Yep, also hate them.

I know there has been discussions on promotion to the A-league but have they discussed how relegation into the state NPL's will work? I'm definitely in favour of a second division but when it is ready to introduce promotion and relegation to and from the A-league, I'd like to see promotion and relegation be applied to and from the state NPL's. 

The board member are supposed to be meeting today (15th) I think to discuss models etc for a second division.

I think we need a system where the proportion of teams from each state federation (across the combined pool of A1+A2 leagues) is maintained, to ensure ongoing interest from supporters across the country and thus protection for TV ratings.

For example, of the 32 teams (16 A1 and 16 A2):
Group 1) 8 from NSW PL (SFC, WSW, CCM + 5 more)
Group 2) 8 from Vic PL (MV, MC + 6 more)
Group 3) 4 from Qld PL (BR + 3 more)
Group 4) 4 from SA PL (AU + 3 more)
Group 5) 4 from WA PL (PG + 3 more)
Group 6) 4 representative teams, 1 each from developing PLs (Nth Qld {I would split it from QL PL}, NNSW (NJ), ACT, Tas, NT = 5 developing PLs, so one team has to wait for relegation of an existing group 6 team).

Relegation from A2 to state leagues:
- Relegation zone = bottom 4 (13 to 16), but only allow 1 relegation per "group". (e.g., 4 WA sides finish 13 to 16, only 16th place is relegated). Thus only the number 1 performing team from each state league can be promoted per year.
- If the lowest placed group 6 team is in the relegation zone, it is replaced by the 5th "in waiting" representative team.

Relation/promotion between A1 and A2:
- Top 2 A2 teams promoted and bottom 2 A1 teams relegated, irrespective of group.

Since some state leagues may have to wait a number of years for promotion opportunity, the number 1 state team could be decided by performance over a number of years so that performance every year is important.

Newcastle Jets would become the representative team for NNSW PL, so they could play a few of their home games in northern NSW. If Wellington's future is secure in the A league, NZ could relpace NT in group 6.

It would be great to start each season with a televised A1+A2 cup, replicating the exact format of the world cup (8 groups of 4 teams). This would be great exposure for A2 teams.

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With the above system as the final goal, you could start a standalone A2 league now: with 4 teams each from groups 1 and 2, and 2 teams each from groups 3 to 6. 

Can we just move to a straight pyramid system based on merit as soon as possible and cut out this state quota BS

Promote to 16 (2 each year). When an aleague team gets relegated it would be up to the club to decide if they want to move from their current location. Only Sydney FC has a problem to find a decent sized venue upon being relegated. If they need to relocate each club around the country has a venue to fall back on. 

@ TheSelectFew

It doesn't work like that. Clubs sign 5 or 10 year contracts with stadiums so if they get relegated they'll just need to suck it up. The long term answer is their own stadiums of course.

Not having a go at your approach specifically (as it has some nuance), but I personally find any sort of P&R that is conditional on a quota of clubs from different regions to defeat the purpose of P&R and ends up being extremely unfair. 

When you have some sort of quota like this, your hopes of being promoted rest on a team from your exact region being relegated - you could for instance dominate your division for years and never get promoted; whilst teams that are lower than you on the table could get promoted because someone in their region happened to get relegated that year. Or you could have a top 2 from the one region but the team 2nd not be allowed to get promoted because you want to limit who goes up. And it would be even more farcical when you imagine that a big club from a higher division could have a bad year, get relegated, and then for 4 or 5 years top the lower division but still not be allowed to return to the top flight because the teams coming down were from different regions. 

I know your suggestion doesn't necessarily result in all the possible examples I gave above, but I used them to show the inherent unfairness of quota style systems, and to show that it defeats the purpose of P&R as the better teams aren't necessarily rewarded (or conversely, the worse teams aren't punished). I'd rather have no P&R than something like this.

I think relegation down to NPL has to be in there from Season One; you wont get all the clubs in to a 10-12 club start up competition anyway so we will need competition to get the ebst run clubs up there rather than being artificially there because of their location.I happy to start with 2 from QLD, 3 from NSW, 3 from VIC, 1 from ACT, 1 from SA and then maybe 2 more as wildcards to maybe teh NPL National champion this year/next year. But after that it needs to be merit based which probably means SA, ACT and Qld will struggle to stay there and promoted teams will come from VIC/NSW's but so what?

I sent 2 emails, here are the structural parts-



I am not a fan of conferences. Sydney and Melbourne teams need to be playing against each other for a 2nd division to have the best prospect. I have no idea of costs and Rabieh would be aware of those realities.

If I assume 24 wished to enter a 2nd division I would propose to allow them all in. Each team to play each other once, over a 2-year period. Home then away or vice versa. In the 3rd year this could be divided into 2 divisions (2nd and 3rd). It also caters for the possibility for more clubs to enter the 3rd division in the 3rd year with league numbers being adjusted. This seems fair to me or as fair as it can be now. It does reward teams that have current strong squads however.

