yeh looks like the heart was maybe not such a good idea after all, I predict the club will fold within 2 seasons, and a canberra club come in in its place. Gold coast should fold as well and bring in Wollongong, I believe both of these clubs would average over 10,000 a match, which is alot better than what Heart and Gold coast average.
Central Coast is currently in the midst of their 4th best season attendance wise, granted that is mostly due to the 10k+ they got on the first game, but even then 6,883 is not out of the ordinary for them. The Heart are also above last year's average once you remove the Victory games from last year's number. Don't get me wrong, we're talking about an average of 6,448 vs a 5,814, so that's not good, but it is at least a step in the right direction. What the Heart really need is somewhere else to play, IMHO. Not saying in a different city, but right now they are playing in the same stadium as the Victory and they are always going to have that little brother reputation if they continue that way.
Eh, I don't think there's a problem with Swan Street so much as Heart lack 'character' - they're not-Victory but that's a pretty empty vessel - so far their players and their style just haven't resonated with anyone outside Victory-haters. Not winning kinda hurts too.
The problem with the Heart is that the Victory marketed themselves as a team for all Victorians. They use the state colours, uniform heavily based on the old Aussie Rules state jumper etc. They have done this very succesfully and thus most Victorians would consider Victory to represent them in A-League. I'd imagine that over 80% of Victorians, if asked what A-League team they supported would reply with the Victory (most of this support however won;t go that far). The Melbourne metropolitan area is laid out in a circular fashion so there isn't any clear geographical divides between different regions of the city, Perth for instance is clearly divided by the Swan river and Sydney has a geographical split between the inner suburbs and the western suburbs. Melbourne Heart also marketed themselves poorly, not so much with the choice of stadium- because they don't actually have a choice in the matter, but that they don't actually represent anything. They don't represent a different socio-economic class, they don't represent a different region and they aren't associated with the state as a whole. Whilst I have my doubts about whether a Geelong team would be succesful it would at least have a different stadium and be able to differentiate itself from the Victory. The downside to Geelong is that it is one of the strongest AFL cities, the AFL club effectively owns the only useable stadium and that Geelong may not have a large enough population to support a team. A Canberra would have lower crowds than Newcastle. The Mariners populations is that Gosford isn't really large enough to support a team. I'm not actually sure why Gosford was selected in a first place. The next team has to be Western Sydney. It's a closest thing to a heartland the sport has in Australia, has a very large population space, has several avaliable stadia and can easily differentiate itself from Sydney FC.
we already got too many teams in nsw, maybe just one more for the south coast, heart was poorly concieved, some stupid new agers wet dream, I mean heart honestly.
I wouldn't say we have too many teams in NSW because nearly a third of the population is in NSW, plus the sport is more popular in NSW than other states. Western Sydney is an era where a team can be placed and grow- especially given that Sydney FC is perceived to be an eastern suburbs club. Wollongong and Canberra are other possibilities and with decent stadia but neither would be as big as Newcastle.
