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FernandoFowler9 · #1 27-06-2008

I posted this a while back on australian football forum, and there was three different posts so excuse me if I repeat myself a bit.

Quote:

You wont find many more critical of the A-League than myself, I have been saying all this time that they A-League would not be able to grow due to it having started backwards. It started with a top division and by promoting the idea of that.

The only way for the league system in Australia to grow it to introduce promotion and relegation however I do not believe that any team that would get promoted would have the fanbase to stay up, because apart from their specific ethnic gropus, not manypeople are really into the state leagues (I am speaking as a Victorian.

I dont think A-League fans are loyal enough to be expected to go to the games week in and week out if their team was playing the second division?

Hence why adding promotion and not adding is kind of a lose - lose situation.

Quote:

When you think about it all Australian leagues in every sport promote 'the best of the best' everyweek. A large majority of fans you'll find also follow the AFL or rugby or cricket etc. In the AFL they have a draft system so every team will have their own turn at the top. This doesn't happen in football.

Can you compare the crowds and quality of grounds etc of the AFL to the VFL or SANFL etc?

No.

Lets say there wasto be 12 teams it the A-League. They then decided to make a promotion and relegation system. The team that did win promotion would be almost guarenteed to go straight back down. Because no one would have been following them in the past season. Because Australians are not used to a 'second division' type of attitude.

A majority of the promotion of Australian football is being targeted at the younger generation because they are the future people who will be following the game.

And can you tell any one from the younger generation than supports a VFL, SANFL, WAFL etc club?

You have people from Bendigo say that support Collingwood not the Bendigo team.

So then when this team gets promoted eventually, you have the relegated team [we'll say Central Coast] that's support would drop and would suddenly lose every player because the quality of the leagues would be so different therefore so would the pay they recieve. The promoted team would have all the glory hunters of that area jump on the bandwagon all of a sudden but 3 games in after they're -12 goals in goal difference you wouldn't be seeing much of those fans anymore.

Quote:

You've said yourself there that the A2-League wouldn't have a good a relationship with the A-League that the CCC has with the BPL. In the Premier League you have Derby and Birmingham come up and both go back down, if the A2-League was to be even worse than having 66% of the teams come up go down then what really is the point?

I'll probably repeat a few of my previous points but a local team attitude isn't exactly what Australians have, hell i support the Western Bulldogs and I live just down the road from the Essendon Training ground, my neighbours support Melboune and Collingwood.

However I do understand what you mean in terms of if I lived in Geelong or Woolengong, a big place outside the major cities and a team just started there and I was a fan of football, then I would go to the games with mates, it'd probably be a cheap place you could just go with mates, to watch some football, however Geelong has a population of 160,000. I doubt even 1% of the population would be interested in football or ever going to a match wouldn't you? Meaning the attendance for the games would be around 1,600 a game.

And I doubt anyone outside Geelong or Woolengong would be interested in watching Geelong V Wollengong.

I would like to get AG and MR opinion on this!

MarkusRevolver · #2 27-06-2008

Basically sums up my thoughts and emotions about it. I do beleive that there is a promotion/relegation system being made at the moment as Platini has decided that every league in the world must have one, but yeah, who is going to go out and support division 2 clubs? And seeing as how we struggle to get even half decent talent out here as it is, who on earth is going to join one of our second division teams?

There is always that slight hope that these other teams will gain support though. Take for example Port Adelaide in the AFL. Started up roughly 7 years after the Crows, and they have a decent (not a nice bunch though) crowd. Same goes for Fremantle and the West Coast. Where the problem lies is attracting people towards the sport more than anything, because from most of the people that i've ever spoken to, this is an anti-"soccer" country.

FernandoFowler9 · #3 29-06-2008

I suppose you make a good point there with the Port Adelaie thing, but AFL is much more popular than football is, do you think that a second Adelaide team would be supported and accepted? If it was in the second division? Or would it be treated as a reserve team?

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CHAT FOOTBALL FORUM

My reasons for why the A-League is crappy

My reasons for why the A-League is crappy