Whatever gets you through the night.

As for the investors who were 'stiffed' - not so. The terms of the original loans were honoured - the pay back issue only kicked in when the government funding started to come through and the creditors got worried that they weren't going to get their cash (and jumped the gun - requesting the funds before the club had them). End result - all settled out of court, amicably.

As for filthy tax-payers supporting the club... I don't see how you can hope to use this against the club. The government is paying us compensation for giving them access to land they had no divine right to. A fair package. Don't know what taxpayers have to feel bad about.

As a Melbourne tax-payer, as excellent as I find AAMI Park, I feel more cheated by the extra money spent on extending it from 20k to 30k. An extra $100m for the sake of 4-5 games per season, all of which could have been held at Etihad.

Also, in reference to taxpayers footing costs - I'll just mention the on-the-record issues of an ongoing tax investigation against the owner of one A-league team, and another A-League team in hefty arrears on their tax, as an example of why one shouldn't throw stones in glass-houses.

Say for example we got rid of the salary cap, the big city clubs would survive no problems, it will allow them to actually grow as big clubs while the regional and community clubs battle for promotion/relegation and lets face it, if a big club does face the drop to a-2 then why wouldn't their supporters stick by their club to make it back up to top flight, they would relish the idea of supposedly smashing the second division teams while gaining more fans and support as they will actually be winning.
Scrap the finals, Bring in an FFA cup, and all teams no matter what position on the table will have something to play for. The right to stay in the top division. This would in theory bring more excitement to the league across a greater scale no matter what.

If you won't support your club during relegation, how can you claim to support the club and be part of that club. Promotion and relegation could single handedly be the catalyst for football to become the number one sport in the country. By a long Way too. Every single club will have something to play for, not just 6 clubs at the end of the season.

Sorry but what is a community club?

The only argument against jumping out of a plane is fear, no matter how you try and dress up the fact you'll almost surely die when you hit the ground.

The only argument against playing Russian roulette is fear, no matter how you try and dress up the fact you'll almost surely blow your brains out.

etc.

Promotion/Relegation poses an existential threat to the A-League. It is not a subject to be trifled with.

Id go as far to say the Wanderers are a big community club

Suburban teams such as south Melbourne, penrith/bluemountains, ballarat, rockhampton, sunshine coast, Woolongong. All have the makings to be great community clubs of they followed similar avenues the Wanderers went through. I'd go as far to say any community club in the state league could be as successful if marketed and approached their local fans / community in the right way. If a team can do it from scratch. So can an existing team.

Imagine a team from an isolated area such as wagga wagga gaining promotion as riverina FC for example. There is no other national league in that area, they have a great isolated population and would thrive on a similar model followed by the Wanderers. It's just a matter of having a team to support, and with no salary cap regulations they can actually rely on local investment to survive comfortably and live on their own means based on their size.

I think we should just get to 14/16 teams and then raise the salary cap to 5mill, By then the FFA could still cover the cap because of increased TV deal $ and we could have foreigners on 800k- mil each. In say 2 TV deals time.

And with the relegated team, how are they going to pay the 2.6 mill wage bill that they still have from the HAL. Will the FFA continue to pay it, if they do then wouldn't that team just spring back up into the HAL the next season.
Edited by Roar #1: 15/2/2013 12:07:57 AM

Edited by Roar #1: 15/2/2013 12:13:30 AM

Ah ok, i think all A-league clubs should hold fan forums.

FWIW I think promotion and relegation can definitely work (sooner rather than later) but it would need two viable divisions and the second tier would need to be capable of running its own show rather than burying failed A league franchises.

Promo/relo odds will need to be quite high (around 30%) to ensure the second tier is not percieved as a massive drop down in quality and the high chances of promotion ensure fans continue their active support and the turnstiles ticking. Also there would be a strong transaction of knowledge and skills with relegated A league teams feeding the NPL and vice versa.

It would also need its own marketing platform and live TV coverage on ABC/SBS to give it that aire of credibilty and played out of decent botique infrastuture that provides a quality gameday experience.