Not a bad week. A little bit of a backslide in the Adjusted AAQ driven largely by a drop in the Median in comparison to the 2007/08 median, but on a weekly average, there were some good numbers put up by the teams, with only Wellington being sub-10k. The Victory seem to have bounced back quite nicely from their doldrums of the last few season and are in the midst of their best season ever. Granted it is largely driven by the two 40k games at the start of the season, but even this week's game was a 25k and above their historic average. Code: Wellington 5090 Adelaide 10294 Newcastle 12383 Victory 24820 Sydney FC 11051 Total 63638 Average 12728 Code: Season Average Median %<7k %>16k AvgPts MedPts <7kPts >16kPts AAAQ AAAQRnk 2005/06 12381 11020 13% 20% 39 45 39 35 158 3 2006/07 12491 8785 20% 20% 37 93 61 35 226 5 2007/08 14589 13144 0% 27% 0 0 0 0 0 1 2008/09 12726 11535 7% 27% 33 34 21 0 88 2 2009/10 10390 9398 24% 12% 74 80 73 75 301 6 2010/11 8880 8466 33% 7% 100 100 100 100 400 7 2011/12 12937 11051 20% 12% 29 45 61 75 209 4 Round 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 Grand 1 17552 15741 14554 13331 13631 10810 15970 14412 2 11181 14584 16994 9670 12130 9045 11154 11979 3 7921 5897 10135 13585 9153 10512 17502 10838 4 11651 15024 14828 12870 8674 6624 7331 10666 5 12031 8832 12291 9502 8361 6571 12728 9965 6 8366 12658 15131 11281 12008 10018 11477 7 12087 9928 12442 12001 10084 4801 9817 8 10516 14910 10077 9818 6198 8745 9805 9 12175 14260 15352 14736 12529 10465 13118 10 10400 9824 18308 12294 12238 7359 11431 11 9299 12580 11149 10145 6891 8868 9705 12 10143 15235 16371 11396 9746 8478 11452 13 13204 9640 10709 7522 7250 8641 9322 14 7276 14960 15611 8233 9632 6764 9994 15 10860 10528 14521 13957 8048 7965 10552 16 9751 20003 14415 9901 10034 5936 11000 17 11746 11681 13884 15627 7981 6854 10701 18 10146 11643 17112 17379 6170 8351 11229 19 9602 11941 13884 11006 11359 7635 10679 20 9523 15546 21171 14505 10687 10645 13344 21 14627 16259 17581 17044 9870 9643 13676 22 7097 8994 8203 23 11990 7890 9754 24 10591 11624 11193 25 9487 7791 8498 26 10875 4953 7230 27 12637 14122 13379 Grand 10955 12937 14596 12181 9828 8400 12937 11032
Yes and no, their crowd figures are awesome, but on the weekend looking at the catchment area of clubs like Adelaide and Newcastle, they are pretty healthy crowds. The regional teams are unlikely to ever challenge victory for crowds, but some of them have healthy crowds when you look at the catchement population. Unfortunately if you look at crowd figures in isolation, they don't stack up. The big worry for me is Sydney and Brisbane. I really can't understand why the brisbane public aren't flocking to watch the quality football they are dishing up.
yeah its weird like that in sydney too, the FC are playing pretty good and we have some big names carle and emmerton, not to mention we were champions and premiers only 2 seasons ago, possibly the economic crisis, people are tightening their belts, I went to the gold coast game here and I cudn believ only 11,000 turned up, if we beat or draw perth I expect 15,000 plus against mariners at least, get to the game u lazy arse sydneyites.
Personally, I hate going to the SFS as its a shocker to get to. If I were in the western suburbs I'd probably pass on the games. I know people in the northwestern suburbs who go to the central coast as its quicker and easier than heading into he city. Anyway, in Newcastle we have over 10,000 members and the crowds are looking good.
Adelaide is about twice as large as Newcastle in population and the team has consistently being pretty good. The crowds aren't bad but not great.
yeh thats sydney for you but, nothing is planned out properly because the guys in charge have always been idiots who cant think ahead, u know like building a train station one of the busiest in Australia right underneath townhall wtf?
Half of Sydney's problem is geography. Botany Bay has a very bad shape to build around- Port Phillip Bay on the other hand is almost circular. So Melbourne can be built in a circle, with the roads and public transport like a grid whilst Sydney has some weird long shape with roads all over the place. Perth will have the same problem if it ever gets as large.
Actually Botany Bay is a nice circle shape as well, but got passed over as colony site for Port Jackson, which was full of handy little coves to stash ships in. The transport issues have a lot more to do with mid-late 20th century NSW and local politics which pushed land releases over urban consolidation, creating our vast, unintegrated, low population density suburbs. If you want a geographical culprit, there is one but it ain't no bay.
yes just poor planning particularly with the rail system in sydney, there should be an underground metro as well, and dont even get me started on the nsw roads, utter failure as a state because of decades of labor not fixing and building proper infrastructure, idiot party voted for by idiots.
