that a certain mask hating individual instigated all the ALeague bashing this time..... I did find the conversation pretty interesting though.

In regards to your experience with the "effniks" I'm sorry you feel that way. I can't pretend to speak for the Olympic boys but perhaps it was equal parts them being weary of you as it was you being slightly uncomfortable around them??? I know it was meant to be a joke  but assuming  Greek Australians would be wary of ASIO is the sort of low level racism that allowed Lowy to  enact his own white Australia policy....Fear of what you don't understand or relate too is a powerful tool used by those who want to get their own way... 17 years later and I'm still being told by kids, who weren't even born in  2005, that they would never feel welcome at a soccer club where people spoke a foreign language, and then they go off and fire up FIFA to play RM or PSG. The Aleague is pretty crappy they say but at least it better than those old scray monster ethnic NSL days... lol
Im  not dismissing how you felt BTW, I know the old NSL clubs could have seemed fairly hard to swallow for those not willing to put up with young, loud, raucous young blokes looking to make themselves feel alittle better about themselves after being treated like foreigners in their own country all week but I have plenty of skip mates down at Lakeside that would find your comments very very hard to relate too.  Personally I swear to you I have never told anyone to leave a Hellas match for not having the right DNA..... :) 

The Internet as we know it today didnt really take shape that much in 2005. Things were still pretty much driven by a 3 station and 2 newspaper mentality and there is a lot that was said that isnt documented. Its hard for me to dig up everything that was promised 2003-2005, and even a few years after. And it wasn't a single speech either. Often its a case of piecing together fragments over time to form a macro picture

The differences between the early A League and the current one is the "why" instead of the "what". I'll give one example (but by no means all):
. The top 6 was introduced based on a 14 team league, but the early introduction was to cement a start and end date for the A League (like every other professional sport). A gradual expansion would have meant constant changes in the season length and start / end which would have made it hard to get network backing
. The top 6 was reintroduced after season 6 (despite no expansion intent) because Aussies love finals and the longer teams stay in the less sad their fans get. It was also redesigned to be "more exciting" and lacked any competitive merit. Who asked for that in 2005?

Oh, and in all my ramblings above I forgot about the October kick off too. Another product of the fear of failure introduced after season 6. I think this point alone highlights the difference in ambition. A game that was going to dictate its own fate instead of being told what scraps it was allowed to have

I appreciate all your points and agree with most of them. I just dont feel cheated by the Lowy mob. I'm happy with how the A League started and I'd be curious to know what you would have done differently. I think the way it was managed, especially given the shortfalls at the time, I can't see how it could have been any different. There was IMO a clear change of direction after season 6 and we're still paying for it. But I take your point, and I've always been a believer that if you dont acknowledge your mistakes then you're likely to repeat them. If the game was stuffed from the offset due to the initial framework then its something we need to steer clear of next time

Not really the right thread (and I note Mono always seems to bring this argument to any thread) but we really need to be looking forward rather than backwards.

Also, it does my head in that football fans in this country don't unite around our code. That's always been the main problem - too many competing visions of what football ought to be or look like.

Of course, it hasn't been helped by some terrible decisions in the past and the creation of a working pyramid MUST be the number one goal. We're going nowhere until that happens.

I see so much promise and have no doubt that, by the end of the C21, football will be the number one game in Oz, but I don't want to wait that long.

Small point for the effniks... Sydney Olympic have always been my NPL club but as a skip I was always made to feel unwelcome when I went to matches. I loved Jimmy Patikas and Mark Koussas but not being Greek made everyone suspicious of me in those days. The fans probably thought I was ASIO. So I stopped going.

I live on the Central Coast these days and am overjoyed to have a local club to support but what I most want is for football to find its rightful place in Oz, and that means the pyramid and establishing a national game that is utterly unlike all other Australian sports with promotion and relegation from grassroots all the way to the top.

Should also say, I always enjoy Mono's passion.

Not really the right thread (and I note Mono always seems to bring this argument to any thread) but we really need to be looking forward rather than backwards.

Also, it does my head in that football fans in this country don't unite around our code. That's always been the main problem - too many competing visions of what football ought to be or look like.

Of course, it hasn't been helped by some terrible decisions in the past and the creation of a working pyramid MUST be the number one goal. We're going nowhere until that happens.

I see so much promise and have no doubt that, by the end of the C21, football will be the number one game in Oz, but I don't want to wait that long.

Small point for the effniks... Sydney Olympic have always been my NPL club but as a skip I was always made to feel unwelcome when I went to matches. I loved Jimmy Patikas and Mark Koussas but not being Greek made everyone suspicious of me in those days. The fans probably thought I was ASIO. So I stopped going.

