How will Victorian Premier league clubs approach the 2013 season with the new proposed NCR competition due to commence in 2014. Will club continue to spend huge sums of money not knowing what the future holds, or will most clubs be happy to play out this season using youngsters and saving their hard earned cash. Interesting times ahead!!

Can see massive protests. Fuck the NCR! Resistance is the key.

With the VPL already being disconnected from any higher league, competition is essentially about pride - contracts are only one year most of the time, so as everyone will still look for a straight win this season and worry about next year later.

Every team should have the right to the top tier. No team or group of teams should be exempt from fighting for the top position.

100%

Unfortunately, that's NOT going to happen under the NCR. You'll have an A-League which is a closed shop. Beneath that will be state based APL leagues which are closed shops. Then... Below that, on the third level, we will ultimately have regionalised leagues with only very local promotion/relegation.

Ultimately, I think is counter productive to the NT with so many registered player.

Counter productive to football development in this country is the notion that having a 10 team top division, then something like 80 teams forming the effective 2nd tier, could ever be a useful system for identifying and developing talent.

Said it so many times it hurts - FFA should bite the bullet and come up with an official '2nd' division of some kind. Even if it's only taking the NSWPL or the VPL and nominating that as the 2nd division. Then do whatever is possible to funnel all available talent into THAT league - raising the standard of all teams, meaning that everyone is playing at a higher level, meaning that the A-league sides can scout the best players whilst they are playing against the best players week-in week-out.

EVERY signing to the A-League from the state leagues at the moment is made on the basis of trials - because the A-League coaches can't judge players based on how they play in the state leagues. At the end of the day - signing players based on trials is often a flawed process as you don't get to see them in real match conditions.

It makes you cringe to think what talent is actually out there.

Well, fwiw, my colours and thoughts are on my signature. For all to see. But I reckon we need to voice the opinion a bit more an explain to people who reject the notion of a second tier why they miss the big picture. Feeder clubs are a joke.

Edited by TheSelectFew: 10/1/2013 12:02:57 AM