General A-League discussion

Care to define "east European"?  As opposed to your other categories above.

Money that keeps this competition afloat, that is..

True, but also:

Fans that keep this competition afloat, that is..

Also youd think it'd be beneficial to sacrifice a small amount of money for the sake of the integrity of the competition. 

Meh, I don't mind it to be honest - means no breaks and young players get a chance (or fringe players, like Krishna)

Tim Cahill throws his support behind a Sutherland Shire A-League franchise - today's Sydney Sunday Telegraph.

"20,000 players in the Shire, 26 clubs, similar in neighbouring St George. Hopefully for 2017." 

I don't reckon this stacks up from FFA expansion perspective. Sutherland football people would make up a fair % of bling FC support. Can't see FFA slicing off big chunk of bling supporters for a new Shire team. Now 'Gong wolves I do get. They've also just done a deal with WIN stadium.

3 teams in Sydney? Not happening.

Agree JV. Now cronulla sharks want in on it.

there is a lot of talk in aus about one of the two expansion teams being from the south/south-west of sydney (woolongon/ southerland as potentials) 

I think having two teams and splitting the city in half makes the most sense. There is no point putting in a new team if they are going to take away support from existing teams. If you added in Canberra or Wollongong then this would bring new fans into the A-league who currently can't attend games.

According to an Aussie betting agency, Dunedin is an option(!) and a new Gold Coast team is more likely than a Canberra one:

Next Team to join A-League
$2.00 Cronulla
$4.00 Wollongong
$6.00 Fremantle
$8.00 Gold Coast
$10 Canberra
$14 South Perth
$16 West Adelaide
$26 Hobart
$33 Darwin
$41 Dunedin

http://www.sportsbet.com.au/blog/sportsbet-media/southern-sydney-set-league-team

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

Cronulla is in Sutherland Shire far as I know. Sounds to me like Cahill (who owns a house on the Cronulla waterfront) and the guy that left the FFA to join the board of Cronulla Sharks are trying to stitch up a bid.

Olympic Sharks Mk II.

Went well last time, won a title but no one went to watch them in Cronulla.

NSL Sharks

The ARL team is the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and the football team are the Sutherland Sharks. Fudgeing Shark attack! For as long as the A league has existed the majority of football people in the area have supported Sydney FC. Side note; sky blue is the colour of most Sutherland sporting teams and also Sydney FC. The FFA will not set up a Sutherland based team. Wollongong

Wollongong-Illawarra is a different kettle of shark though and could be viable as it is more accessible to Sydney's south western suburbs.

Auckland didn't do themselves any favours. 11k to a one off match is laughable

Fox News saying FFA will give application from Brisbane for a second A-League franchise for 2017 "favourable consideration".

My mid season #ALeague XI (4-3-3): Vukovic -  Risdon Sigmund Durante Jamieson - Bonevacia Riera Mooy - Keogh McGlinchey Burns. Thoughts?

DM & #10 role are quite hard to pick. Malik would have made my CB paring but didn't play enough for me.

I love the way Dunedin ranks waaay above Auckland as our second franchise. 

Any potential names? .... The "Maori Hill Blues" has a certain ring to it.

Maori Hillbillies.

Personally I think Fremantle or South Perth, or West Adelaide are the best Australian candidates, followed by a second Brisbane team and Tasmania.

Gold Coast has been tried and the people there don't attend. It would take a massive shift to change that.

I can't see Canberra successfully supporting a team attendance wise.

Auckland is clearly the most likely place in NZ.

Aussie Rules is far too popular in Fremantle/South Perth, or anywhere else in WA.

Agreed. Glory are doing reasonably well at the moment and have a proud history - probably not enough market for two clubs. 

There is still potential on the East Coast, and the area south of Sydney is clearly underutilised (Wollongong/Illawarra anyone?)

Relatively speaking yes, but in absolute terms I started to hesitate by now. 

Football (as in HAL) may not be in the hearts and minds of the paying public up there.

