Im going to go ahead and quote myself:

" The mls is shit. America are shit at football. This is our future...but even a little more shitty... to repeat myself, the mls is an experiment, and we are an experiment based off that experiment, but with 300million less people and dollars and new cities to break with new franchises. We will forever be a shitter version of mls. 

We need p/r. Its tthe only way we will truly move forward as a football country. We can create a fiercely competitive 2 tiered system here, that will win the hearts and minds of the currently-non-engaged-football-community in aus, AND help us to start developng great players at the rate we used to and then some.

At this rate neither usa or aus are ever winning a world cup, put it that way.

Bureaucracy greed and ignorance holding the game back in aus."


Youre another blinkered naysayer who wants us to to pander to midget sports and accept a bum deal. 

Anyway monfries youre a nix fan. Awful rich of you to tell us how to run our own game. 

I'm not a nix fan, not sure where you got that from? I don't think being a realist is the same as being a naysayer. Once all of the teams we have are well financed and well supported I'd love to see pro/rel, but save that talk for another 20 years. 

ALtho i agree in oart with what you're saying. To say that we should wait until ALL clubs are well financed and well supported is highly unlikely. In pretty much all leagues around the world you have a number of clubs that at any one point are struggling financially. Heck even the afl and nrl have a number of clubs in massive debt despite the tv deals they get in that sport. We have to live with the fact that there will always be some clubs that struggle financially. Waiting another 10-20 years isn't going to change that, even if the broadcast deal triples. All costs rise as a result as well. 

Pro/Rel is necessary, however not until the league hits 16 teams. Whether we get to 14 then introduce promotion the following 2 years is a possibility, but a full fledged pro/rel system shouldn't happen until the league has expanded and clubs in the supposed 2nd division have got their shit sorted in order to be considered fully professional.

AS Monaco, surely one of the best financed clubs in the world, superstars all over the park, ran 3rd last season, only 7800 rocking up to their games on average. Central Coast Mariners, run on the smell of an oily rag playing dog shit football, first wooden spoon in the clubs history, 8100 average gate. Adelaide this season, same deal but pretty sure their average gate would be over 10000. That's a pretty 'realistic' assessment as far as I'm concerned and yet at what point do we say "Okay well we've hit arbitrary financial and crowd targets, let's expand + pro/rel"? Will it take filling every stadium in Australia? Not even France/Germany/Italy do that. Japan was experiencing it's lowest average crowds when they created a second division. Obviously every club being in the black financially would be nice, and hopefully the new tv deal will help in that regard, but I think that's what most of the people who are pro pro/rel are saying, it's the financial model that is preventing these clubs from getting into the black regardless of how much tv money gets allocated to each club. 

EDIT: FTR while I advocate pro/rel, I think expanding to 14 rather than 12 teams would be a good compromise as it would alleviate the repetitive fixture issue that SuccessFactor Timmy constantly alludes to. 

Also, Austrian Bundesliga and Swiss leagues both have 10 team comps with pro/rel and seem to go alright. 

The teams cant all be well financed within this model. You dont understand that its the model iteslf, of paying for the entire comp from an ivory tower and one central pool, is not sustainable at tge level that it would need it to be. (Read my mls response to you). You dont understand what youre talking about. We need a complete model overhaul...and incidentally one that allows for pro rel.

And yes you are a nix fan dont lie. You let it slip in your first response to me a while ago.

I guess you decide who I support then. I don't remember what I said, but I've always been a fan of having NZ in the league. I live in Adelaide and support United FYI.

Forget about the tv deal as an excuse. Ffa, like portuguese fa, can get the newscastle jets owner to invest millions into our second tier.

The excuses autopilot people are on is ridiculous and plain laughable. 

Edit. Why do you mention monacos crowds as one of the ills of P/R anyway? Thats weird... is the french league or monaco in danger of folding or something is it?  Irrelevant non point.


Edit sorry reedy... i didnt read your post properly... i shouldve reponded differently....

You've totally misread my post, I'm trying to agree with you. 

