I bet alot of the turncoats have really enjoyed the increase in popularity and validity they feel as soccer fans now that they went to McVictory... "Football but not as you know it" really proved to be a huge  mainstream success eh?

Its not about whether South Melbourne will get 500 or 50000. And this is the mentality that has broken our game

The AFL is a league where 99% of Aussie Rules fans follow the AFL. Same as the NFL. And same as other invitational only sports. Thats their model

We will never have that model. Fact. Reality. Accept it. Football can only thrive with the next best economic model which is the 80/20 rule (where 80% of revenue / support comes from 20% of clubs). The rest is just filler. The game needs a big MV, SFC, WSW, BR and another club. People arent going to turn in Saturday night to see top vs bottom

For the NRL to succeed it needed a strong Victorian team to capitalise on 100% of Victorian support so they manufactured one. Same as what the AFL did progressively over their foreign markets. We dont need a strong Central Coast Mariners or a strong Canberra. Thats not our model. The pittance these regions can bring at the expense of having our most valuable shit kicking at the bottom of the league just isnt worth it

There is no such thing as an AFL fan or an NFL fan or a Cycling fan etc... People are dynamic sports fans. They watch the AFL expecting one thing, they watch the EPL expecting another, they watch golf or track expecting another. Fans of our game are used to big clubs, and internationally competitive instead of just locally. They dont tune in to say "herp de derp, last year MV bad, this year MV good. Me happy. Not bored"

The FFA started with the answer. We must have an AFL model. We must be on one of three networks. In any other model South Melbourne would have been part of the league by now and nobody would give a shit what their crowds or ratings unless they ended up being one of the team 80% of people are interested in

Pretty much my point mate. The FFA "re-invented" the game/clubs to appeal to a new audience and that has not materialised. All it did was alienate a segment of the old audience forever and bring in a an equivalent number (possibly marginally more than what was "lost" but only slightly) of new fans and then wonder why, after 17 years the TV audience and match day attendance is still where it was in the 90s..........

Apart from South Melbourne and maybe Wollongong, how are the old NPL clubs going to get new support? Starting most clubs from scratch was the right way to go imo, unfortunately the expansion process was fucked up. Imagine APIA in NSD and then getting promoted to Aleague, they would struggle to get 1k fans per game. 

Another way to look at it is that Apia, with their 1k fans, would have been a very solid base to grow from if they were included in the "Lowy revolution" 
Clubs can and would have gathered new support if given the opportunity to instead of being frozen out forever..... 

The new model did find a much bigger audience but then through rank mismanagement on every level alienated that audience. Now it's time gone and I agree it's not coming back. 

They've been getting 4k+ for each of the last two FFA Cup games. Bigger crowds than some A-league clubs.

Where would they have gathered new support from if all the alienated fans are loyal to there clubs? These NPL clubs been around for decades, they aint gonna suddenly bring new fans out of nowhere. Most a-league fans already support NPL teams as its a different comp. For example say Perth SC are in the ND2, they certainly aint gonna get new fans? Floreat, Stirling, Gwelup fans aint going to follow them? South Melbourne would have the ability to attract the older fans, but thats it.

How many would they get against Adelaide or Perth?

The A League was dubbed the NSL with a coat of paint. It was the same closed off franchise model that existed at the end of the NSL. It wasnt the model that found a new audience but a promising new organisation for digging our game out of a hole that every fan of the Australian game got behind. Also one that could attract government and commercial funding

I've always argued that the first 2 or 3 years of the league were necessary evils. Some people agree. Some dont. Some think there should have been 2 teams from Melbourne / Sydney. Other will argue there should have been a 2nd tier from day 1

The problem was those in charge decided to cement the initial model and sell it as the product. Season 7 was the start of the end of the A League

Why should I bother answering that? You’ll make another excuse.

Umm, are you sure about this statement? Myself and thousands of others did not "get behind it" as for the hundreds of thousands of so called "eurosnobs" that love football in this country and have done so for decades upon decades they didn't even realise the franchises existed...... and never will.

