From my experiences I was a year 10 year old being taken to games in the NSW 1st Division in the early 1970s
i loved the different European communities teams, but deep down I could see the majority of the spectators were elderly Europeans.
So where were their children like me ? Well sadly following Rugby League..
I estimate that from all the kids that I knew roughly my age ( from school, neighbourhood, my soccer teams, relatives etc) that’s 200 kids only 6 kids followed and attended games..
The outcomes were that from the 1970s the attendances were poor for these clubs and by the early 2000s just 5 teams survived.
of these 4 of the 5 teams attendances were around 1,000…

Wearing Mono's hat. Racism.

In many ways you are right. The family migrates to Sydney in the mid sixties. I became a  fan of and played Rugby League, daylight second. It had alot of appeal. Cricket did also, it was the summer sport. 
I always had an idea of most sides in the NSL as a young person, especially in Sydney with Sydney Olympic, Sydney Croatia, Marconi, Apia, Northern Spirit, Newcastle KB, Rosebuds, Sydney City (where Kosmina played), and ofcourse others. 
The feeling for Soccer started to amplify for me around my mid thirties, due to the fact Socceroos started to get competitive and achieving internationally, from just  missing out on World Cups to Finally making them ie. 2006. That's when I massively started to learn about more names of players and so on.
Previously I only knew most of the Sydney Olympic names. As the NSL, being part time and political, I never looked at NSL as being a serious competition. It was the competition that wasn't taken seriously enough. I can still see Johnny Warren trying to do his best in the 'Soccer segment', on Channel Seven's Sportsworld with main host RL man Rex Mossop. Warren's book 'Shielas, Wogs and Pooftas' was the way 'Soccer' people were thought of, still do by most AFL types.

I was aware of names like Petkovic, Peterson, Postacoglou, Trimboli, Taliadores and some others, but mainly the likes of Patikas, Kalantzis, Raskopoulos, Kotholos, Phillips, Gray and Meyer (yes there were Aussies).
As soccer/football had already started gaining traction for me, I also grew fond of and learnt more about players from the Greek national team the 'Ethniki' from 2004 onwards when afew of us went to Brighton at 2am to watch Greece win the Euro on massive screens. I then got to gain more knowledge of players, only knew of a couple before 04.

It is crucial that Socceroos and Matildas keep winning their way into major competitions and young people will increase in numbers as Soccer /Football people from earlier stages of their lives, and play Soccer as well.
Infighting and self interest within Australian football administrations and federations have to be tossed out along with the dinosaurs. Unbundling football, next introducing more teams, a NSD, Transfer Fees (irrespective of what Townsend spruiks, a cannot do kind of guy), will continue to push football to greater heights and if some Enthic teams never reach the heights again, so be it. There are some that will continue to get stronger as well and may even get back into the A League, such as Melbourne Knights, South Melbourne, Sydney Utd, Marconi, Apia, maybe my side Sydney Olympic, Prestons and others.

Largely this. The general xenophobia aimed towards the 'foreigners' and their sport.
Coupled with a governing body who looked down on them in order to appeal to the 'casual' crowd.

Prob from the late-'80s/early-'90s onward when ASF/Soccer Australia failed to read the room w/regards to more recent waves of immigration from o/s...these were readymade demographics - as now - for wooing to the cause of Oz football, but they were largely neglected. That would've had to do w/the Eurocentric hubris of the older-gen blokes running the show ie. "what would Asians or Africans really know about football anyway?"
Just my 2c.

Largely Assimilation. 

Soccer admin has had a role to play in that, not maturing into an established professional entity. FA/APL can try to right the wrongs of the past and try to capture youth interest in the future but it starts now. Get systems in place to keep growing and be seen as a code to be respected in this country.

There haven't been high numbers of immigrants coming from Southern Europe for 50 years now, so we have to expect that the aging of the the immigrant population from that era will have occurred.
But, that's actually not the reason for the decline of the bigger and stronger clubs like Hellas and the Croatian clubs.
They were all squashed by "new football" and basically kept out of the new A-League.
Let's be very clear - it was a deliberate policy on the part of the then new regime - backed by the Commonwealth Government.

100%. Lowy is and was a very established player in the political landscape at the inception of the AL. He didn't stumble on the role. 

I was joking.

Anglocentrism.

Which is kinda understandable given this nation's beginnings but obviously the metaculture has shifted significantly the past couple decades.

Lots of factors go into this.

1950's and 1960's saw many single males arrive and football was an escape from the drudgery of work and a social event.
During this period with shops and pubs closing early everything pretty much closed on a Sunday, not many alternatives to entertainment.
Also the calibre of player coming to Australia was high, in many instances players earned more here as a part timer than as a full timer in Europe.
Most teams had a high numbers of foreigners in their starting XI.

