A-League- The Promotion and Relegation Thread?

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

They can ******** off.

That would be a massive headache. Imagine state league teams getting promoted at the end of season and then having to compete in the A-League within weeks. Or waiting in limbo for a year before competing. Not workable in the short-medium term.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

Interesting reading, thanks for that.

I think many of those 7 goals the FFA does head towards, like a separate legal entity managing the league and stuff liek an excutive committee for the league. And with these things you'd naturally then have a CEO For the league's management body and an auditor etc...

It's only 3 years old and the FFA still babysits a few things. Only recently was the FFA looking after clubs like Glory. So we're still learning to crawl at this stage, the walking and running will happen over time.

One point on the list though, is fundamentally or philosophically, not a path the A-League will be following anytime soon. That is Promotion/Relegation. This is not practical for the league in foreseeable future. A few reasons I can think of are; franchise numbers, potential franchise numbers, logistics and intrinsic cultural factors.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

Promotion/relegation just wouldn't work in the A-League in the near future. Most Australian's don't understand the whole idea of it. Plus, like Glory08 said, logistics would be a nightmare & we don't have the population to support it.

BTW, the K-League doesn't have promotion/relegation system.

EDIT: They've scored Korea with a few B's as well.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

There is NO way it could happen by October 2008. More like October 2018, if ever!

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

If they force us to go to two division I can see it kiling the A-league. The FFA is already tentative about including so called 'Ethnic Clubs' like south melbourne. To get around this the FFA would have to financially support the creation of 8 new clubs to take the 1st div up to a size where pro/rel is viable and then create a whole new 2nd div where there will be little commercial value which would put even more strain on their limited finances.

Im guessing any clubs that do not fit the criteria would play in the second cup comp (AFC Cup iirc).

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

Are we sure that were reading this right? it doesn't make much sense. By October 2008? next season? that is totally impossible. IF this has to be done to play in the ACL then I say ******** it! We can do without it better than watching our young fragile league be destroyed.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

I'm guessing we're reading it wrong, plus there could be a bit of a mix up, lost in translation... 2nd/3rd sources... the old Chinese Whispers Syndrome.

And with translation, that literally can be an issue - it IS Asia afterall and meanings etc.. can be misconveyed/interpreted, even if it's coming from FIFA lol.

And like Wezza said, we're hardly the only Premier Domestic League in Asia, that has no promotion/relegation and I'm sure neither are South Korea. Look at some of those rich Middle Eastern Leagues - like Qatar, UAE etc... Some of those countries only have a few hundred registered players!

I think some of these are just recommendations or ideals being promoted by the federation. Certainly the federation is expected to apply a small amount of pressure on members to improve. That's to be expected. In Asia's case, they might be a little more intense, with the growth. But still this is probably more for others , than for us soo much too don't forget. We're hardly the only ones in Asia.

And don't forget, if it's how you guys reads, then this condradicts all the signals we've been getting from the AFC up till now, who've been suggesting on the contrary that Australia may be asked to include more teams into the ACL, as many as 4, because of their whole favouring increased professionalism and their disappointment with some nations' performances in the ACL (Not us), so we might fill the void.

Bottom line, we're wayy too attractive to be dropping and ACL know that lol. If it ever got that bad, I'd suspect FFA would cause a serious fuss too, taking their muscle to FIFA. But then I doubt it will, as we're building positive political relations within Asia. In the future I can only see it getting more positive, as positive as it can get ofcourse (not too), with our status growing inside Asia and having more clout/say and more acceptance/familiarity on both sides, in Asia.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

That seems to initially allay, then re-inforce some of your concerns :s . That deadline is still highlighted. Once again, what I mentioned about possibly expanding Australia's particiaption came from Bin Hammam's lips, but then he was speaking to SBS, so might've just been telling us what we wanted to hear, typical politics/spin.

I guess we'll get more clarification from the FFA and the Australian Football Media in time. This surely is not as big a deal as it reads. Australia being new, league new and so forth, we might be given some leeway, I'm guessing, especially as the spread of fully professional teams is thin as it is. Many teams before were only semi-professional or some possibly amateur. I notice the likes of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore are not listed. Thailand and Vietnam tended to have semi-pro teams AFAIK. I'm very surprised Qatar and the successful Uzbek's (Their side made an ACL final/semi-final or two in recent years, I think) have not made the list either

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

So is the new format ACL going to be called "Pro League"? I hope not, that sounds ridiculous......

