#brivsyd 8,059 according to courier mail. Bullshit. 

No they were not. They were the NSL crowds not the SMFC.

I was there watching all the games. SMFC was the second best attended club in the NSL behind Perth Glory at the time.

Perth Glory were averaging about 12 to 13K and SMFC were averaging about 9 to 10K. The average was bought down by other teams.

You also got to remember the NSL had 14 teams whilst the HAL has 10 teams. There were teams in the NSL averaging 2500 and 3k per game, sometimes even less. If you chopped off the bottom 4 with the lowest attendances and left the top 10, the average increases drastically. It's all statistics, so the NSL wasn't as badly attended as some people seem to think. You also had Sydney Olympic, and Marconi that could also pull a decent crowd.

What happened with the A League was nothing short of CRIMINAL. The FFA through the baby with the bath water and with the bath water went thousands of die hard fans too - people now labelled as EUROSNOBS.

What's left is the plastic and band-wagoners. What you have is a lackluster competition that even all of us here on this forum are bored to tears with.

What should have happened was a hybrid set up between the old and the new.

In the last season of the NSL average attendances were:-

Adelaide United - 12,568
Perth Glory - 9,470
South Melbourne - 6,832
Sydney Olympic - 3,115
Melbourne Knights - 3,099
Newcastle United - 2,849
Sydney United - 2,799
Wollongong - 2,569
Brisbane Strikers - 2,566
Parramatta Power - 2,326
Marconi-Fairfield - 2,008
Northern Spirit - 2,000
Football Kingz - 1,273
Average - 4,121

Only Central Coast this season average less than South Melbourne did.

By that last season, the NSL was already a dead man walking, for Hellas to get nearly 7k in average attendances is a pretty good accomplishment in my book.

I wasn't talking about the last season. In the last season everyone knew it was the end and that it was going to be the last season.

The competition was terminal and dead.

I was talking about the seasons before that and that is the 3rd time I said that.

And for SMFC to get the crowds that it did in the last season is fantastic.They were down badly from the previous season like all the teams were. They were a 9 to 10K team.

You can't compare the HAL to this and say "see, we are better off" Firstly this was the final season and everyone knew it. If you had SMFC in the HAL right now, they would average about 10K and be the 3rd highest attended team.

You are not very clever.

Yeh it was. It proves they had the support.

The previous seasons they had a lot more than 7K.

I remember it well. Everyone looked forward to playing SMFC as they were the Barcelona of Australia. You could always expect a good game from SMFC.

We had 12k against perth on Australia day that season. 10k against parramata power and 9k against adelaide. From memory the attendances died towards the end of that season when it was 100% certain we wouldnt be in the new league.

The attendances crashed when it was announced.

Yet the morons keep comparing to the last season because it was the worst. They got no brains.

Perth v Victory - 17,856.

Perth's highest A-League regular season crowd ever. It's even more impressive considering that West Coast played at the same time and unfurled the Premiership flag.

1998 Perth Glory v South Melbourne - 18,067....they got pretty close to the all time record.

I remember that game.

If only they didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The HAL would have been a lot stronger with SMFC and some old soccer.

What a slap in the face for those Nuevo new dawners

A-League saved

Problems in Aus football = solved

Ouch, that's like a cold wet haddock to the face.

This is colder:

1998 Perth Glory v South Melbourne - 18,067....they got pretty close to the all time record.     

Also this:

http://ultimatealeague.com/records.php?type=att

Yeah but that was against the Barcelona of Australian football.

Yes it was.

name me one country where they would prevent teams like that from seeing the time of day?

We ALL lost a lot when teams like this were given the boot. For starters, its a major FECK You to their supporters who many would have walked away from the game.

Not just for SMFC mind you. There were other clubs that had the capacity to play and progressed the game in this country such as - Marconi, Adelaide City, Sydney Olympic, Melbourne City and Sydney United.

Plus the NSL was actually full time pro. And there were some really great players too.

Well, the Championship will be perfect for these clubs that can manage 3-5 000 and unlike the NSL they will have the opportunity to progress to full time professional football, so you could argue that things have worked out for the best anyway.

Last year when Newcastle were doing well they had an average of 11k with a high of 18k
Now they have an average of 9k with a high of just under 12k

Every season has a team that does well and gets higher attendances, and teams that do poorly and have poorer attendances. They arent sustainable because every team cant have a dominate season at the same time

I dont see last night as a win for the league and a sign of things heading in an upwards direction. Next season when its somebody else's time to win the league Perth will be exactly where they were last year

Yeah, they will be back averaging 9-10k, which is fine. No team from the NPL is going to do better than that.

No they haven't.

The best was some kind of hybrid where some of these teams can play rather than be excluded.

Crowds are irrelevant and some could attract 10K or more - SMFC would average about that.

Now we are all bored shitless and walking away in the droves.

ALL teams are down this year except maybe the Vuck. Or maybe they are down too.

SMFC would at least average that, maybe more.

This is what they averaged back in the day with no marketing and no exposure at all on FOX or FTA

But that is not the point. The beauty of this game is that teams can fight their way to the top flight by winning on the ground. We want to see this plethora not the same 10 teams for the next 50 years.

Even if the Bentleigh Greens got promoted they would average a good crowd because the local community would get behind them. Everyone loves a Cindarella Story.

The difference is when the NRL wanted to squeeze a few more numbers out of the Melbourne market they gave them a decade of success. The AFL have tried similar tactics for strategic "interstate" markets also with GWS being the latest. These are long term strategies for codes that have outgrown their regions

The FFA's strategy of using success as a carrot boost all markets at the same time is stupidity at its finest, especially since we have nowhere near outgrown our biggest regions

Aflw got 54 k apparently 

just under

Apart from the consistent booing of opposition players for no reason it wasnt a bad turnout

Go to the link I provided.  They were not the NSL averages, they were the SMFC attendances foe each round.  I cited a source and you have cited your memory of something the literally didn't happen.  You are making numbers up to suit your argument and then proceed with a nonsensical rant based on lies.

Any chance you will provide a source or are you just going to continue making this stuff up?