The other option is to rank teams using an aggregated points system over the span of the NPL. An example of this puts Fury tied 9th in Queensland (2013-2016). Another problem is ranking each state’s NPL. Which state should get more spots? Should it mirror FFA Cup allocation? Etc.

I feel with Sydney and Melbourne being in the same group it will increase sponsorship and revenue streams for clubs and the division/s


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I just wanted to expand on my thinking and give more a detailed explanation as to why I have come to these conclusions, after having discussions with many people about structure. During examples, I will use 24 as the number of teams wishing to participate.

As previously stated an “all-in” league that is played over 2 years, where each team plays once per year has many advantages to get a league started.

The league can be as big as you like (beyond 24)

can even end up with an odd number of entrants. Geographical location is not important and you don’t have to solve the riddle of allocation of teams into conferences.

I think there is more security in having 1 league because teams may drop out due to various reasons. If you have a conference system and several teams dropped out of 1 conference it may be difficult to resolve. Whereas in a 1 league scenario if the participant number dropped from 24 to 21 in the next year over a 2-year season it would not comprise the league as much and no restructure would be required.

If the “all-in” league isn’t mature enough or viable enough to break into 2 divisions after the initial 2-year period it can continue for a new 2-year period and so on until it is the right time. New teams could enter the league to either expand it or replace teams if necessary.

I have read people writing about how a conference system could break into 2 divisions but to me this seems problematic and perhaps unfair. It would be difficult to rank the conferences to know which one was stronger and therefor teams from the weaker conference may be gifted spots in a higher division at the expense of stronger teams in the opposite conference.

Costs may be a factor but this seems to advantage teams from Sydney, Melbourne and SEQ mostly. I may be wrong but the impact for Cairns, Townsville, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart would be minimal.

A conference league would have 2 12 team conferences which means 11 away games and a 24-team league means some teams have 11 and other 12 away games then reversed for the following year. It would cost Sydney and Melbourne teams more but the impact would be spread over the 2-year period.

The reason I suggested the eventual division split is it promotes the concept of promotion and relegation. After the initial phase to gain stability when it becomes possible. To consolidate players into a more compact competitive league. I am optimistic of promotion to the A-League before the FFA’s 2034 forecast.

It has to be entirely merit based. The winners of the NPLs should have some fair way of determining who gets promoted, maybe a tournament of the premiers with the winner going up. 

You overstate how much teams outside NSW/VIC will struggle. Due to the semi-professional nature of the competition, or at least the fact that people won't be getting huge wages, most players will stay were they are, instead of in the a-league where MV/MC/SFC buy the best talent. In fact for me taking a lot of the money out makes it all the more interesting. This is proven in my mind by looking at all the former a-league in NPL teams, they aren't going around looking for money, most are playing at the highest level in the city they're from (or the city they want to live in). What you WILL see is super clubs forming around the smaller cities. 

How much better would it be watching a league with home grown players from your city playing against home grown players from somewhere else. Something that the sterilized big money leagues around the world completely lack. 

They sign five year contracts now because they have a guarantee of being in the league for the next five years.

If the possibility of relegation comes up, any future contracts can be negotiated to be subject to them staying in the A-League.

I agree with this.  I don't mind conditional promotion if it's based on criteria that are completely within a clubs control (e.g. minimum lighting, facilities, finances, etc.). 

As soon as you make it subject to criteria outside of a clubs control, such as needing to wait for a club to be relegated from your State, it creates inequality. 

It wouldn't be ideal if Perth had no representatives in the top divisions, but as long as there is a chance for a team to win promotion each season it remains fair.

@ aussieshorter

They will be able to go that, most likely the cost of stadium rental will go up though - you get a better deal with a 5 or 10 year deal than with one that has an opt out clause should you be relegated.

Brisbane for example woukd struggle with an alternative venue st the moment with Perry Park holding only 3500 and Ballymore about the same to rent as Suncorp. However there's st least ten years to prepare for that, longer if the ffa stay in charge lol

I think starting off with more than 8 teams is a risk. If the model works with 8 it will work with 10, 12 etc. It should be easier to add teams rather than take teams away if it doesn't work. 

If it were up to me I'd combined through conferences the VIC and NSW NPLs and have that as a defacto second tier and build a natonal second tier from that. 

Of course, and that would be part of any negotiations.  My point is that it's fairly unlikely that a relegated A-League goes under because of a stadium deal, because it's within their power to prepare for that.

Perry Park might not be up to A-League standards, but possibly it'd meet standards for the 2nd division?

The obvious solution (as you say) is to own our own stadiums.  It might sound pie in the sky, but I think that's what A-League clubs should be planning for already.

This sounds like a Plan B or C to me.  Like we're already accepting that Plan A won't work and so we settle for something sub-par.  Surely we start by trying to see if Plan A will work initially?

