You really do get the feeling that the FFA haven’t done the proper due diligence as far expansion is concerned.

NQF’s owner left after 1 season so the FFA have had to run the club draining their resources unnecessarily; and why put a club in a small, remote city anyway? If crowds of 10,000 are the target that was never going to happen in Townsville.

As for the Gold Coast, did they get a team simply because a billionaire was involved and it was rushed through to get a head start on the AFL? Palmer has already threatened to walk away once and surely GCU will fold at the end of this season just as Gold Coast Suns join the AFL. That’ll be a great look for the round ball game.

Then there’s Sydney Rovers which we now know has no finance behind it. Everyone agreed at the time that the Canberra bid for the 12th licence was the outstanding one. The money and sponsorship deals were in place, there was strong evidence of community backing and there was guaranteed local government support. However, the FFA had made up their mind that West Sydney was the place so, with nothing other than a brilliant strip to go on, they became the 12th club.

The AFL have spent years of planning getting things right for the Gold Coast and West Sydney and have set aside vast amounts of money to see the projects through. The FFA, on the other hand, don’t appear to have any strategy.

"Is Melbourne the only place in Australia where you can’t hear the A League on the radio or is it the same everywhere?"

No. In Perth 6PR have an exclusive broadcast deal. Glory does this to get joint promotion through Southern Cross's FM station and a shirt-sleeve sponsorship.

However, if there is a clash with AFL then Glory is dropped.

If it wasn't for FC2's interest I wouldn't be bothering this season. $30 for repetitive crap. We have already played Newcastle twice.

The Con Constantine show has finally crashed to a close at Newcastle, with "mining and racing magnate" Nathan Tinkler taking over for the rest of the season with an option to extend. While Con has undoubtedly put a fair wodge of his money on the line for the past decade or so and is undeniably passionate about the game, he's cleary bonkers and has alienated large parts of the community with his uncompromisingly erratic style.

Just on MA's point above, last season over 5000 showed up at Canberra for a Mariners vs Perth dirge. FFA labelled the crowd as disappointing and used it as an example of why the ACT shouldn't get a licence.

Canberra usually got poor crowds in the NSL, because they usually had a poor team which was often near the bottom of the table. They would struggle to get 2k normally. However, on the odd occaision when they had a decent team, their crowds would really pick up... I think their best season was 1981, when they finished fifth out of sixteen teams. They would get crowds of up to 6k in that season.

I think a successful Canberra A League team would probably get crowds of 7-8k these days. Which is not great, but it certainly would be better than Gold Coast or Melb Heart, and on a par with Brisbane, Newcastle and Mariners. I think the Gold Coast franchise should be moved to Launceston, and Canberra should come in as the twelfth team.

One problem with canberra is that there can be few stadia in the country which convey a poorer atmosphere. I haven't seen it recently, but is there still a running track around it?

I agree on getting the Gold Coast out, but I'm not sure whether Launceston has the population to be its replacement.

I think Wollongong needs to be looked at. The region has produced some wonderful players and deserves a club for the kids in the area to aspire to. The problem obviously is that if Canberra and *some* West Sydney side were to come in, this would make it 6 in NSW/ACT. I don't think that these would necessarily be in competition for fans as there is sufficient separation for all, but the competition for sponsors would be a problem.

You've got a point about the stadium in Canberra, VF. I haven't been there since I lived in Canberra twenty or so years ago, but I can remember that there wasn't a very inspiring atmosphere there... particularly with a 2k crowd!

Launceston has had good crowds, I think around 6k once, for A League pre-season cup games that have been played there. It is not too hard to drive to Launceston from other regions of Tasmania.

Agree with Wollongong- it would be good to have them in the A League. In the very early days of soccer in Australia, Newcastle-Hunter Valley-Sydney-Wollongong was the epicentre of the game. It certainly wasn't Gold Coast-Brisbane-Townsville!

I read somewhere recently that, if you added together the crowds of the various clubs, more people in Sydney watched the NSL than the A League. Would that be right?

Well if you took the Northern Spirit in their first season or two, they'd be able to beat Sydney's last 2 seasons reasonably comfortably. However, picking the best from one side of the equation and comparing against the worst from the other is not really a good way of doing things...

... so taking the 3 clubs which were around for most of the NSL, Olympic's average was probably somewhere around 6-7k. Marconi around 5 and Syd Utd something similar. THere would usually be one or 2 others around out of the likes of Spirit, Blacktown, Parramatta/Melita, APIA and others, none of which would have done much better than 3K or so. At a rough estimate then, if the averages of the 4-6 clubs in a typical NSL season were added up, there would be somewhere around 20-25k.

The problem with this though is that they would need to support 4-6 times as many players, so the quality of player would be less. And there would be less interest from TV watchers in these teams. The other problem is that with no significant new migration to Australia from the involved ethnic groups, there would never be anything other than a slow decline to irrelevance. Whenever the ethnic clubs tried to go more mainstream, it never succeded, either because they were half arsed, or because the general public disn't wanto to hang out around "a bunch of wogs".

On a positive note, it was fantastic to discover last night that Gold Coast's "rump" is not less than 2000! I would guess that non-attending members were counted in the impressive mid-week figure of 2091.

I doubt if the averages for those Sydney clubs were anything like as high as you claim, VF.

Dipping into the records at random, I chose the 92-93 season. In round 6 Olympic and United (Croatia) were at home- and drew crowds of 3,900 and 4,200 respectively. The following weekend Marconi and Parramatta Eagles were at home- and drew crowds of 2,600 and 3,400 respectively. I might have chosen unusually bad weeks by chance, but I doubt if the average attendance of those clubs would have been much greater than 4k in that era-an era which popular myth has it was one of great crowds. And they weren't any better 10 years later. I can remember attending NSL games at Wentworth Park in 1978 and 1979- where Sydney City and APIA played home games- and the crowds were so tiny you could almost count them individually in a minute or so!