He's wind-effected

sorry reedy... i didnt read your post properly... i shouldve reponded differently.... 

View is right, the winds gotten to my head, apologies. Its not easy playing bad cop lol.

Haha all good. 

Not the best example to use Monaco imo. It has a population of 38k. So in reality 7,800 through the gates is actually extraordinary when you look at it as a percentage per capita.

Expansion. That is the goal. pro/rel is a separate 'red herring'. We don't need pro/rel to expand, but we do need to expand. We need more teams playing in the top tier to give more players a chance of playing at that level. We need more teams in the top tier to engage with more people across the country and potentially gain new fans. We need more teams so we have more 'content' for broadcast/media partners to sell our product here and overseas. Forget about parochialism for a minute or your old NSL team, and think of the good of the game here in Australia. This is what the game needs, which to me is more important than what the clubs need. I'm a Victory fan, but first and foremost, I want to see the sport of Football thrive in this country with a strong domestic league thats well attended and well publicised and thats of a high standard, whilst giving young Aussies a pathway. To have that we need more teams. The best way to get more teams is to make the league an attractive investment option for the people/organisations that have the cash to run a team. Football is a business now, not just a sport. Give them a league where all teams are professional, financially stable, potentially profitable and in it for the longer term. Thats similar to the 'franchise model' that major american sports have. You may not like it, but it works.
Whats the end result if we have a 'mini MLS' with say 14-20 teams? We have a successful competition with plenty of opportunity for young aussies to play, lots of teams around the nation, lots of supporters, a place in the mainstream, and potentially profits for savvy club owners.

The problem with expansion is that its essentially going to be fixed, lowy is gonna give his buddies in south Sydney a team and is probably organising a consortium in Geelong right now, yet the areas/clubs that really want a team will be left out, so expansion is going to be shit.

Mark the problem is FFA sells the idea of 10 green bottles. They want everyone to be as big a MV. The reality is we have WP CCM etc in the league.

A city like Melbourne imo could have 5 teams. Just as long as we don't kid ourselves and expect them to be MV or even MC.

Yeahhh I get your point, but I'm using them to highlight the fact that putting arbitrary goals on attendance figures isn't always the best thing. Another example, Tokyo has a population of 13 million but between the 5 professional teams in Tokyo they can only get just over 100 000 people through the gate on average per week. 7800 avg / home game could be good or bad for Monaco, 37000  avg / home game might be good or bad for Urawa Red Diamonds, it depends on how the moneys being used. 

In reality it's a micronation which is a tax haven and in the top 10 richest per capita states on the entire planet. 

Geelong not so much.

I get your drift. personally i'd like to see South melbourne in the A-League, and maybe Sydney united too. I agree that we don't need every club to be big, but we do need every club to be financially viable. That's why I think its imperative for minimum standards to be set, for teams that come in to pay a fee to join and thus have 'skin in the game' which pressures them to be financially viable. I've run businesses before, and I can see what FFA and the current club owners want to achieve long term. They want their brand to increase in value and give them profits. That seems reasonable.

Of course it needs to be set. Then clubs given time to achieve it. It wouldn't be fair to expect all clubs to have the standard the day they are released (if ever).

SU, Marconi, SM & MK all own/have good rent deals. Pretty much meaning all would probably be sustainable.

Like you said, clubs should pay a fee. Why rely on FOXTEL? If FFA will give each club eg $2.5 million why didn't/doesn't FFA say eg a new club has to pay $10 m, to pay for themselves the first 4 years?
Or at least a healthy contribution to their own cap.
(Not all license would be worth the same however. It would depend on location and amount of teams in that area).