Australia cannot sustain a second division whose sole purpose is for the concept promotion and relegation alone, it needs to be a positive endeavour and seen to underpin the A league and provide a bridge between the national and state and local tiers.

Basically I envision a 20 team competition split into two conferences (not literally) operating with diagonal promotion and relegation, the fully pro A league stocked with wealthy franchise clubs and the semi pro NPL with some franchise operations and self sufficient traditional clubs.

P&R is the heartbeat of all thriving football competitions and given it has worked so successfully throughout the world and made football the number #1 sport why wouldn't it work here. Until it's implemented football will never experience natural organic growth it's capable of

Or it could kill the A league..

I think it's a matter of money over everything. We possibly have enough football people for 2 divs, just not enough money. If there was no such thing as AFL or NRL then the HAL would have a Billion$ TV deal and we would have an amazing 2 or even 3 division system. But sadly AFL and NRL exist.

No other country has 4 other major billion$ established sports competing with Football. Also we have a fairly small population for the amount of pro sports teams we have.

True but we are only competing with cricket in the summer, and they aren't even a 'footy' code so to speak, I would not even classify them as a competitor.

The J league 2 operates quite well with some clubs achieving averages over 10k and my understanding is baseball is a much bigger sport there. Yes it's competitive environment but it's not a deal breaker.

The A league would struggle to maintain 20 franchise clubs but if we modelled it so there was a mix of fully pro and self sustaining semi pro clubs it might work.

But the clubs survive on TV deals. There is already so much invested in the other football codes, I don't know how much more the tv channels are going to spend on the a league. And we still compete with NRL and co, families only have so much disposable income.

Also the fact we share the same stadiums are 2/ 3 codes is concerning. The fact that the Roar had to play in Thailand because of the NRL Allstars.

And again we have quite a small population centered in only a few major spots.

Japan has a population of 130 million people. Tokyo has 35 million people living in the area.

In 30 years time we could have two 14 team divisions. If we have p/r in the next 10 year's we will be restarting a new league in 20 cause the a-league collapsed.

Yes there are plenty of ifs and buts, but opportunities also. NSL lasted 28 years without a decent TV deal, you would be loooking at a similar low cost structure for the NPL.

And where do you think the money is going to come from to fund a post-Tinkler Jets? The bottomless FFA pockets? At the time the fans banded together to try and forge a community model if Tinkler did leave but they might not have had enough to meet A-League criteria. If the A-League kicked them out, what would have happened to the Jets?

But how does a team go from low cost to fully pro in 3 months and then back to low cost 9 months later when they get relegated. Do they take the 2.6 million wage bill with them back to state league?

How about this?

Set up the league so that you have ten teams in each of A1 and A2 BUT....

Sides in A1 play other A1 sides three times, and play A2 sides once. 36 games in total.

A2 sides split into regions say Pth/Adel/Vic/Tas and NSW/Qld. They play their regional teams twice, other region once and A1 sides once. Or perhaps A2 only plays 27 games (e.g. doesn't play other region)

Benefits:
Keeps the costs down for A2 sides but enables them to compete against A1 sides - preferably at home (perhaps creating additional income),
Means that a side getting relegated does not disappear off the radar completely as it can continue rivalries to some extent.

Should also try to play some double headers with A2 games followed by A1 games.

Promotion and relegation play-offs only apply if there are teams from same city in bottom 3 of A1 and top 3 of A2. So if you finish 3rd in A2 and a team from your city is in the bottom 3 from A1 then it's playoff time!

But A2 teams would also have to meet some minimum commercial criteria to be eligible for promotion.

No there is no requirement that any club go fully pro or fulfil the salary cap. Some of the old NSL teams were fully pro while others were semi

But then, neither does the OP's suggestion of promoting the best team from the league of the lowest placed team in the A2-League, rather than the best team in the entire second tier.

