https://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/what-s-the-point-of-a-league-finals-if-the-champions-can-t-play-in-asia

WTF is this???!

what's wrong with it?

seems fair. 

I don't have a problem with this.
Statistically and historically speaking, the GF winner is usually the Premiers or the runners up anyway.
There has to be repercussions for performing so poorly and losing that spot in the first place.
This seems like a fairly logical solution. Premiers obviously deserve a full spot, and premier runners up is far more difficult than winning a GF.
Maybe an alternative could be that the AL GF winner and the FFA cup winner have a play-off tie for the half spot.

The finals system is a joke, until you make it more serious instead of being a Mickey Mouse knockout competition then how you could take it seriously a true winner of the league when you only have to win 2 games to win the toilet seat in the final series?

Bring back the 2 legged matches and then you make the final series more of an legitimate trophy, for me the league season is a better indicator of who the best team is in the season.

Fair call.

It's ridiculous. Has the FFA been overtaken by eurosnobs? Here, the team that wins the grand final is the champion. It has always been like that in all sports and it works pretty well for most people, so why mess with it? There is no reality where winning the bloody FFA Cup should be more prestigious than winning the grand final. It's a truly pathetic decision.

This was always the flaw of two trophies in one season

The logical thing to do would be to have the finals as the second phase of the league, like normal, where the GF winner is the league winner. Or to not have the finals series at all

The FA have gotten it half right at least by using the FFA cup as the national cup competition. Now they just need to determine a single means of nominating a league winner. And that means if its through finals it needs to be top 4

I don't know why you people want to devalue the finals to such an extent. If it doesn't matter who wins them, we might as well not hold them. But with no relegation and no finals, there'll be nothing to play for except the premiership. At least now, there's some interest in who gets in the finals. There's something to be gained by finishing 4th or 5th instead of 7th. Eliminating the finals as something to strive for will make the league unimaginably dull.

"it has always been like that in all sports in Australia" fixed. 

First past the post in the regular season, and winning the domestic cup competition is the way to go, just like how 95% of the footballing pyramid works.  

The AFC has nominated a place for the cup winner. That was their decision. Other confed cup comps dont recognise the domestic cup but Asia's does. If Australia doesnt like this decision they cant simply not send a cup spot

What Australia does have control over is the format of the league, in which the AFC does recognise finals. Not sure how obvious this is, and the name kind of gives it away, but the point of a finals system is to determine the league conclusion

Australia simply needs to assess the finals system and determine whether it can fairly determine a winner or whether it has always been a naive attempt to keep fans of low ranked teams interested, not that teams 5th or 6th have historically had high levels of interest

But that's not a cup winner then.
It's either the FFA Cup or the finals.
Why not seed the top 8 of the AL into the round of 16 of the FFA Cup at the end of the season.
Will give a quasi finals feel and will penalise teams in the AL that finish outside that top 8 etc.
That way you have to win 4 games in a row to with the Cup.  Hell, have two-legged round of 16 to the semis, in case someone has an off day.
Not the 2 game BS we have now.

AL Finals have only been an attempt to compete with other football codes Finals. Now more than ever it seems totally pointless and obsolete 

I don’t mind finals it gives most of the teams something to play for 

"Yet if we rob the champions of their rightful spot in the Champions League, we ought to wonder why we should have a finals series in the first place."

What an assumption that the finals exists only for the champions league. By this assumption you would think the finals series should then have been named ACL Finals Series or something to that extent. 
Wouldn't the more likely reason finals exists IS because Australia generally is a finals series driven landscape. 
In fact I'd wager that the mention of the ACL spot generally comes up after the winner had been declared and is as an added bonus to winning the finals. But it's not the reason why we have the finals series. 

Untrue on the finals. As a youth player my area had a premiership and a knock out cup. No finals. I then played state league with the game format. They finals thing was this bizarre thing that Aussie Rules did because they were cretins. 

and here in lies what a Finals series is about, just a specticle, not to qualify for another Series such as ACL.
As others have mentioned, we followed due to the nature of gayfl/nrl, unique, they dis respect the Minor Prem who is the real season winner !
and finals is a money cash cow spinna, sure lets have one to entertain all and let Clubs benefit some extra dollars But lets make sure all know that the Minor Prem is the out and out no1 Winner.