A NSW/VIC 2nd Div is a bad idea in my opinion (not only because I'm in Queensland!).  It gives those States (and clubs) an advantage over the rest of the country and other States will be playing catch up when they are finally let in.  

It's not pie in the sky. This is just pedalled by sports administrators in the top levels because they are chasing after government funds and freeing up all the operating revenues for player wages. 

NSL clubs owned their own stadiums. NPL clubs own their own stadiums. A club like West Adelaide that went under 20 years ago has come back and in that space of time found the resources to build a 5k capacity stadium. 

Yet we are to believe that professional clubs can't afford a square inch of dirt? Turn it up

Case in point NT who dont have a semi pro NPL yet. They are miles behind.

How do people feel about potentially merging the National Youth League with a second division?
In such an event the A-League clubs would field their youth teams (plus the allowable amount of overage players as we already see in the NYL) and participate in matches against second division teams instead of the rather pointless (and short) NYL season. They'd play at the same boutique venues used in the NYL to save money and it's not a crazy concept since many European leagues do similar things with top tier clubs having their youth teams play in the second division or lower. I can imagine it's not going to be a popular idea here or with the NPL teams aspiring to be in the second division (and I personally wouldn't support it unless we were desperate for suitable teams) but it's food for thought. Could save a fair bit of money by getting rid of the NYL and absorbing the youth teams into a second tier, too.

My view is a Div 2 should remain clear of youth/B teams. We need it to be a proper comp with real credibility so I'd say keep the youth down at NPL and maybe create an expanded NYL when Div 2 catches up (say 24 youth teams playing 23 games .. starts to feel like better youth development as well)

I don't mind second teams being in the national set up but to start they need to be excluded. Maybe keep them in NPL and they can work their way up (1 team per league only). No reason to exclude them, especially if a youth team is doing better than other senior teams.

It is conservative  but I really think it's not worth gambling on. Both models get to wherever the end goal is the conservative model just means we don't get ahead of ourselves. 

If we start at 12 or 24 or whatever people have been proposing and it fails we could scare a lot of investment and sponsorship off the idea of a second teir for good. For me it's just too much of a risk. Start slow and build towards the end goal.

I will concede that a joint VIC NSW league will give them a leg up on the rest of the country. I still believe it to be the best place to start. I soibt many players would come from interstate in a semi pro league so it will just be the best players from the city which should naturally happen in every city with a team in the second div.  It may only be for a year or two so may not have too much impact. 

On the topic of using conferences, I was trying to conceptualize how it would look to start with and this is what I could think of:

The teams are just examples based on those that have expressed interest and the breakdown is based on trying to split teams geographically to save on travel costs. The big question is where to put the ACT in this since they could realistically be in any conference or none at all, and then there's the matter of WA, NT, and NNSW, all of which I have excluded because there are uncertainties about whether any clubs from those regions will participate.
The positive thing is that even with 24 teams there's still plenty of clubs that come to mind, so there won't be any problem in getting the numbers. It's going to be a matter of what works.

Personally, I'd be happy if we started with a single national league of 12 to 14 teams (mainly drawing from NSW, VIC, QLD, etc.) and then took it from there. No need to dilute the quality or cause lots of dead rubbers at first. 

Another option is starting with two tiers (League One and League Two) of 10-14 teams (for a total of 20 to 28 teams) with promotion and relegation between them to start with, and then P/R down to the State Leagues and - in the long term - up to the A-League. It would essentially be our own version of England's "Football League", with parallels between the A-League and the English Premier League as entities above them.

The main issue with any conferences is that that the two strongest regions (VIC and NSW) are in separate conferences. They need to be playing each other on a regular basis to get the best playing against the best.

My main issue is we have more than enough bidders who are willing to invest in the A-league. If they think they are A-league ready and all the costs associated with that then surely they are ready for a 2nd tier. The second tier doesn't need a conference system. It needs 12-14 clubs who want to push to get to the A-league. I'm sure travel costs won't be an issue. National tier 2 or nothing.

2nd tier and expansion can happen concurrently. 

I'm not sure about other States, but Queensland has been losing at least a few players every season to the VIC NPL already.  Create a National 2nd Div that only includes NSW and VIC and you'd see a huge movement of ambitious players who think they can make it at that level.  

Moving beyond the structure and the geographic location of clubs, the division needs to give some thought as to how it's going to jump crowds significantly? There's some clubs putting their hands up for this that play to 100-150 every week and, as the HAL jumped average crowds from 3k to 11k, what can the Div2 do to achieve a major jump?

Personally I don't think the marketing sizzle will be there as it was for HAL1 and it probably comes back to selection of clubs - a few are going to be able to draw a few thousand (Souths?) and it would seem logical if they meet the criteria they should be in on the basis of crowds and therefore sustainability, tv appeal, sponsor appear etc.

I think of Brisbane City, Strikers and Pen Power, will they be able to get crowds out of the few hundreds in to the few thousands? I'm doubtful.

Are crowds the most important thing these days?