Personally (and might be obvious to everyone else), I can't fathom P/R working in a drop between a single league, and 8 or 9 different divisions with concrete boundaries. The Conference National, the point at which the English league stops being One-league-per-tier, has "North" and "South" divisions, which allows poetic licence in placing relegated teams into the divisions.

Then, when you get to the 8th/9th tier, it goes from "Northern"/"Southern"/"Isthmian" to concrete locations for the leagues (e.g. "Eastern Counties League", "Wessex League"). And on top of that, a club in, for example, the Southern League may have to start playing in the Northern or Isthmian, to keep the numbers in the lower tiers from becoming too far out of kilter. (And of course, the A-League wouldn't have that luxury as the single league of the tier).

TL;DR: Divide it gradually, and make the League Zones fluid.

So:

A-League
West League|East League (possibly with 2 tiers each)
West Coast League|Central League|North-East League|South-East League (also possibly multi-tiered)

But then you possibly have the problem of travel; in theory, the 3rd-to-Easternmost club in the country could end up in the West Coast League! And after this set-up, do you then need to divide it again (a North by North-west League)?

I'm beginning to see why the FFA doesn't even contemplate setting up P/R; this truly is a fool's errand. ](*,)

Relegation release clauses should really be an FFA standard. Having said that, the possibility is there for some conferences to go professional. If Victory went down I can't imagine that they wouldn't be professional.

Strange that we're not talking about Victory going down, shows how big a club they are now.

This. The possibility is just so far from reality, the obsessive focus on it by some posters is comical, it's like 442 is in a time warp.

There seems to be a misconception that the APL is a second division. Everything so far that has come out of the FFA suggests it is the opposite, a continuation of the existing competitions, but a way to control state clubs and start getting them to focus on developing players for the a-league, like they should have already been doing. lol

From what has been said the NPL (now that it's the NPL) is being primed as a second tier to all for the future possibilities of the FFA Cup and promotion. Personally I feel that in order for promoted and relegation to work, we need a solid buffer between the A-league and the State leagues, and I hope that this is done correctly, but whatever happens that's a long way off as things stand.

You're completely right about youth though, reading through the first mentions of it under the National Premier League title basically read like their main interest was youth development, which is very important.

This. We have a core support that props up our attendance figures each week. Could you imagine what relegation would do to the Mariners. In years to come after relegation, we would just float off into history never to be seen again and be a constant sporting question at trivia nights around the country.
More clubs down the track in the A-League if viable would be better and definately an FA Cup style comp.

Promotion/relegation wouldn't work because if Brisbane Roar got relegated and South Melbourne got promoted paulc would have an aneurism.

-PB

Here's a more ridiculous thought, how about if the players and coaches were relegated and promoted accordingly. So if Sydney FC loses and Green Fern Gully win the right to promotion Sydney inherit the Green Fern Gully team and coaching staff and all the Sydney guys must play for Green Fern Gully.

Imaging the final games of the season in the A-League watching relegation threatened teams battle it out, it would be on. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Edited by StiflersMom: 15/2/2013 08:15:56 AM

There would also be terrible effects on the sport in Queensland, one of the few places that has been a success both on the pitch and in producing good young players since the start of the A-league era.

Replacing Brisbane with Perth or Adelaide would yield similar effects.

A crowded Melbourne market would probably put both the Heart and South Melbourne on their knees with the cost of running an A-league club and limited support as it gets stretched over 3 clubs, one of which (Melbourne Victory) would almost certainly still hold a dominant share.

We're still a long way off being in a position where promotion and relegation could actually work in a way as to not destroy the sport in this country again.

This partly ties into what i said in the FFA Cup thread but as the state league clubs appeal to so few and are too suburbanised or mono-ethnicsised, they should be brought in under existing a-league club families or as part of a potential new geographical area for places like melbourne and sydney and combined with the regional teams such as Townville, allow these teams to play in the FFA cup. This would allow the cup to be developing new a-league options, rather than cannibalise existing a-league teams which is precisely what promotion and relegation would also achieve.