Why wouldn't they?  Leichardt is a fairly multicultural place from what I am told and just because APIA has got Italian roots, if they are successfully and in the top tier I would assume they would be able to bring new fans onboard from the local community.. I mean look at at Macarthur and WU ffs.... people are dumb enough to claim emotional connection with these business and they manage to get 2 to 3k fans to games, someone like APIA, with their history and being in an area where people actually live and breathe football, would be, with their existing 1k of fans ahead of the game from the get go.  I can't speak for Perth SC , but I would assume, if they are anything like all the other "ethnic" NPL clubs around the country they may very well have a lot of Perth Glory fans supporting them but they would also have a lot of Perth SC Azzuri fans ONLY who don't extend the support back to Glory.... I m not trying to be mean but it is obvious from the  numbers, there are hundreds of thousands of "fans" of  NPL, state league and Amateur clubs around the country  if all these people liked the Aleague franchises better than their own clubs then we wouldn't be having this conversation about poor TV viewers and low NSL like attendances.  Would we?
I know people on here really don't like to hear it but these old ethnic clubs that are so reviled have a better chance of adapting and growing than the franchises..... 
My club this week, with one social media post in support and congratulation of Angie winning the league cup in Scotland have almost overnight doubled their social media followers with Celtic fans far and wide ( and most importantly for us, plenty of them here in Melbourne) pledging their support to the mighty Hellas and hopefully this leads to an increase in membership for the coming season and better attendances... These Celtic fans are not Aleague or even Australian football fans, they are not being "poached" from anywhere, they are just being  connected with... When the dumb c#nts at FFA said they where fishing where the fish were they where chasing AFL and NRL fish..... we went fishing with Postecoglou as bait and caught a few expat Celtic fans...  hahahahahah it can be done, if FA wants it football can be revived in this country. BUT the foreign owners of APL will fight it every step of the way.......

Ummmm, pretty sure SMH did get behind it the 3 times they bid for a license  😀 and as a loyal SMH fan I assume you supported the bids at the time?!

That post has to be read within the context of my post above it. The 80/20 rule. I know I'm preaching to the converted so take this as more of an elaboration rather than a counter point

Interest in the Australian game was low. You might have 100% of football fans follow football, 50% follow the Aussie NTs, 20% follow the national league (just as a very loose example). The point of the A League was to engage with the 20%, not the 100%. The fact the euro snobs didnt follow the initial league was moot, as with AFL fans

I did a lot of stats at the start of the league and effectively it was just a consolidated NSL with money. Some NSL fans such as yourself may not have gotten on board but most did. It wasnt bye bye fans of Sydney teams and hello new fans for Sydney FC. They were the same. There was no way an unproven league for a historically mismanaged sport could have attracted a new audience like that. It was the NSL but with 8 clubs

Then after the world cup the Australian game received a boom. In my made up figures above it would have been say 70% for the Aussie NTs and 35% for the local league. Peak interest can be seen in all teams in season 3

The A League was without a shadow of a doubt a successful and viable league. It had the corporate backing, investment, TV dollars, sponsorship and even player pool that the NSL couldnt touch. It just could never be a 100% model like the AFL / NRL. If the focus was on the 35% instead of the 65% it would be an established and stable part of the Australian sports market by now

Fact is I don't care about whether you would watch it any more than I care about whether sad CCM fans would watch if if their team starts losing. The only thing the league needs to do is be competitive (not rigged) and a pathway for all clubs and players. The focus has to be on viability instead of popularity. Selling our game to be in a prime time slot on one of three networks shows we're a long way off learning that

57k on Ten's main channel last night.
Ouch!

Deary  me.

What  are   they    doing ???

I was watching Sydney FC on Paramount. Looked like a good game from the mini though.

Welll maybe "at the time" hahahaahahah but even then with fingers crossed behind my back :P....  I still wouldn't say that was getting behind the Apartheid choo choo train, more blind loyalty to the club I was born into. 

Will have to agree to disagree bluebird... I was not and will never be a statistician however anecdotally can state that most people I come across who are fans of the Aleague tend to mention in the same  breath that they where also  not fans of the old NSL .... you know the same old garbage arguments I get into on here all the time "blah blah, didn't like the wog teams, didn't feel safe, was scared by foreigners, soccer hooligans, Croatian flags etc etc etc"  Yes some of the original NSL crowds migrated over ( please pardon the very laboured pun) but I think you will find the vast majority, like  myself for a long time, just switched off altogether and watched EPL and euro leagues instead..... There is a dormant "ex NSL club" following out there which only comes out very very rarely ( big derby, final or FFA cup game), how many they are God only knows but they are still around and alot of them, have past on the madness to their kids.... The APL doesn't interact with these people and never will, you may dismiss us as being insignificant and you don't care if we watch the Aleague or  not, that's fine, but you should care if the CCM fans "consume" the product because if they don't the APL and silverlake  will pull the plug and you won't HAVE a league to follow....