I live on the Central Coast these days and am overjoyed to have a local club to support but what I most want is for football to find its rightful place in Oz, and that means the pyramid and establishing a national game that is utterly unlike all other Australian sports with promotion and relegation from grassroots all the way to the top.

I live on the Central Coast these days and am overjoyed to have a local club to support

I dont believe in the "old soccer new football" mentality. The NSL was a failed mainstream league and lacked any soul when it was rebooted. In fact, many of the A League teams were either ex NSL teams or had roots to NSL teams. Its hard to look at the NSL and think this was a pure football league with an all inclusive pyramid. It was just as much a closed off shop as the rest, had long been de-ethnicised, and the lack of a "real" salary cap was because you cant cap what you dont have

You may not but it was certainly the slogan of the day .. Old soccer was surplus to requirements. Totally agree thta NSl was a failed league... not relly relevent to my argument... We are talking about new improved version 20 of the Soccer Australia dream that Lowy was peddling here.

The NSL as a reboot failed, and equally Soccer Australia failed. The code needed a reboot reboot and a new governing structure. To understand the A League model you have to look at the 5 or 10 year plan, not what was rolled out in the first year or two. But as I have seen too many times in my experience in the business world people start off with a project with the intention to change something and wind up with the same result because they lack proper planning and direction. The A League went full circle and winded up as the same crap, but a different name

In 2005 everything was "there". An expansion plan, the addition of new teams from metro cities, a 14 team comp, talk of one day P/R etc... But the game started to falter after season 5. It wasnt prepared for a low so quickly. At that point it was as if the AFL / NRL chiefs in charge were saying "we tried things your way, now lets try the tried and true AFL / NRL model". The game consolidated and gimmicks were introduced including the all stars, concessions, rigged draws etc... The game has been in a downward spiral ever since as it tries to get a commercial balance instead of serve its literal point of a serious competitive league. The game is a laughing stock from top to bottom and our absence from the world cup (I'm calling it) further proves that

I don't follow you. What was there? Sure I remember talk of future expansion franchises to metro cities, and even vaguely 14 or 16 team comp but P/R??? really? P/R with who exactly? Gimmicks come and go but the alignment with closed shop AFL/NRL competition was spoken about at the very beginning... and was inf act sold, by Lowy as the only way to appeal to serious investors.

Football doesnt need "pure clubs" (which in some instances is a paradox, or too ambiguous) or multiple tiers down to the grassroots to succeed. I'm not saying these are bad things, or that we shouldnt strive for them, I'm just saying that "old soccer" is just as much a dead end solution as the AFL model. Trying to work a model around, for example, reviving South Melbourne and Sydney United is no different to trying to build a 50 or 100 year plan around Central Coast Mariners and Adelaide United. The game needs to exist independently of the clubs. Some clubs are organic, some are purpose built, some last decades, some last weeks

Fair enough but football needs CLUBS..... CLUBS are the bricks that will make the mansion.... Its not an old soccer vs new football conversation for me either its a "some clubs are excluded on nothing more than racist ideology". I dont want a football pyramid built around South and Sydney Croatia ONLY I want one built around Mt Druitt Rangers and South Melbourne Hellas, AND Central Coast Mariners..... The Aleague, as it was founded, was NEVER even pretending to want that.... so my point is that NOTHING has changed from their initial remit... they started out as a closed shop franchise plastic boys club and thats all the ever promsied to be..... what has changed since then?

There is no wrong club structure in an organic league. The teams at the top, the teams with the resources, are the right teams, whatever shape they take. Nature decides. The whole point is to see what the league produces instead of working a framework around what we think the answer is. In some regions a club with history might triumph, in others a shameless commercial grab might succeed. Who knows

Agree with this 100000% percent....  I hate the shameless commercial grab club obviously but agree.

When the A League first launched, IMO, it was integral that it distanced itself from the previous attempt, and I would argue 100% of the initial success was a result of this decision. Whether it was a lifetime mandate (like masks on buses) or something that was going to change when the time was right, we never got there before the big red abort button was hit. Everything at this point is speculative at best

It was Integral for two reasons, and two reasons only - Lowy had to convince non-ethnic investors to stump up money to fund his franchises and the existing clubs (in the majority) wouldnt or couldnt keep up AND the new metrics the competition was targeting where in the majority, very new to the sport or felt alienated by any "foreign" references in their day to day lives - except for Aboriginal flags outside council buildings and "welcome to country" ceremonies at the footy oddly enough?!?!?!?!? It had nothing to do with club structure or even the NSL, Newcastle wasnt, even back then, a bastion of financial strength but they were ALWAYS going to be included, as where Adelaide United, Perth Glory etc...