G’day fellow football fans, and a happy Easter to you all.

My best guess is the old adage - divided house cannot stand

If divisions in football could be healed the crowds would be big enough there would be no question about the viability of two national leagues with p and r and eurosnobs probably get drawn in by the local football comminity

having said that, hoping divisions go away in football is like hoping for world peace. 

You reckon an NST would do that?.....lol. This is not April 1st.

Many people's expectations are going to be so massively disappointed. 

Fractured pyramid system, politics with the Victorian Federations, Melbourne Victory, Sydney Utd and the Covid era didn't help. All these issues have stifled the chance for football to gain momentum, to be seen in a positive light. There, that didn't take long.

The problem with the A league is too much passing not enough dribbling and innovation in attack. As a kid I would stay up till 4am to watch players like Kewell, Lazaridis, Viduka fun players etc but most A league games are a flat out snoozefest, even if the standard and tactics are above average. Fortunately that is changing a little bit, I’ll tune in specifically to watch players like Irankundra, Tilio, Arzani etc because they alone can make a game interesting.

Crowds are fine in some places others they are not. It’s a league developing without financial muscle of some other places. Focus on development and improvement the Socceroos and Matilda’s are both very visible brands. 

I get that, but watching games overseas you can describe that very same thing to many of them too. I took someone to a Serie A game once and that person said afterwards he'd rather watch an A-League match for excitement. Admittedly, it was a sterile type match. Different approaches, tactics, styles, strengths and weaknesses differs enormously throughout the football world.

Average attendance before the governance war was 12,500.  By the end of the governance war it had dropped to 10,400.  Covid took it down to 5,500.  It has climbed nearly 40% since then.  The lower average attendance now is because of the inclusion of the expansion clubs (-500), Perths temporary stadium issue (-200), Victorys issues (-900) and Brisbanes attendance struggles (-400) and the slow recovery fro the effects of covid for other clubs. 

Understand, but the Australian market wants to see attacking football. They also want to see goals and their team win. If you play serie A type here we will always have dismal crowds. 

Looking over the history of the A-League, there have been constant peaks and troughs.
The best average attendance was in season 3, over 14k.
It dropped for about 4 consecutive seasons after tht, picked up again, dropped again (for 8 consecutive seasons), has picked up again, and will be even higher next season.
But what we note is that after each trough, the new peak falls short of the previous one, and so it will be this time round, absolutely guaranteed.
In short, the pattern is there for all to see, trust in the numbers, they don't lie. it is what it is.
There are no silver bullets lurking anywhere, there's no magical rise about to eventuate.
The long term average is just on, or slightly under, the very first season's average.
It is what it is.

To many stupid decisions by administrators. When you're at the match it's fun and people are into it. I think some clubs try to bring in fans but most don't care or seem to bother 

The standard of play is not perfect but it's entertaining with plenty of goals and providing some good football to watch, the young talent on display is exciting as well so I dont think the fans should not complain about what's on the pitch, if anything its comparable to the NRL and AFL where its providing good entertainment as a sporting code.

For me its down to the experience at game day as well as poor marketing and promotion of this league, some daft kick off times dont help either especially those 3pm during the summer months.
Although the stigma that the a-league is not the standard as the top European and South American football unfortunately will not change anything soon even if the NSD comes in with pro-rel I don't think the stigma will go away because people will make an judgement based on their own perception.
And perception is very hard to change especially now with a social media era where everything is compared on to the best.

Just make the game experience worthy and let the football take care of itself, not pointless gimmicks which dont work in pro sport and most importantly market and promote the damn thing until its irritating to the mainstream.

Any successful product will always focus and look after on its core which for football it will always will be the players and the fans experience, otherwise there is no game.

An interesting stat the commentators mentioned tonight is the a-league has a higher average per goals scored per match than the top 5 league's in Europe, the goal scoring isnt the problem.

Correct, but they need to find ways to make build up play more interesting. Attacking players who run at defenders can be enthralling to watch rather than just the typical generic passing bs. 

Happy Easter to all too.

You've raised a lot of good points, SR1968.

Using specific football performance game based analysis/criteria, the AL is forever improving, yet so many in Aus talk it down. I think a third of the Socceroo Qatar WC squad, who finished 11thin the tournament, were based in the A L too.

Of course everyone likes to see players who can dribble past defenders at pace as this is the ultimate skill of a footballer. ( scoring a goal is the bonus).However the passing game is best suited for most players even professionals.The best teams have outstanding dribblers as well as a smart passing game-to whit Barcelona with Messi.

There are some very good dribblers in the A-league-Arzani,Piscopo,Ninkovic and O'Shea to name a few but most players are passers as they have been taught since junior days.The problem with the A-league is that many players have a very average first touch and while they can control the ball if not pressured and then pass this slows down attacking momentum and lacks the cut and thrust of the top European and South American teams.However the new generation of players-Kuol( Garang),Segecic,Irankunda,Archie Goodwin,Robertson,Wilson( from Victory) and quite a few others have a very good first touch and thus they are in a better position to take on a defender or more time to put in a telling pass.Therefore the standard of the league should continue to rise as these players with attacking potential get their chances.As long as the media shines some light on these players interest will grow and hopefully increase crowd attendances and viewing numbers.

Interesting?

It might imply A L defences aren't as tight as they could be.

First touch is improving in the younger generation.

Not going near a game again until/unless they scrap the Sydney Grand Final shit.

Nothing else.

The crowds are down because the people who said "I'm leaving" left.

It had to. Our first touch was pretty woeful, even with our GG, bar a very small few, their fist touch were never great.

All of those young players from this generation that have great first touches and dribbling have benefited from the national curriculum which was brought in 12 years ago, so in a way its not a surprise to see this large improvement.