The original A League support came from somewhere. It wasnt manufactured from a few board meetings and a brand new audience, one in, one out

The fact remains that you have 100% of football fans, and x% for Australian league. The interest in the Australian "league" game has always been the smallest portion of football following as a whole and this isnt something that can be replicated in identical numbers over night

If I had to guess I would say 80% of the A League year 1 fans had some original tie to the NSL whether it was a casual fan for big games, a historic fan who was disengaged towards the end, or somebody who just wanted to see the Australian game work, or a hardened fan

I'm not dismissing NSL fans as insignificant. I'm simply saying that interest in the league will always be the smallest portion of fans so there is no need to try to appease to all football fans. Let them come over in their own time, if at all. The game simply has to be viable, not popular. If 60%-70% of football fans in this country are not fans of the national league, the vast majority of people are always "not" following the Australian league, so the league needs to appeal to those who are

The AFL / NRL model for artificially stimulating growth in disinterested markets simply wasnt translatable to our game. Our approach should have been to simply "have" a league, and capitalise on the inevitable interest in the top league of a big sport, backed with the recent commercial interest that didnt exist before. The league would have continued to roll on year after year and a natural market would have determined which teams were in / out, and which fans were in / out

I'm going to try explaining what I mean in a different way

The AFL / NRL is like a stage show. You can't have a Harry Potter show without Harry Potter. Same, script, same cast, rinse and repeat. The AFL needs Collingwood and Fremantle to survive. Think of this as a static league

The A League is like a cinema. Depending on what is on depends on who watches, and the end game is to make a profit. Sports that adopt this model include the world cup, but also week to week sport like the PGA / LPGA. If Brazil missed the world cup but America made it, its not the end of the world cup. The viability is in the collective support, but you wont have 100% fans engaged at one time. Think of this as a dynamic league

The A League has failed with a static model because 1/ you wont get 100% of fans behind all teams and 2/ nobody is falling for the gimmicks used to try to keep things interesting

Football needs a dynamic model to succeed. No particular club. No particular fan base. But a collective interest that signs in at different points and is viable as a whole

That makes sense but the afl is 100 years old so people have family members that support Collingwood. Would that not happen with the a league?

I don't think it is as cut and dry as that and worth a bit of a "poll" among posters on here if you are keen? I DO believe that there was indeed a whole "new audience" brought about when the Aleague was formed, not saying they weren't football fans before hand but definitely  not fans of the previous national leagues.... Soccer was a new shiny, de-woggified family friendly entertainment thing under the new regime and this would have appealed to a totally  different demographic, naturally.   Yes I have agreed many times that quite a few NSL fans adopted a new  a league team ( Perth, Newcastle and to some degree Adelaide and Brisbane fans didn't have to) but anyway the point is moot, whether it is 100 fans or 1000 fans that are feel "not represented" no amount of marketing or goodwill will bring them in  under the tent, they/we are members and fans of a specific club,  not of a league. 

Some soccer clubs are almost as old MCG and have multi-generatiinal support.......

Hey Bluebird, I think I get your point  but ( and I really adore your analogy) the Aleague cinema only shows the same old tired 12 movies week in week out. Fans of other movie genres are  not going to watch the same old Disney trash....... they stay home and Netflix :)

Thats my point. Thats why the ratings are low. The A League started with the foundation / blue print / promise of a dynamic model but somewhere after season 6 decided on a static model. As I said, there is no such thing as an "AFL" fan or a "football" fan but people are sports fans. The Australian Open would not be popular (or even viable) if it had the same athletes participating for 100 years

Different structures suit different leagues. The static model is the exception, not the rule. It suits leagues like the AFL, NRL, NFL, etc... where the league has 100% of the players, support and resources. Its very hard to implement and even harder to get right

A dynamic model is a more natural model. As the balance of resources and support shifts, so do the teams. 

The World Cup is how ever many decades old but there are people who want watch it next year if Australia don't make it. And equally people who won't give a shit

Its not the age of the AFL that makes it successful but the capitalisation on resources, players and support. It suffocated every other league into oblivion (dont forget the SANFL and WAFL are top tier leagues at the same level, not second divisions). If you want to watch Aussie Rules, pick an AFL team. Same as the NRL. If you're a Vic, that's great! Here's your team, here are your colours

We dont have that level of capitalisation. "Here's your team and colours" "Get stuffed, I follow the EPL". Things will be the same 100 years from now also

Our ratings would be higher for our biggest teams if they were performing at their best with decent signings (at least the biggest our country has seen). Thats why we need an open and competitive model. Something every other country has managed to work out

That's all there is to this debate, people follow a club and despie the initial goodwill from many football fans to support the local top league (me included) AL has squandered this with gimmicks and staleness.

Football is the most popular game in the world for a reason and all APL needs to do is copy what other small football leagues do rather than trying to provide a AFL/NRL comp with a round ball