Well for gods sake, someone get on the phone and give their local club a call and DEMAND they get in contact with him and hire him in some way. He's being wasted, in my opinion. If he can help produce another Grella, Bresciano or Kennedy, it'd be worth it.

He is a player agent and has a Football Academey. When he came back in 1997 he was the highest qualified coach in the country but no-one would hire him so he played a season at Morwell under Arok.
When he took the helm at Carlton he had a hand in the development of Colosimo, Bresciano, Grella. Got the best out of Markovski and in its first season made the Grand Final.
He has got to be a better Coach than, Mitchell, Merrick, Ferguson, McKinna, Postecoglou, Bleiberg, Herbert and Culina. Yet he hasn't had a gig. Some things never change in my opinion.

I pretty sure I remember reading some time ago that he was working as a player agent. Or in another football related roll. Definately not on a construction site as I recall. :)

Is he seriously working in construction Spathi? Is your source accurate?

It's a tragedy that such a good coaching talent has been overlooked in an age when Australia is starved for good coaches.

ABSOF***INLUTELY

An A-League club needs to find this guy and get him out of retirement (Eddie Krncevic). He's only 49 for crying out loud. Surely a successful manager like him should be playing an assistant role at the very least.

Thank you Arthur, many seem to forget that Eddie was one of the first Aussies to ply their trade in Europe. When he came back he did amazing things with Carlton. But where is he now? Does anyone know? I heard on the grapvine that he is working on constuction sites in Melbourne!!!! Bring Eddie back to the fold I say.

Lord wanted to establish his own sporting club in Melbourne, based around Victory. He made preliminary moves for a rugby franchise but was slapped down by the FFA who wouldn't allow him to use the Victory name in association with any other sport.

Why Carlton developed so many quality players?

Spathi you win first prize, Eddie Krncevic deserves a lot of kudo's and is a greaat coach.

It is a shame that he is not coaching in any capacity at the top level, while others of limited ability are and have coached A-League teams.

I must be going crazy at my old age (25), but I could have sworn remembering NSL teams playing games in winter. :oops:

I'm now looking at wikipedia telling me otherwise though. It's like something out of the twilight zone where you wake up and you're in some kind of bizarro world.

Edited by socceroossupporter: 19/4/2010 02:11:29 PM

Plus the fact the idea was a dud and has since gone broke and closed up shop.

Pretty sure this is spot on. I remember Victory rejected the idea of joining this thing called TEAMelbourne (an alliance of sporting teams named Melbourne, ie Storm, Demons, Melb Phoenix, Melb Tigers). http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/victory-not-in-teamelbourne/

I'm certain the reason Victory chose not to join was that Melbourne Demons were in it, and Victory did not want to be seen to be aligned to any AFL club, something they probably learned from the earlier Carlton & Collingwood teams in the NSL.

I suspect the main problem you would face would be that very few non-Carlton AFL fans would get behind a Carlton related A-League side, so you would immediately limit your potential fanbase to 40-50k (or whatever). Of that limited number you then have to remove the die-hard AFL fans who hate football, and of those who love football you'd already have quite a few who have thrown their allegience behind Victory (and their nice dark blue shirts). Leaves you with a small market.

I used to think a Collingwood franchise could work in the 'new age', playing on the "no one likes us" mentality, but again, once you remove those who hate football, you've not got a lot of room to move.

With regard to the timing of the seasons - I'm pretty sure there was a fair cross-over between the two codes. Collingwood Warriors started the season at Victoria Park but had to switched to Olympic Park half way through as the AFL boys needed their park back.

:oops: :oops: Carlton did play during summer. The NSL changed to summer football in 1989/1990

Yeah, definitely not good timing at all back in 1997.

Back in the NSL days, it was bad timing, because the Carlton SC played during the AFL season. This really destroyed the possibility of crowds for the Carlton soccer club in my opinion.

Times have changed though.

Since the A-League are playing in the summer, and they're starved for support for their club, would a re-emergence of a similar club in the A-League be out of the question?

I betcha if a Carlton SC was reestablished, the crowds would be up due to the summer season.