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

Promotion/ Relegation can take many forms. I'm sure over the next few years anyway we could argue that we are only promoting teams as we expand the league.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

lol on a technicality, I like

I'm sure things will progress as normal as they can't afford not to have the likes of the A-League teams in the comp, especially considering the lack of depth the comp already seems to have, in regards to competitive professional teams.

I think Adelaide's progression may help promote our value to this comp.

But then, like I said earlier, an Uzbek team got through to the Semis or Finals of the ACL a year or so ago and I see they do not feature in that 11 Nations list .

 

Thanks for that article on the J-League.

Yeah, good idea, could nearly be perfect for us, though logistics are still a problem.

The FFA have re-iterated that for the medium term atleast, they'd prefer to limit the A-League to 12-14 teams max.

This could mean that a 2nd division of some form is on the table in the much longer term, if the interest is there. As you suggest many semi-pro NSL teams seemed to manage in that league during it's existence. There is some merit in the idea, it's just whether there are enough interested markets willing to both stretch themselves to be in a National Comp AND/OR Be content to being in the 2nd Tier of the country.

To be honest, it could work really well, in regards you have many places where realistically, A-League access/entry would be far fetched, but having a semi-pro team based nationally, may just work. Like say, a Ballarat or Bendigo, both centres approach 100k people each. Bendigo have a WNBL Team. I doubt they'd ever have a Professional Football/Soccer Team, not for 50+ years anyway. Not just for general market catchment, but also due to culturally, their AFL/Cricket Mad Towns, so initial, even long term, support may not be as high as one may think from such moderately large centres.

Say if a Bendigo had their little franchise, drawing 5000 fans a week in their 8-10,000 capacity rectangular stadium, with a squad filled a few local boys, rest Victorians, with 2 overseas players. They have alot of local and regional sponsorship support, also some sponsorship support from more National Sponsors. Hopefully such sponsorship could alleviate the wage bill and travel costs. Especially if they have to travel to Western Australia. I think a team from town expected to be 90-100,000 like Bendigo could possibly be one of the teams from the smallest markets. With the smallest being no less than an 80-90,000 market. That would unfortunately mean possibly only 1 more SA team and 1-2 More WA teams.

Most teams should be required to be drawing a certain number of fans, a minimum of say 4-5000 for some of the smaller places might be appropriate. When I say smaller, the larger could be places like Tassie, Canberra, Cairns, Darwin, Geelong and co whose populations/wider markets are/will all greater than 200,000 in 15-20 years. Maybe the league could be like only 8-10 teams total, or 12-14 max, split into 2 conferences, for logistics. I guess WA, SA, Vic and Tasmania, could be like Southern. And ACT, NSW, QLD and NT Northern. The top 2 or 4 of each conference could play-off against each other, at the end.

BTW In America they have something similar, the USL (FKA the A-League I believe ) . Their small semi-pro teams somehow manage to travel nation wide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_First_Division
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Soccer_Pyramid

Hmm the Charleston Battery and the Carolina RailHawks are two teams from markets comparable to the regional markets we would have here. The RailHawks average 5000 fans a game, in a 7,000 cap stadium and Charleston have a stadiums who's capacity is only 5,100.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

We could also be waiting for the next TV deal, if big enough it could susidise a second tier of some sort (maybe still regionalised in some way though).

I think the main points of prom/ rel. are two fold.

1) It provides an avenue of removing a team that is not performing - without going through the courts and scandles that AFL/ League have gone through to try and remove clubs in Melbourne/ Sydney.

2) It provides an avenue of allowing a team ANYWHERE to be formed with a hope of competing at the highest level. Obviously for a team to "succeed" there must also be be certain criterias met outside of result WRT finances and stadiums etc.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

The big difference in the US is the overall population. Charelston isn't that small itself, and overall for a sponsor, even a small team still has a very large population as a marketplace in the rest of the country.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

they could always add a darwin team, canberra, tasmania, another adelaide team eg port power lol, the new gold coast team, and another from sydney and maybe 2 more from victoria like geelong and a team based around south melbourne too franksten to be named off course. thats 8 team and you could just make that divion 2 with the winner each year going to the aleague and the aleague looser into the league

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

Oh yes sorry, I looked into it again and while the home bases of those two teams are towns of like 100-120,000 people, the surrounding region constitutes at the very least several hundred thousand, even 1 Million, for both teams.