1970's saw less top quality players coming over, along with new migrants establishing families with everything that goes along with that.

Moving into the 1980's and beyond, the social changes along with 2nd and 3rd generation migrant children not following or consuming the game the same way as their parents.
Yes assimilation, or wanting to "belong" to the dominant culture.
And the dominant cultures hostility towards football, seen as foreign and "Un-Australian", reflected in the media.

Overall a simple viewpoint that I'm sure some have written University thesis on the topic.

The "Assimilation" aspect still affects us in different ways even today, the desire to implement structures that reflect the dominant culture, in a vain hope that we "mainstream" hence commercialize the game, The A-League, NPL and Federation Development pathways all reflect the influence of the dominant sporting culture on our game. Noting that the dominant sports are local in reach and not global.
By adopting local principles you hinder the game on a global competitive level.

Never change Muz :)

Thats true but not actually that new of a development mate... Was happening in the 70s and 80s as much if not more so than today.
There are a whole generation of Southern European men (most who came over in the 50s and 60s) who never "participated" in Soccer in this country for this very reason. 
My father in law tells of going to Princess Park in the late 50s (if you rocked up after 1/4 time entry was free) in order to shout the foreman a case of beer so you could get overtime the following week... 100s of poor village wogs found that by becoming a "true blue Aussie footy supporter" they could get further ahead in life in this country.
Assimilation = Ethnic Cleansing = ALeague :)

Quite a bit of truth in this too. Sadly why we dont have strong clubs from these communities at NPL level to this day.

Sorry Johns, not sure about NSW but in Victoria alot more than 5 teams survived.... In fact currently of the 14 teams in NPLVIC all 14 are "effnik sokkah" clubs.... Yes even Eastern Lions is an English Club.... Going down the rabbit hole, baring the odd few outliers, I would say that 85%+ of clubs currently in VIC NPL and State Leagues are, or were at least at one point "Effnik"
I realise it must be daunting for many who have jumped on board the franchise express but it may help if you thought about these clubs as just "football clubs" and not "effnik clubs" for a little while. We are moving into a brave new era of inclusiveness soon (God willing) and while some of these clubs have pivoted from their original communities, many will not.... nor should they be forced to anymore. 
You mention that only 6 out of a 200 kids attended games in the "bad old effnik days" but have counted how many attend now in the racially clean Aleague?

In the final seasons of the NSL only 5 ethnic teams survived- 3 from Sydney and 2 from Melbourne.
The whole point of the discussion is if all of the next generation of the original supporters followed football we would be matching it with Rugby League and AFL

I get your point but dont agree with the "survived" bit.... Pretty much ALL of the effnik teams from the NSL days (even clubs like Wollongong Macedonia and Green Gully who only lasted 1-2 season in NSL) still exist... Yes their crowds are down because they are now locked out of the top flight forever, but they still exist. They are hurting, their volunteers have slowly diminished, some of them have totally changed their "identity" but they are still there... Its been 18 years but there are still plenty of "dormant" fans around to help you fulfil your dream of increasing attendance. They just dont support the franchises, dont go to their own clubs NPL games and have spent their days either watching these other codes or being Eurosnobs on the telly.... There are small glimmers of hope still left, maybe not for many more years, but some of the old fan base is still there.
Watch Adelaide Juve vs Adelaide United pull a crowd 4-5 times more than WU vs Victory last week in the cup....... Sadly most of the black and white scarves and flags will get put back in the back of the closet if Juve loses and many wont be brought again during the NPL season......  BUT...... give these guys a sniff at being able to play Adelaide United twice a year AND some of their old foes like West Adelaide, Perth Glory, South Melbourne for a meaningful competition and maybe, just maybe, some of these black and white flags may fly again....... To answer your original question, two things caused the decline of ethnic teams.... Frank Lowy and  ............ ..... well..... Frank Lowy.

I remember clearly. Mostly the ethnic teams wanted to remain ethnic teams, with ethic names, ethnic colours, ethnic fan culture, ethnic boards, ethnic histories intact, with bolt on mainstream public paying customers to bolster their financial positions and validate their right to play at the top level. They weren’t prepared to change, and the mainstream public wasn’t prepared to support clubs that they felt didn’t represent them, so naturally those clubs faded from prominence.  I seem to remember some guy on here called Ben, he was a South supporter and the clubs favourite pet Anglo, who argued that the clubs didnt need to change but the public was racist, blah blah. But for every Ben who is prepared to chant Hellas and wave Greece flags etc there are 1000 who arent. Its as simple as that.