In Victorian Premier League cricket, there are teams that represent all of the current AFL teams. They all even have the same club songs. I can't see why football clubs could not form some kind of connection and association with AFL clubs.

The Melbourne Victory's choice of colours and logo definitely appeals to AFL-going fans due to the state of origin guernsey of Victoria.


So why not the clubs themselves?

I for one have no ties or emotional connection with any football clubs throughout Australia, though if a team associated with the Sydney Swans popped up and were represented in the A-League, you can bet your balls I would buy a membership immediately and attend games.

This is something AFL supporters will never get in their lifetimes: international representation. I'm sure some supporters would be thrilled at this prospect, if I'm anything to go by.

Boutsi may have given the guy a little shove - but then again, he was onside for the goal he had disallowed a couple of minutes later... These things cancel out. ;)

Also everyone knew that Collingwood was basically heidelberg in disguise, they turned up early in the season, 15,000 against the melbourne knights for its first match, from memeory carlton only got about 6,000 for its first ever match, as soon as they started losing the heidelberg fans went back to heidelberg for the vpl, the afl side of it stopped caring and the heidelberd board members also jumped off the shinking ship, they had some fine players though, Boutsianis, Lozanovski, Juric in goals, Andy Vlahos in his prime, tapai, bit of a mess by the end.

Good idea and an excellent side but probably not the right time for it though. Was well intentioned but with no governing body support and very little media exposure it was a hard task to gather supporters for them. South had some really good battles with them including a last minute dodgy GF win in '98 against them and an awesome 4-4 draw that year as well. Crowds in those games regularly topped 10k.
In the end it got embarassing for them. Their last game from memory was at Epping Stadium where one of the owners Peter Jess was telling tickets out of an old caravan. I think he's made some cash on the Bresciano/Grella transfers over the years.

Collingwood football club(AFL) had some pretty serious financial problems back then...I think they were actually technically bankrupt at one stage.

I think Eddie Krncevic had a hand in not only brining these good up and coming players together but also to play an exciting brand of football. Unfortunate about the crowds though.

Managed to hold it together on and off the pitch a damn sight better than Collingwood though. ;)

Ultimately, I think Carlton actually wanted do play the game - whereas Collingwood thought there was some money to be made out of it.

And failed miserably when the fans didn't show up.

Basically the club was cashed up and in an attempt to win supporters they pumped that money into the football business.

Grella was not a product of Carlton, he came from Canberra. Archie had made a name for himself at Gippsland and Allsopp at Hellas. The others would have been picked up from other NSL youth teams or State League teams I guess.

No club can produce a player in just a couple of years of existance

That's not to say that they didnt contribute greatly to the development of these players while they were at Carlton.

If you look back then through the NSL there was a heap of players that have gone on to have very successful careers. it was just a good time for the NSL really.

Wether they had specific strategies for finding talent I'm not sure.

So was it just luck that they managed to get good players? I'm asking because maybe they had a particular strategy in finding new talent, which other clubs can learn from.

Double post.

Edited by socceroossupporter: 17/4/2010 11:38:08 PM

They were successful on the field but suffered from abysmal crowds.

They were banking on the idea that other AFL supporters would come watch but in actual fact it just didn't happen. Ended up playing only 3 seasons and folded because of massive financial problems. They were the first broad based club to ail in the NSL followed by Parra Power and Northern Spirit.

They experienced those 2 good seasons basically because of the good batch of young players they had coming through.

Not sure whether I should post this here (Grass Roots football section), but couldn't find anywhere else to post.

Was checking out wikipedia today and stumbled across the Carlton soccer club. Upon further examination, it was apparent that this club, despite its short existence, had a lot of on-field success and produced a wealth of good players, including Vince Grella, Mark Bresciano, Joshua Kennedy, Daniel Allsopp, Vince Colosimo and Archie Thompson. I remember them being established by the Carlton Australian Rules football club, but never being very familiar with club football in Australia, I could never figure out 'why' they were so successful.

Can anyone explain the on-field success of this particular club?

Does anyone think a football club established by an AFL club (Or some sort of partnership) could ever be achieved in the future with the A-League? I think a lot of AFL supporters are beginning to warm to the A-League.