National League review and future

A few thoughts on this. There doesn’t seem an option that is clearly the best. All have their pros and cons.

1)Probably the ideal scenario though much costlier. Concerned with the implications on the Chatham Cup. Would almost certainly mean Southern would be relegated and probably never to return. Though is that a problem given their history? Could end up being a very Auckland heavy league.

2)The conference option looks horrendous for Joe Public but would help keep some geographical representation.

3)The current set up seems to going ok at the moment. The inclusions of a third Auckland team has probably raised the average standard of the league and perhaps reduced the number of inter-city players. Some teams seem to be struggling with the current entry/travel fee. Wonder if increasing to three rounds, but retaining a closed league, is an alternative for a few years before re-assessing in 2020. But then again, costs would be greater with third round.

4)Winter football is horrible. Can’t imagine more than a dozen people heading out to Davey F or Newtown Park for a game in mid July. I tend to run on the assumption that most people have commitments elsewhere so are limited to watching/playing one game a weekend. In most instances, people would rather play with their mates, that watch a national league game. Would expect support and attendances to drop

Here's Enzo's Review of the review of the review of the Women's National League...

https://in-the-back-of-the.net/2016/12/02/reviewing-the-review-of-the-review-the-womens-side/

So basically NZ football plans to do nothing really positive for the Women's national game. Can't believe they aren't even looking at a second round. 

 Kenny Smith could not fit young when he ran one.  The best part of the TRS is it was turned down by CAMS as not being right for a premier single seater motorsport. NZ took it up as formula ford was failing and our premier single seater class was too expensive as you had to own the car etc. As it turned out the father(sponsor)/son race teams took it up (Are the cars leased from Toyota?). With testing bans in the northern hemisphere TRS became attractive to driver for off season running and the like of Damon Hill who brought his son down.  

They killed the interest of a lot of teenage players of good std (Not International) when aligning federation training programs with world cup cycles 6/8 years ago.  IMO

Agree. In fact I would suggest a 12 team league with 1 more Auckland team (get yr act together Nth Shore clubs!) plus 1 other successful non-Auck bidder (Rapa/PN/Wanga comb?). 22 match regular season then top 6 play off as with A-League. But of course this won't be considered.

Let's agree to leave Kenny as the exception that proveth the rule. It's fair to say that he was once a competitive driver, for the last 20, it's been for fun.

Lets consider what actually happened post F5000 -> Formula Pacific/Atlantic -> Formula Brabham/Holden -> Nothing -> Toyota Racing Series.

Yes, NZ Motorsport were stupid enough to promote for a few years Formula Ford as the top 'formula' in NZ, and that decision was a poor one, but the reality is there was no top series. Sure, the move to TRS wouldn't have happened if Toyota weren't interested in, give the lack of vision within NZ Motorsport, but it reflected a sound decision- stop trying to have international-class competitions in a small market, and focus what funding you can afford on promoting young talent- something TRS does very well indeed.

Atlantics & Brabham/Holden were very expensive formulas. We attracted to many lifestyle/pay drivers to both those series.

That's my argument with the current national league. It's going to be a money hole for some time, its difficult to see a path to financial viability. How does pouring NZ's precious football funding into a bunch of journeymen make any sense? Why not focus it on a younger comp, with a goal of getting more players into good professional leagues, as a plan to improve the all whites?

The National Youth league is a good start for development and now all SS clubs/franchises have to have one it spreads the viability fo a wider group of players. 

Big problem is it needs money/sponsorship which needs a return. I'm guessing but, the TRS cars must be leased and Toyota is heavily subsidizing this and TV coverage. ( I believe some of our automotive and racer heavy weights pitch money in too) 

Who in Football would do this.  

No-one will. That's my point- that's why the limited funding should be spent in the sphere on young player development, not a vanity series that can't find an self-sustaining audience. Spending that funding on journeyman players lifestyles- i just don't get what that actually achieves for NZ Football.

How does the National League improve outcomes for the All Whites in any of the proposed four formats?

Will be interesting to see what NZ Football would proposing for a domestic national league(s) if FIFA stoped the World Club Championship and along with it the money it guarantee's.

In the south do not that many clubs would be interested if the changes are club based, that is why the franchise model seems to be supported on the Mainland.

Women's league needs to move to two rounds. The Pride have been getting good (paying) crowds down here, unsure if the same would happen if was a club based competition.  

If the leagues do move to solely club based then I think the pressure will go on NZ Football to allow the clubs to run and market the league themselves(should be the case now) and leave the national body to concentrate on the game at international level.

At times you get the feeling that costs to enter the league(s) is used as a bit of a cash cow for the national body. 