Damn straight.... I agree with you.... You shouldn't have to support a club just because there are no other options...... that whole "you've gotta have a team"  garbage was aimed at people who already had one, locked out of the Aleague forever by a bigot.

I can recall visting relatives in Melbourne as a kid, maybe early 80s?
Their idea of a Saturday out was going to watch Carlton, so they took me to a game, standing room only, pretty jammed in actually.
We were completely surrounded by wogs, so at half time and other breaks, everyone was talking soccer, they all seemed to follow the soccer as much as the VFL.
I actually quite enjoyed that part of it!

Hey Mono, dont be jealous that broad based teams like WU have such fantastic support......

I tried really hard to connect with them and the Aleague but when I went to a few of their matches everyone speaks English and nobody spoke to Greek to me so I felt excluded. I only discovered football in 2019 as I come from a multi generational Super Rugby 7s and Netball family ... for years and years us effniks would tease the poor anglo kids that their "skip-ball" was for ballerinas and girls but ever since WU and their new stadium came onto the scene to revolutionise Australian Soccer I tried to get involved.... I just cant identify with a corporate logo that is designed to resemble bulk-built estate houses and nature strips. I hope the new Papadopoulos Report in Australian Soccer recognises the need for more foreign language clubs (NZ Phoenix are an awesome start) so that myself and the non-assimilated mainstream can get on board with this new sport we keep on hearing about.

What you say is correct.I can only speak for what went on in Sydney and in Melbourne the overweening presence of Australian Rules may have presented different problems as other posters have noted.The second and third generations often "assimilated" by following the dominant sports( Rugby League and Aussie Rules  in winter and cricket in summer).

I went to a Catholic boys school and apart from a few Italian, Croatian and some Pommy kids 90% of my classmates followed Rugby League and to an extent Rugby Union.The only code that school played was Union and I played the game which limited my time to play junior football( on many Saturdays time permitting  I played a Union game and a football game).That school which I left over 50 years ago now plays football and does well in school comps.

The massive post WW2 European migration has long dried up and most of the ethnic clubs have suffered as a result with lower attendances and lack of interest.The newer Asian migrants( Chinese and Indian) are not from football cultures so have not formed "ethnic" football clubs.Middle Eastern and African migrants do have some clubs representing their cultures but are generally lower tier or park league set ups not with standing the fact that many ME and African players are in the A-league and NPL sides.

The Australian media generally is still very Anglocentric as regards to football coverage and is more likely to run a story about  the EPL rather than the Aleague if it is doing a football story( except when it bandwagons for the World Cup)Even  SBS is more into cycling and basketball than football these days.

There's multiple reasons not least old immigrants blokes are dying out, can't go, have lost interest and their kids have other interests and /or have 'assimilated' into the 'local' sports and dominant culture.

Expats play cricket in Singapore and have done for over a hundred years but it's never taken over the country there. Why would football be any different here? 

Football had decades to become big before Lowey got involved. Blaming him is an easy out. There'd be a myriad of reasons.

Sir Frank Lowy tried his best to fix the game here.
He helped create the NSL  in 1977….
The Aust Government then asked him to save the game in the early 2000s and he DID…

There is a big surprise for anyone wishing to look at our immigration numbers from the past 150 years.

It's tempting to think that early on it was all immigration from the UK, and then post-war it was all from continental Europe (which in turn has changed again over the last 30 to 40 years).

In fact, even during that post-war period, for a good 30 years after the end of WW2, there is one source of immigrants that dwarfs all others.

The UK was the biggest source if immigrants prior to WW2, unsurprisingly, but remained overwhelmingly the biggest source of immigrants for the next 30 years after WW2.  Overwhelmingly.  As of 1954, the number of Australian residents born in the UK added up to more than every other immigrant group combined.

And it's fair to say that the bulk of those immigrants from the UK would also have been from a football background.

AS of 2016, Australian citizens born in the UK still remain the highest source of immigration, by a fair way, and Italy was no. 7, but dropping rapidly.

Apart from New Zealand and South Africa, the rest are all Asian:  China, India, Phillipines, Vietnam, Malaysia,  and Sri Lanka.  Their numbers would dwarf the post-war immigration numbers from continental Europe, but they will clearly have far, far less impact on our football.

In short, the days of immigration impacting on our football, for better or worse, are well and truly over.

Clubs come and go, regardless of arbritary labelling

Football reflects the society it operates in better than anything else.   That's it's strength and it's attraction worldwide.

From Chaos to rigid structure all you're seeing is the product of  such.

Now we're trying to be the United States.  Hopefully we'll grow out of it before too much time is wasted

Didn' t   the   APL   just   sell    30%   of   the   league  to   some   Americans ?   

You can revise history and bestow lordships and knighthoods on whatever scum you like.... the truth is the truth....l