"institutional Anglo-Celtic Australia as a collective"

Yeah!  What have those Anglo-Celts ever done for football?

God help us, because we will never help ourselves.

The answer to that is pretty obvious if you look at the history of football here:-  Probably more than any other group.

i 'somewhat agree' that we probably did need a change but you said in the above quote ethic clubs destroyed themselves....etc

are we not witnessing the AL destroy itself? its closed off model and isolation way from the rest of the football community has made the league dry, boring and unpopular.... NSL lasted 29 years realistically the AL in its original model lasted less then 2 decades before we essentially changed it to a 'independent'  model which is even more closed off then before and from all accounts less popular ... 

i agree the 'ethnic' side of clubs did make them some what 'unfriendly' to neutrals but i think the 'wokeness' of the new 'We are A leagues' has probably turned more people away from the game domestically as the game bends the knee to the small number of outrage merchants who probably have never attended a match in their life. - in addition the fact the AL structure and model is absolutely garbage without P/R the league is un-interesting as it takes away one massive part of football - who is getting relegated and who is coming up....  

i personally hate the idea of a final series too but idiots seem to like it so fair enough.... however we got more media coverage around a gay footballer who is rubbish at football btw then the AL finals.... 

i personally think this in-carnation of the domestic game wont last another decade it is simply too unpopular i think the clubs mostly will survive but i doubt the model will you can see the general dis-interest in the AL by just going back a 10-15 years on this forum how many members where active and now few are now....  

if you think the A league is the omelette i hate to tell you it is just 'another' egg from what i can see 

the AL was at least on the same platform as the EPL for the 1st 12 years of its life which gave it a boost from Premier league fans having a look in on a Saturday/Sunday when they had nothing else to watch. 

i think any AL fan is kidding themselves if they think the League is in a 'good place' or if they think when the NSL was torn down this is what was expected to be the outcome. 

im not mad lover of the NSL but frankly speaking it wasn't as much of a joke to non domestic football fans as the AL is 

Jeez, take-me-serious why don'tcha😏 Guess I should've said 'institutional mainstream Australia' or 'bogan Australia'...the point is, the Anglo-Celts who were involved w/the founding of & earliest decades of the game in this country wouldn't, by any quantifiable definition, have been amongst the Establishment clique/s. For we know what sports the latter-mentioned group did preside over and give patronage to then and in the ages to come..

Which ethnicity do you actually think makes up the absolute vast majority of people who have ever played and currently play the game in this country?

There still seems to be an inward looking view from some, perhaps many born and raised in Victoria, that their local perceptions and experiences extend beyond their borders and the reach of the Melbourne media.  Guess what?  Things are genuinely different everywhere else.  People are as diverse in their views and beliefs as the places they set their heads down to sleep at night.  Football is played across the continent.  Queensland has Leagues and competitions that have been continuous for over 100 years. Time passes and they still roll on.  It's the same everywhere.  Northern NSW has the game entrenched solidly in the fabric of its towns and has done, again, for more than a century.

Australia as a nation, has grown and socially progressed since Federation.  It continues to plough on and each generation finds the vigour to go forward.

When you characterise and generalise 'institutional mainstream Australia' as somehow against football, against immigration, and hint at some deep-held antagonism to "your ethnicity" you just come across as small. 

Interbreeding ?

Says the guy insistent on taking offence even after I clarified what I'd intended to mean.

Try spending some time south/west of the Murray during winter and then you'll get an actual inkling as to why ⚽ fans from those parts are perhaps more militant than their NRL-state counterparts..

I think everyone knows how difficult it has been for football in AFL heartland Victoria.  There are reasons why the registered player numbers in Victoria as a percentage of population are the lowest in Australia at around half the national average and the principal reason is the constant opposition from Australian Rules football authorities, supporters and media.

Havent the Croatian community actually split the businesses now. 
Melbourne Croatia Social club owning the facilities.?
Melbourne Knights Soccer club running the club leasing the facility. 
In effect dividing the operations. 
Therefore if someone takes over the football club doesn't mean they can decide what to do with facility. 
Sydney Croatia and Marconi are the same I believe. 

So tell me why any 'neutral' would support this club?

https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1762912514042295

The problem in a nutshell.

Sure, be proud of your heritage but I'm not going (nor are thousands of others) to support that team. (And my Dad was a Croatian). Anyone that can't see ethnically based clubs are why the A-League started needs their heads read. 