Not a bad week, but not a good one. The lack of 16k games and number of sub 7k games are really hurting what is otherwise a decent season. If the <7K and >16K numbers were taken out, this season would be tied for the 3rd best in A-League history, but with them included it is #5 by a good margin. And just to show how big of a joke Gold Coast is, they let Adelaide have one of their home games and Adelaide outsold Gold Coast's season average despite the game not being part of Adelaide's season ticket package. Code: Adelaide 6368 Heart 5914 Perth 9046 Central Coast 10251 Brisbane 16428 Total 48007 Average 9601 Code: Season Average Median %<7k %>16k AvgPts MedPts <7kPts >16kPts AAAQ AAAQRnk 2005/06 12250 10424 17% 22% 30 41 43 25 139 4 2006/07 12438 10130 22% 28% 26 48 57 0 132 3 2007/08 13852 12179 0% 22% 0 0 0 25 25 1 2008/09 12355 11634 11% 22% 28 13 29 25 94 2 2009/10 10660 9491 23% 17% 59 63 60 50 232 6 2010/11 8462 7929 39% 6% 100 100 100 100 400 7 2011/12 12381 10334 23% 13% 27 43 60 65 196 5 Round 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 Grand 1 17552 15741 14554 13331 13631 10810 15970 14412 2 11181 14584 16994 9670 12130 9045 11154 11979 3 7921 5897 10135 13585 9153 10512 17502 10838 4 11651 15024 14828 12870 8674 6624 7331 10666 5 12031 8832 12291 9502 8361 6571 12728 9965 6 8366 12658 15131 11281 12008 10018 9601 11184 7 12087 9928 12442 12001 10084 4801 9817 8 10516 14910 10077 9818 6198 8745 9805 9 12175 14260 15352 14736 12529 10465 13118 10 10400 9824 18308 12294 12238 7359 11431 11 9299 12580 11149 10145 6891 8868 9705 12 10143 15235 16371 11396 9746 8478 11452 13 13204 9640 10709 7522 7250 8641 9322 14 7276 14960 15611 8233 9632 6764 9994 15 10860 10528 14521 13957 8048 7965 10552 16 9751 20003 14415 9901 10034 5936 11000 17 11746 11681 13884 15627 7981 6854 10701 18 10146 11643 17112 17379 6170 8351 11229 19 9602 11941 13884 11006 11359 7635 10679 20 9523 15546 21171 14505 10687 10645 13344 21 14627 16259 17581 17044 9870 9643 13676 22 7097 8994 8203 23 11990 7890 9754 24 10591 11624 11193 25 9487 7791 8498 26 10875 4953 7230 27 12637 14122 13379 Grand 10955 12937 14596 12181 9828 8400 12381 11022
Sydney's low crowds has more to do with the mix of people that live in Sydney. Sydney's Football following is primarily European migrants and these are being replaced by other ethnic groups and also the more sophiscated demographics that are not Footbal followers. I moved to Tassie 16 years ago and Sydneys public transport system is a marvel from my new viewpoint.
I dont agree with all that, as football is very popular everywhere, thats why its called the world game, even the muslims like it, thats how popular it is, its very popular in asia, so I dont agree on just changing demographics as you mentioned, unless its Indian type people, where there and (besides certain polynesian rugby loving islands) is not so popular a game with people, who worship cricket mostly, even though most of them cant afford to get into a game there. So I would agree with some demographics in Sydney, such as Indian type and of course polynesian people, most of whom would rather die than play soccer, but not with the asian and middle eastern ones, and there are plenty of them in Sydney, so why arent they turning up in large numbers? I see the problem here with the Aleague at present is simply this, most aussies prefer going to watch harder contact sports such as the rugby codes and afl, and the majority of ethnics in Australia with the exception of Melbourne Victory, see the ALeague games as something for Aussies to go and watch, not them, and they would rather go and watch football at their ethnic club games because of their much stronger culteral ties to them. From my experiences so far growing up in this country, ethnics from european and middle eastern countrys, south east asian ones here are very tight within their own groups, and will definitely stay that way here for another century or more, possibly even forever. This is a combination of two things, one their love and preference of their own culture, and two most Aussies want nothing to do with them, which includes all the politically correct ones, who give lip service of loving all cultures, as we are constantly told we must, or face been cast out of open minded tolerant modern white australia as social pariahs. I do see asians at Sydney FC games, but not that many( of whatever pathetic general turnout usually now anyway) I would have thought given that Fooball is very popular in Asia, that alot more would come and watch Sydney FC play, which I hope will happen. On Sydneys transport, I agree with you its a marvel, a marvel of mediocity, but seems to be getting better since the Liberals got in, Ive heard very little problems with it since that useless pack of communist rats called the NSW Labor party finally got the boot, may they and their corruption and socialist incompetance never return.
To be honest the biggest A-League no-shows are Anglos, and in this town it's because no one knows or cares when games are on. The team has to win big to get a flicker of interest and a bad spell will douse that soon enough.
Agreed I said that too, aussies or anglos as you call them mostly like the rugby and afl, and I dont know why most arent into going to football, bcause england where the anglos came from invented the game and love it to bits, but that doesnt seem to have come here with them.