I also its down to how teams are set up, most teams want to attack even if it means playing in transition whilst others like a slow and patent build up, also we see mistakes as well but this is beauty of football in a way so its at least entertaining to watch.

For example: 2 different games with the same problems with pitch between Sunday and Monday but two different approaches, one was awful to watch that was very risk adverse on Sunday whilst the other match on Monday which was great to watch especially Melb City and even the Nix where both teams wanted to play on the front foot.

To me apart from all the dumb admin decisions is the poor marketing of not only the A-League but of the players as well, unless the players have played hundreds of PL games we don't know how to market them.
Look at Mooy, from a technical point of view as good as anyone who has played for the Socceroos & has played in the PL, now with champion club Celtic (albeit, not strong league), but little is known of Mooy outside the football community.
Leckie, played for many years in the Bunesliga (top 5 in Europe), scored against Denmark, set up goal against France, one of the best back in the A-League (very few GG came back as good), played more games at WC than any other outfield player. Very little is known of him outside of football community
Goodwin, scorer against France, also the shot that caused own goal against Argentina, probably best player in A-League, again not known.
Vuckovic, what a heartbreaking story about his son & how he managed his O/S football career & his son needs, back in the A-league
Rogic, as skillful a player to ever don the Socceroos shirt (Harry & Dukes apart), biggest European trophy winner (Chipperfield up there too), but not known outside football community.
We have thousands playing football every weekend & all our Socceroos & Matildas, Plus A-League & ALW players, all came from local clubs, these thousands are playing every week, why not market these stars to them.

What would NRL be without the marketing of Latrell, Munster, Cleary, Tommy Turbo,Tedesco or AFL without the marketing of Buddy, Dusty Martin & now I'm struggling (not an AFL fan).

The NRL and AFL have a media machine which we dont have but I agree the admin here dont market the key points very well especially the players that featured in the World Cup, talk about an own goal!

So your right, focus on the good things as the narrative whilst trying to build to your audience, its like the game doesn't have enough good points to talk about each week here and overseas even with a stigma that has against it.

We just dont hear enough about the good stuff and the NRL and AFL do it so well.

There is no issue with the quality of football played in the A-League. It is exactly where you'd expect it to be given the dollar value of squads. I'd actually say the A-L punches above it's weight overall. The problem is that there has been no progression. You could take a top side from this season, put them in a time machine and go back 10 years and they'd be just as competitive then as they are now. The A-League has just treaded water. This is extremely evident when we look at ACL performances. Nations that were once on par (or below) A-L quality have progressed and are now much better. They have had significant growth. What is happening now is the rusted-on fans are finally starting to walk away, or at least dial back their level of regular engagement. Which is fine if there is new fans coming through, but there's not.
I'd say it's also a little unfair to look at A-L averages as a whole. It's not the job of the league to get people to games. When you isolate individual clubs, it's very easy to see what's working and what's not. For example, AU are doing well, because they are getting results, playing exciting high scoring football and are genuine contenders for the title. For the AU fans, history tells them that AU is not going to be great that often so it makes sense that they will jump on board while it lasts. Although Perth's numbers are low, they actually did well given the restrictions of their temp venue. Then if we look at MV. Poor results. Recruiting hasn't worked out. Players lost to transfers and season long injuries. Then you add in the pitch invasion issues and the GF decision. It's obviously going to have a negative effect on attendance. That being said, if there was relegation, I have no doubt way more people would be showing up to support the club. With the new clubs it's very easy to see why crowds are low. WU don't have a stadium and have made zero visible progress in actually building one. Macarthur treated their fans poorly from the beginning and then played really boring football. Brisbane moved out of reach for a big chunk of their fans and then performed poorly. Then we have an interesting one with SFC, who have been the poor side of average this season, yet the fans have been showing up. The derbies obviously help those numbers, but it's uncharacteristic for SFC. In the past the numbers have dropped when the team has done poorly. Interesting to know why they are getting better crowds than what would be normally expected. MC is the other interesting case. Excellent consistent results. Entertaining football. Exciting players. No one cares. They seem to be losing fans. CFG would be partly responsible as they really don't care about the fans. The free tickets have also dried up, so less casuals are going. They seemed to do better when they had a bit of that underdog identity going on. Now they are the benchmark and people aren't interested. The other clubs are pretty much the same as they always are. Not great, but not really much worse than normal. Bit of a shame CCM don't get better numbers. They've been worth watching this season and could finish 2nd or 3rd if they do well over the next few rounds.
I think the final series will give us the biggest indication of where crowds are at. We know AU will pull full houses for any finals actually played at home. If SFC makes finals, they will do well also especially with WSW in the mix. Surprisingly there has only been one season in which both SFC and WSW appeared in the finals series, however they have never played each other in a finals game. If WSW finish 3rd and SFC finish 6th that finals game would be close to a full house for sure. However a MC/AU GF in Sydney is going to have low numbers. MC couldn't even pull a full house at home last season against another Melbourne side.

No P/R

So
1. same teams every year, no natural refreshment
2. at least half a season of dead fixtures, why put effort into attending glorified friendlies
3. leading to little interesting media content, few clicks, fewer journo's 

There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza , dear Liza

Total season attendances peaked  with Del Piero's ( and Ono and Heskey) two seasons and remained level for another 3 seasons. That's 5 seasons of peak attendances. 

Sydney FC's average attendance increase by around 5,500 in Del Piero first season alone

The there's the TV ratings, the merch, the media interest boost

Genuine star players improve the league substantially and contrary to common opinion  that this uplift continues for a period after they leave ( but not forever, obviously).

Pretty much bang on the money in every aspect... I rarely watch any Aleague personally but the level of play on the pitch (on the few matches/highlights I have seen) is not THAT terrible.... 

I would say same established players and unproven youth.