Agreed. But it's not a problem and they do have a place in the football world. 

For the record, Many thousands aren't going to support broadbased clubs in the A-league either. Melb city. WU. MacArthur. 
Or weren't going in the NSL either. Carlton. Brisbane. Newcastle. Parra power. Northern spirit. Canberra cosmos etc. 

In the current landscape, the professional game can successfully sustain about 10-12 pro clubs "mainstream" clubs. Even then the question about sustainability is raised.  
And any discussion about a second division...realistically only includes the ethnic based clubs as the clear majority.
 

Look Danny Townsend, that rhetoric take with you and go back to your Afl roots. Cannot do attitudes are banned from here!
Let me go to the song book AGAIN. This is our Narrative till it happens:
16 teams ALeague, 12-16 teams initially for NSD, with eventual pro/rel.
Boom or bust!!
Mono, come back, I need to be able to argue with someone re!

Lets get some understanding here........
As the NSL was declining so was the Clubs that owned their facilities/pitch/Club house etc revenues........and might I add the times were a changing compared to their pioneering days that has been mentioned not keeping up with the times.
Sure they were their own worst enemies with in infighting/gross mis management as well as declining gate takings, which sport doesn't have these issues but our game has been far more scrutinised and exposed compared to those NRL/AFL protected species might I add incl the Gov support, no matter the countless wrongs those codes have done the collateral damage is limited in the name of the game to survive.
Heck lets not forget ol Frank has had to endure similar as the other ethnic clubs and even a SFC shareholder being a conflict of interest another eg. but having $$$ behind you keeps you over the line.
APIA Club on the watefront was a massive $$$ maker had to be sold off for eg, they endured theft by employees, you name it, insurance claims yaddayadda but above all mis management.
Marconi went into huge debts around $30M due to their highs little did they manage this well when the declines and cracks came to be and couldn't turn the tide around.
Therefore on top of that being casted off to oblivian what do you think any business/Club needs to do ?, sell off some assest/s to survive........
Its a sad chapter despite all the wrongs.

oh come on Muzza, lets move on.....
Isn't it the same as seeing the RBB/Covites and the rest of them whatever been posted on FB etc and wonder why would a neutral jump on the current Pro clubs.
What about the bogan nrl/afl behaviour at grounds over the years, how many neutrals does that pull in ?

I invisage what the NSD will do is pick up the interest of following whichever Club is from their own members more than anything else.
Alot of new dawn families there with their sons/daughters playing for all those Clubs at Jnr levels, very mixed bag nowdays of nationalities not exclusively effnic of old.
Thats where the supporter growth more so will come from compared to neutrals.
Don't forget these are exisiting Clubs not newbie.

Hey don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-ethnic clubs but this is a perfect example of why football in Australia never attained mainstream prominence. In the NSL your biggest crowd pullers towards the end were Northern Spirit and the Glory. Made up 'franchise' clubs with mainstream appeal. Ethnic clubs, although they wouldn't turn a skip away from the gate, are geared towards and/or attract people from those ethnicities to those clubs. None of this is rocket science.

Been over this a thousand times. No average blokes (what is an average Australian I hear mono ask) in large numbers are going to see Syd Utd 58. Lets be totally honest.

Whataboutism is irrelevant for this. 

Having said that bogans and the NRL go hand in hand. Perversely it seems the worse the players and fans behave the bigger the crowds they get. The A-League would kill for NRL crowds and tribalism. Watch any game at Brookvale, Leichardt or the old Kogara.

The AFL, for all it's bogans and racists, have the 4th best attended league in the world. The World. Not bad for a insular, parochial sport that's 'apparently' going to die out.
  

The AFL, for all it's bogans and racists, have the 4th best attended league in the world. The World. Not bad for a insular, parochial sport that's 'apparently' going to die out.

This only attainable due to rigged fixture lists and playing majority of Melbourne games at only two grounds.

Other such sports have their own ground and play each other home and away.

Spin in it any way you want. They have a very successful league. (And this is from a bloke that hates Aussie Rules with a passion.)

There probably are some notable exceptions.

The NFL is the biggest sporting comp in the world, it has 32 teams who play only 17 games during the regular season.  So, not only are all the teams NOT playing each other home and away, each team doesn't even get to play half of the comp, not even once.