What ever happen's hopefully the new formats last more that a couple of season's as sadly NZ Football's track record with change has not been that great for lasting long term.

can anyone mentioning motor sport just fudge off

Re point 4- if the winter weather is shark house then watching footy (as long as undercover if it's pissing down) is a decent option. As opposed to in summer when it's a nice day - there is sometimes better stuff to be doing. In winter you are in the football zone - bit of chat on Saturdays about the game on at Newtown Park tomorrow etc. Do you think it would be any worse?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/domestic/90877596/team-wellington-coach-jose-figueira-still-coming-down-off-high-of-66-game

"Meanwhile, the premiership will have another name change next year as Japanese billionaire Haruhisa Handa expands his involvement with New Zealand Football through his International Sports Promotion Society Handa organisation.

The competition will be known as the ISPS Handa Premiership for the next three years, having been known as the Stirling Sports Premiership this season and the ASB Premiership for the five seasons before that. It follows on from the Chatham Cup becoming the ISPS Handa Chatham Cup."

Thanks for a great season Stirling Sports.

More mo ney in the league can only be a good thing. I thought the SSP was great this season and the increased coverage has been great the last couple of years. Hopefully we can see it continue to grow and try get more than one game on TV per week.

And hopefully fan bases can grow.

Hopefully not a return to the dreadful Thursday night games.

A 2.30pm, 4.30pm Sunday double header would be ideal imo.

That timing I don't think would be a good idea. NZ Football isn't off the standard where we can convince people to watch 2 full games back to back, especially when they can see better football on Sky. 

Something like 5:30-6pm Saturday and 4:35pm Sunday would be better

2.30 on a Sunday summer afternoon would be a disaster for TV scheduling. Audience would be a few tragics.

So, no change from how it is now then!

So very interesting document released today from NZ Football

http://www.nzfootball.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/201...

Will be 2020 before any big changes (pro/rel, timing, new teams) to the national men’s league, when 18-19 had been indicated previously

Two round federation-based NWL from 2018 is great news for the women’s game though.

Ooooooooh, I've been waiting for this.

So, basically, "we'll talk about it for 3 years before any change, maybe.."

Seems fair enough re: the men's game. This year's SSP was the best ever and you shouldn't mess with success. A South Island Premier League would be theoretically preferable but you can't just conjure one up out of thin air.

It seems a lot of big dreams and it will be a question of action, you can see from the calendar of football what they want to achieve but it will be how they implement it and can see some people being unhappy with it. I'm ok with them not touching the mens national league for a couple of years as it was good this year and needs a couple of stable years before more change. Women's national league really should have been two rounds already and don't know why can't be implemented for this year but at least they are doing it. Still smart to keep that one region based at this stage. 

This year's national league had more teams in the playoff race for longer.

Whether that's "the best ever" is a matter for some debate.

The quality is nowhere near where it once was.

This is precisely the opposite of what many who watched the Grand Final say. (I only caught the highlights but it's an argument that needs rebutting).

Wimmin's Nat Lge cant be paid for by Feds though - or we might as well let Tony Morrison take over social football

Mainland / Football South have been throwing the idea around for a south island league for a few years now, but the travel cost is always the one sticking point. To potentially have Nelson vs Queenstown would be the worst of it, but the reality is the average 5 hour bus triip home after a game is a tough obstacle to get over. Also, a 10 return journey is longer than what one bus driver is allowed to do in a day, so the costs are not so simple. 

It would make the football in these parts so much better, as there is just not the depth of players to have such a high quality league in both areas.

I watched the final, and it was a great game. One game does not reflect the overall quality of the 93 there are in total.

Great games tend to happen when you put the two best sides together.

Is the quality of the final or the quality of each game an indicator of the quality of the league. Because while I admit, the top teams were of a high quality, the ones at the bottom were pretty poor

In general, I've observed the following in this year's SSP:

- the addition of Easts definitely evened out the imbalance of resources in our largest city towards ACFC, which IMHO is all good;

- in previous years the bottom teams have generally been dead weight. This year, three out of the bottom four teams made noticeable strides: WeeNix had some good wins, Tasman brought a strong local fanbase and Southern even made a bit of an impression with those Irish lads.

I confess myself clueless about how to judge "quality of football" in the abstract, but the quality of the competition was certainly better than any previous year.

I still cannot understand the benefit of playing the premiership season from Nov - June, when football is a winter sport. 

The report linked above says something about "spreading out sponsorship/funding over a 12 month period".

Would say it's about giving them 17 months rather than 5 months to get resources in place - and probably at NZF's end to find sponsorship.

Two big things prompt the Nov-Feb part of it.

1, they want the CWC team playing in Nov, so they can be as good at CWC as possible.

2, easier access to facilities, as less competition from winter teams/other sports.

So the National Youf League is gone ?

The Chatham cup overlaps with the Premiership ?

So I guess that means Premiership franchises play in a near 100 year old club competition ?

Don't like that at all

If I'm reading the review document correctly, it talks about the Prem teams affiliating to their regional feds and becoming part of the national player pathway, with youth, women's, development organisations etc. In that case they'd be on the same footing as any other club (which I think is NZF's long term goal) and no reason they couldn't play in the Chatham Cup (ACFC could take Central's spot, for example).

NYL stays until 2019.