There might still be some decent examples, but yeah I notice a majority of the teams in their 2nd Tier are still teams from massive markets, like Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta etc... they even have a team from Puerto Rico which represents the country (4 Million) essentially.

Still as AWB suggested, I guess our NSL managed it with semi-pro teams. But Marconi, Melbourne Knights and co were all from massive markets, albeit appealing to small bases there. My big ideas with the likes of Bendigo are a bit too much of a stretch. I guess even with the semi-pro teams, they'll need to be from pretty decent markets (Darwin = minimum). I think from what we have/will have, we could only manage another 8 or so teams, outside of the likely 12-14 A-League teams. I don't think we have the wider market to support too many teams, unless there are more Kiwi teams, but even then, that's just a few more. I'm not sure if 8 teams would be enough, but then its just enough for our current A-League.

If the next 6 A-League Franchises are based in Gold Coast, Townsville, Wollongong, Western Sydney, SE Melbourne & Canberra. The candidates for Div 2, like I and others have said, could be say, Cairns (15 years =250,00+), Sunshine Coast (15 Years =400,000+ people), Darwin (200k+), Penrith (250k+), Geelong (300k+) and Tasmania (450k+)

Candidates for remaining 2+ places could be like Auckland, Christchurch, 2nd Perth and/or Adelaide Teams, and/or even somewhere like Rockhampton (QLD) who would only be like 120k in itself (In 15 years), but it's hinterland, the 'Fitzroy/Capricornia' Region, would be like 250k+ people.

Aside from that, I don't think any other smaller regions (Below 250k+) could sustain even a semi-pro NSL-level club. As even some of the markets above may struggle to maintain crowds of around 5000. Most of the above markets lack the suitable grassroots 'soccer culture,' let alone being mad enough about the sport to draw significant portions of the town's population fill up stadiums the equivalent of 10% of the regions population (Like they do in Europe, other sports). So despite their size, it would be a hard slog for those franchises, especially as they'll lack the prestige of the A-League to add some gloss.

I read that the Tasmanian VFL Team 'were' averaging a reasonably high, 4000 fans a game a few years ago, but they've since dropped to around 1000. Considering that's Aussie Rules, that's kind of surprising, though you could understand some degree of apathy from Tasmanians, due to Victorian AFL Clubs' reluctance to relocate there.

BTW Central Coast can be a good example of the possibilities for such markets. They had a similar predicament being a semi-regional market (of 300k people), but through being a 1 team town and building up the communal support, they have gone from strength to strength, from averaging like 8k crowds, to now averaging a healthy 12k or so now. I guess most other areas, of similar size, in theory, could do similarly well.

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

Well, well, how interesting...

 

Re: AFC wants pro/rel in Australia

Reading the report over on the AFC site, I just can't see were the requirement for promotion and relegation kicks in?

Australia got 306 points out of 500 and when compared to Japan the top team with 470.1 points it makes some intresting reading

Item 1, Organisation
Australia 13/20
Japan 19.5/20

Item 2, Technical Standard
Australia 51.3/100
Japan 82.4/100

Item 3, Attendance
Australia 76.2/100
Japan 88.2/100

Item 4, Governance/soundness
Australia 12.5/50
Japan 50/50

Item 5, Marketing/Promotion
Australia 18.8/20
Japan 20/20

Item 6, Business Scale
Australia 28.2/100
Japan 100/100

Item 7, Match organisation
Australia 20/20
Japan 20/20

Item 8, Media
Australia 16.7/20
Japan 20/20

Item 9, Stadia
Australia 20/20
Japan 20/20

Item 10, Clubs
Australia 49.4/50
Japan 50/50

So our big loosers would be technical ability, governanance and soundness [whatever that means] and business scale which again what does it mean?

The low score for the media is just conformation that no one at fairfax or newscorp knows anything about the world game, which is reflected in their sports coverage.

I'm going to put my hand up here, just where is the requirement for promotion and relegation?

The most odd thing is the governanance and soundness of Saudi Arabia 50/50, UAE 47.5/50, IR Iran 47.9/50 and Indonesia 41.7/50, so what every it means it must be important but it looks like another enigma like the FIFA ratings system.