Given the MLS currently has 28 teams, soon to be 29, it's safe to say that they're all not playing each other home and away either.

So you say the NFL is bigger than the world cup ?

Also the NFL is played in zones, so not really a proper league. ( As i know them )

Professional football is about money.  If a club wants to play in a professional league they have to pay the bills.  They have to have a product that they can sell.  This is usually made up of the sale of game views, of player contracts and club merchandise.
All are much easier to sell at premium prices when the "product" is attractive to a large base of repeat customers.  That needs to be the prime focus of the business. Play attractive football. 

When a club (or league of clubs) has a customer base that strongly identify with them, through perhaps locality parochialism or religious or national identity (or all of) then it is easier to budget and survive.  If they can't attract eyes to their product then they don't have a business.  If they can't or choose not to continually reinvest and improve their product then it will go stale and again they will not survive.  Only by improvement can they attract an even larger customer base and utilise that to reinvest.  So the cycle goes round.

It doesn't matter to me if they sell to a small dedicated customer base or a large casual one.  There is room for both and all steps between. The league as a whole is judged by the quality of the product it displays as continually tested by the various markets.

The NSL failed.  The A League is staggering but alive.  This is where all the argument and divisiveness lives. It isn't ever really going to stop is it?  Beyond the professional league drama however there is quite a lot of interest in just kicking a ball for fun.

The game of football in Australia is doing just fine. 

An example of a spoilt brat when they miss out on a promotion to a better person and in their defence “but I have been doing this for 10 years”

Your spot also Adelaide United are a great example, created in the final year of the NSL after West Adelaide and Adelaide City pulled out.
Adelaide United crowds were astonishing in that final year of the NSL and their Grand Final 52,000 crowd against WSW is their cities greatest moment as their fans will tell you

Totally correct 

The signings that are being made preseason makes for an exciting season in the upcoming A-League season

Just for the sake of it I went through the list of Socceroo caps since the ethnic clubs took control of football in 1957 through to today and found that there were more Socceroos with anglo names than ethnic names in that period by about 10.  What does it show?  Not much of any significance really especially seeing a name like Davidson can have Japanese heritage but if it shows anything it is that over a long period of time the two parts of our football heritage have worked well together to produce national team players.

The finals series is a win for every stakeholder in the game.
The clubs, players, fans, sponsors, TV Rights holders are all winners.
The A-League GFs have been played in our 5 major cities plus Newcastle and attracted capacity crowds- did you not know this ???

they need to partner with a provider who has a large footprint in the football world. Sky/Optus/Etc

So that on a Saturday night you have that streaming service/channel playing football all night A-League then EPL then La Liga. Make it the lead in to these games and more people will watch. Going head to head with other sports like bbl, etc. is just dumb.

MLS is calling you Johns or the other codes of similar like.
Typical afl/nrl rhetoric and coporate look at it all.

By the way, SWamP's mention that football is doing well and kicking the ball for fun I'd assume is of its large participation at grass roots levels but nothing like putting out your bait eh......
paulc comes to mind re your angles.

you say the problem are ethnic clubs, so why aren't thousands coming out to support Macarthur, Western United, CCM?
Why didn't thousands support FNQ Fury, Gold Coast United, NZ kings?

This is as good as it's going to get for football in Australia, the average aussie bogan doesn't watch A-league nor do they care about football, and you are delusional if you think otherwise.

"By the way, SWamP's mention that football is doing well and kicking the ball for fun I'd assume is of its large participation at grass roots levels but nothing like putting out your bait eh......
paulc comes to mind re your angles."

What?

Grass roots is doing fine.  Yes that was one of the points.  The other was that professional football needs to be attractive to its audience in a different way to how the game is perceived by those who just play for fun.

Playing for the joy of it is still the main connection with the sport in this country by its fans and adherents.

Professionalism is new.  It's success can be judged by its growth and/or its sustainment just like the recreational sector.  The difference lies in that engagement with the professional game can be quantified in terms of money: invested, harvested and reinvested.  People here are the same as they are anywhere.  If the locally made product is not as good as the import then they will buy that.  They really don't give a shit about who works at the factories.

That was my whole point.  I  have no angles.  I am not a sophist.  I put my views as simply and as clearly as I can manage.  It's a fault of mine.

That's genuinely interesting and I feel like the person arguing against you stopped replying after you explained what you meant here.

It's a pity really.