Finally we will have a qualifying system for the ACL that complies with the intent of the original ACL regulations.  Initially those regulations did not mention the Grand Final winner as being able to qualify as the cup winner, that is a fairly recent inclusion in the regulations that was put in to cover our situation.

I had a smile at the thought that the A-League clubs would allow the cup winner a half spot.  What flogs.  It never was and never will be their call because they don't run football in Australia.  They run 3 competitions only involving 13 clubs out of 2,300 in the country.  The only say that the A-League clubs have is through their excessive allocation as a group at the Congress.

There will still be finals. And people will still care about them. Practically nobody gives a shit about the ACL anyway, and it's usually just a drag on club resources. Certainly none of the other professional sports in Australia have a champions league (or relegation) and people still seem to like their finals, even though 'it doesn't matter who wins them'.

It does matter in the other codes. Minor premiership doesn't mean anything. It is widely understood that the winner of the grand final is the champion of the season. Only in football do so many people insist on emphasising the home and away winner as the true champion, which makes sense but is no fun. The finals provide a much needed boost of excitement in a static league with no promotion or relegation, but they only provide that if they mean something. If people have decided that minor premiership is all that matters and there's no incentive or benefit to winning the finals, what the hell are they there for? I agree that an ACL place isn't that much of an incentive anyway, but it's something. It sounds entirely absurd that winning the mickey mouse ffa cup carries more weight and reward that winning the grand final. 

That’s right, who cares about Asia. We are Australia, we’re unique. How dare the FA rob the theatregoers of their one day of the season when they remind us all about their love of ‘soccer’ by turning up in their tens of thousands.

Until we have promotion and relegation you cant compare our closed league with other non leagues that dont have a playoff finals system.
The premiers of the A-League are just that.They are not premiers of all Australian leagues,such as NPL leagues.
So giving an ACL spot to the Premiers means no more than giving it to the Champions of the playoffs.Its all pretend.
If for example the National NPL league got off the ground with no promotion or relegation,who is to say the winners of that competition are worse or better than the winners of the A-League?They would be mutually exclusive leagues.

According the 2022 AFC champions league Wikipedia page;

Automatic spot for top of the table.
Play off spot for FFA Cup winners.
Another play off spot still to be determined. Will either be for 2nd on the table, or the Grand Final winners. I'm hoping it's for the GF winners.

It's funny how different people look at it. As a Sydney FC fan in
2018-2019, we were 2nd by 8 pts to Perth Glory in the premiership & beat them in a penalty shootout, no way did I feel that SFC were the champion team that year, we were 2nd best.
2017-18, we won the league by 14 pts & beat Melb Victory by 23 pts, but lost to MV in semis in xtra time who went on to win GF, no way did I see MV as the Champion team that year & SFC was the champions in my eyes.

Unfortunately, we have to go by which teams actually win the title(s), we can't all just decide who we think are the winners in our eyes.

In both cases, bothe teams won titles, SFC in 2017-18, we won the premiership by 14 pts. We were the best team that year, lost a semis in xtra time. I celebrated our premiership win
In 2018-19 Perth Glory won the premiership by 8pts, lost in a lucky penalty shootout, Perth Glory was the best team better then the SFC team. I didn't celebrate.

spot on.

corrected above.

Very valid point....  Strong argument for whole pyramid then wouldn't you say?

Its a HUGE incentive for all the clubs locked out of the Aleague mate..... Many NPL clubs are now taking the FFA cup very very seriously as it is (a very remote) cahnce at representating Australia overseas. 

I’d love to see a NPL team win an ffa cup would be so good for the game 

But you were the champion in 2019. Officially. Of course I can see how it's unfair on PG, but that's just how leagues with play offs operate. Back in the NSL, I remember when Wolves came back from 3-0 down at half time of a grand final in Perth and won it on penalties. I'm pretty sure Glory came first in the regular season, but there was no doubt around here that Wolves were the fully deserved champions, and are recorded as such. What an awesome grand final that was. It was almost as intense and nerve wracking as the Uruguay game for me. 

So I like finals. Occasionally a dominant team gets knocked off in the gf, but I actually like that element of unpredictability and surprise (as artificial as it is). Even in the English championship, the best and most exciting part of the season is the playoffs. Maybe when some kind of pyramid and pro/rel are introduced, we can think about doing away with American things, but for now it should be the finals that decide the league champion. It works. It generates some excitement and draws some attention. It shouldn't be devalued.