P&R will never happen
There never will be a 2nd division
South Melb Hellas will never ever be added to the A-League

Why would you add South Melb Hellas whose supporter base is a few hundred , whom are all Greek and over 60 years of age.
Their ground is within 2 km of AAMI Park
They have no hope in hell of attracting new supporters

Yeah that's why people only go to fancy restaurants and no one goes to McDonald's

South Melbourne Football Club (the actual name, they no longer use Hellas) are a prime candidate in my eyes. They have a good stadium deal, a ready made supporter base, the derby factor and whilst you may denigrate their cultural heritage, from everything I see, they are an inclusive Australian club, who just happen to have a good deal of Australian members who have a Greek background/heritage. If they entered the A-League I'm sure they'd draw new supporters from all backgrounds. I'm sure the he A-League entity would be marketed as a team open to all and that would work to bring in supporters of all backgrounds (just look at the Roar for an example of a club with an originally Dutch heritage becoming a broad based entity).

Melb Hellas will never ever get into the A-League
Teams need to represent graphical location
They have suffered the aging migrant factor (as have all the old NSL teams)
They relied on a specific European supporter base which has died out and the next generation has become Australised
It simply isn't cool to follow a ethic club, there is massive potential for the sport and the FFA have got it spot on

You just do not get it.South Melbourne aren't just supported by Greeks and nowadays they have a broad fanbase. They have a great stadium for A-League football and IIRC they have a stadium deal where they can get a profit with only 1500 spectators. In the NPL they get a few thousand fans to games as well. South Melbourne will bring former NSL fans to games as well as new fans who want to support a club with history as well as their current fanbase. These factors would make South Melbourne a great addition to the league.

He doesn't want to get it.

Front line

Making a point: Melbourne Victory's Marcos Flores celebrates a goal against Central Coast Mariners in an A-League fixture in Launceston in 2013.
Making a point: Melbourne Victory's Marcos Flores celebrates a goal against Central Coast Mariners in an A-League fixture in Launceston in 2013.

The consortium behind Tasmania’s push for an A-League team is going on the attack.
Melbourne businessman Robert Belteky will front a press conference in Hobart on Thursday to answer questions about the bid.
It is understood he will also meet with representatives of the Tasmanian Government to discuss various aspects of the proposal including venues.

The consortium is believed to have shifted its focus away from North Hobart Oval with Bellerive Oval likely to be the team’s primary base with the intention of also playing some games at UTas Stadium in Launceston.

Tasmania’s former pro player David Clarkson said the consortium believes it can present a compelling case to Football Federation Australia, which has stated a desire to increase the national league from 10 teams.
“We are getting our ducks in a row to be ready when the FFA criteria comes up,” Clarkson said.
“We expect that to include a stadium, other infrastructure, finance and how the bid helps grow the competition.

“We feel we have a really solid foundation and if we can continue to add more layers to that we will be in a very strong position.”

The team believes other interested parties like South Melbourne, Wollongong, Ipswich, Geelong and the Sutherland Shire are lacking in either finance or facilities.
“A number of consortiums are waiting to find out what will be needed but unless there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, there’s not a lot there,” Clarkson said.
While Belteky is the face of the bid, the financial clout comes from his fellow former Melbourne Victory shareholder Harry Stamoulis, but the wealthy property investor cannot be present at Thursday’s press conference.

The current make up of the league includes two teams each from Melbourne and Sydney and two more from regional NSW plus Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide as well as Wellington in New Zealand.

Teams play 27 fixtures before the finals series.

While the consortium is keen to investigate playing matches in Launceston to enhance the team’s statewide appeal, it has yet to meet with UTas Stadium managers.

Melbourne Victory played a series of annual fixtures at the city’s AFL venue from 2006, attracting crowds of up to 8061 for pre-season friendlies, mostly against Adelaide United.

Victory eventually hosted a couple of A-League roster games in Launceston, against Gold Coast United (5268) and Central Coast Mariners (6238) in 2012 and ’13 respectively.

http://www.examiner.com.au/story/4409082/front-line/?cs=96

When is this so called FFA expansion criteria set to come out? Was it Feb 2017?

Clarkson can't be serious adding south to the list of "no facilities", a stadium, a social club, a juniors and women's pavilion and a stack of other grounds we use around middle park for our juniors.

The biggest joke of all is that they are going to commit to Bellerive oval, months of games played on a cricket pitch, wonderful stuff.