The A League crowds might be slumping at the moment- but they are still considerably better than NSL ever were.

Well, in the midst of all the doom and gloom about falling A League attendances, there was a near capacity crowd at Hindmarsh last night: 13,310 for the visit of Perth Glory.

Wasn't a bad game- I thought Glory actually might sneak a win, until van Dyke headed home a cross from Keenan (massive flop at Victory, but looked an adequate replacement for Cassio at left back). Van Dyke then got his second from the penalty spot after Perth keeper Velaphi had pulled down Lucas Pantelis. After Fowler and Baird had tested Adelaide keeper Galekovic with good shots early on, the Perth attack somehwhat petered out later in the game. Keenan actually played a key role in preventing Sterjovski from linking effectively with the Perth strikers. The thuggish antics of Burns and Coyne seemed to take over from skill as the game progressed.

Jamie Harnwell broke the Perth Glory appearance record in this game- I think it was 246.

Great crowd at Adelaide - they averaged over 10k last season when winning the wooden spoon so you'd like to think that they can keep this up when they're top of the league - they're almost matching Melbourne Victory now.

The AFL grand final replay next Saturday will be a disaster for the A League. The first ever Heart-Victory derby was deliberately scheduled for the first weekend after the AFL season but now nobody will be there. The only good thing is I hadn't got round to buying tickets so at least I haven't wasted any money.

Melbourne Heart have asked the FFA to move the first derby match back a week - conveniently, there are no A League games in the second week of October because the Socceroos are playing.

I hope the FFA are smart enough to do this otherwise it will be a very public embarrassment.

Racing Victoria have already moved the start of the Spring Carnival back 24 hours to the Sunday.

The A-League really can't take a trick atm. Even when something promising happens (I heard there were 18K sold for the derby excluding Heart members) a once in 40 year event occurs to put a spanner in the works.

Would it be that much of a problem, MA? I thought the game was on at 730, 2 hours after the AFL would have finished. They could have the GF up on the big screen at AAMI for the fans to watch as they came in.

We are supposed to be calling the state league grand final on Saturday - a listening audience of zero beckons.

SYDNEY
SUNDAY 26 SEPTEMBER, 2010

The first ever Melbourne derby of the Hyundai A-League between Melbourne Heart and Melbourne Victory will now be held at 7.30pm on Friday, October 8 at AAMI Park.

The match was originally scheduled to be played at 7.30pm on Saturday, October 2 at AAMI Park and has been rescheduled today to avoid a clash with the replay of the AFL Grand Final.

“This is one of our marquee games and it is important that we give our fans every opportunity to get to the game and be part of history,” said Head of the Hyundai A-League Lyall Gorman.

“The rescheduling makes sense on a lot of levels and will give us clear space in the lead up and a clear precinct on the night so we can maximize exposure and attendance.

“I would like to acknowledge the collaborative approach taken by the clubs, our broadcaster Foxsports and all of our stakeholders to allow this move to occur.”

ENDS

Rod Allen
Head of Media Relations

Vuvuzela Fitzgerald wrote:
Would it be that much of a problem, MA? I thought the game was on at 730, 2 hours after the AFL would have finished. They could have the GF up on the big screen at AAMI for the fans to watch as they came in.

I think it would be a problem, VF. The Grand Final is an all day event based around barbecues and vast amounts of alcohol consumption. My wife and daughter, who have no interest in sport, spent all day yesterday at a grand final barbecue.

From my perspective, as a St Kilda and Victory member (and remember 50% of Victory members hold an AFL membership) I would have no interest in backing up the grand final with an A League game - I will either be too busy celebrating or too depressed to care. Even last night, I couldn't concentrate on the Newcastle-Victory game because my head was still reeling from the incredible events at the MCG.

On the subject of radio coverage of A League games, the local ABC in Brisbane don't bother. The best you can hope for is periodic updates. I'm not sure if Fox have some sort of broadcasting monopoly on the games though.

I see that now there's a bit of good news around what with Newcastle being funded for at least 10 years and a 31k sellout crowd for the Melbairn derby, the Hyundai A-League haters and Euro-ksnobs seem to have gone to ground.

Just checked out the league schedule and found out that my (now seemingly annual) trip to Brisbane, despite being nearly three weeks long manages to not coincide with a single Roar home match. Which is a bit of a bummer. And they're in the top half of the table rather than the bottom dwelling they were involved in when I saw them last year.

Adelaide, incredibly, managed to win in Sydney for the second time this season. Adelaide are now six points clear at the top of the table, whilst Sydney are winless and at the bottom- a complete reversal of last seasons' positions, when Sydney were champions and Adelaide finished bottom. Sydney FC seem to have no supporters left, either in the stadium or on this forum!

I really didn't think Adelaide would win... Sydney would be desperate for their first win, whilst Adelaide were without star forward Matthew Leckie, on international duty with Australia's U-19 team. When Sydney led 1-0 at halftime through an Alex Brosque penalty, I thought that the writing was on the wall...until Shannon Cole, attempting to whip the ball of Sergio van Dyke's toe before he could shoot, managed to put it past his own goalkeeper. Then, in the 91st minute, makeshift attacking player Robbie Cornthwaite- normally a lumbering centre back, outplayed Sydney defender Stefan Keller and pulled the ball back for substitue Iain Ramsay, once a Sydney player, to slam into the roof of the net. Roy of the Rovers couldn't have invented a more amazing finish.