I would go

              Janjetovic

Risdon   Elrich      Kisnorbo     Jamieson

                   Isaias     

Burns      Bonevacia   Marinkovic   Cirio

                    Keogh

Bench: Galeckovic, Durante, Berisha, Mooy, Dimitrijevic

I have said it before but second Perth/Brisbane/Adelaide is stupid if there isn't some sort of genuine geographic division. You can't just have another team playing out of the same stadium. None of those 3 clubs have attendances anywhere near big enough to justify a second team. Give teams to people who currently can't attend any football club: Woolongong, Townsville, Canberra, Gold Coast. Pick the two best teams out of that lot.

Townsville = NQ Furries

Gold Coast = GC United

  

Both not successes

Sure. 

In Townsville the team has been taken over by their fans.and refounded. They were getting a couple of thousand to some state league games. Gold Coast were owned by a mad man. 

I'm not saying just put teams back their without any thought. I am saying that if people in West Adelaide can't travel what 10km across town to support Adelaide United then why should they get a team in their own backyard. I think it is good that the A-League has big clubs in big cities which can draw on sponsorship dollars across that whole city. Melbourne Heart were also not a success.

i'd pick canberra

Western Sydney worked.

What makes you think Western Adelaide wouldn't?

Sydney is four times larger than Adelaide for start. A lot of people weren't traveling in from the Western Suburbs for Sydney FC games because the travel times were just not worth it. There was a large untapped market there.

There is nothing like that in Adelaide. It is a fairly spread-out city, but where is there for football other than Hindmarsh? If people aren't traveling from somewhere like Morphett Vale for Reds games, they still won't travel if the other club plays at the same ground.

Critical Lemon is correct. The only way any rivalry will work is if you have a geographic rivalry. If you just put another team into a city then how can that team compete when the other team has had all that extra time in the competition? It only sort of works in Melbourne because it is such a big city and had millions of NSL teams. 

If you do want a geographic rivalry then they have to play in a different stadium. Neither Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide seem to have extra stadiums in distinct geographic locations. Therefore any new team coming in to the competition would have to play at the same stadium as the current team or else raise 40 million dollars. What council wants to spend that sort of money when they already have an A-League team? Most likely what would happen is the new team would just play at the same stadium as the old team, get low crowds but the FFA would get one completely manufactured derby 3 times a year. I would prefer to have a new team in a new location with genuine community support.

It's 22 kilometres from Pirtek Stadium to the SFS and some areas of Western Sydney are a lot further away.

It may be only 22km distance but actually they are hundreds of miles apart because western Sydney (say west of Parramatta) is a completely different mindset from the east of the "divide". You could make the same argument about drawing a horizontal line across greater Auckland. I have never lived in Auckland apart from very frequent visits but I lived in Sydney for 12 years and think it is a valid comparison.

You could perhaps argue that people from Manukau or Papakura should be able to support the same football team as people from Albany or Takapuna. That was a much tougher proposition In Sydney, separated by economic and ethnic dividing lines more pronounced than those in Auckland. The creation of WSW was a logical step championed by Frank Lowy. I think he was correct and we see that in the support WSW is getting, whether we like their supporters' antics or not.

I agree. The previous local rivalry in Adelaide, in the old NSL, was on ethnic lines between Adelaide City Juventus and West Adelaide Hellas. We have now moved away from that model of rivalry and one franchise in Adelaide seems more of a success.

At the same time, if a community was hell-bent on creating their own entry into HAL and was prepared to put it together, they should be given a fair go, provided their financial model is sound. Almost every HAL club went through financial woes at some stage, but not each of them had  to fold as a result. For that reason I would not diss the Townsvillians (Townsvillains?) for still trying to resurrect the NQ Fairies, even if we think they are too small and too far away. Equally, I remember the bitterness expressed by the Canberra bid people who seemed to have had all their ducks in a row except for the HAL to let them into the fold.

Is there a formula or rule of thumb to work out how viable a new club/franchise will be for a given population catchment size?

I'm thinking that Wgtn could be sustainable depending on FFA/TV sponsorship (and others, but TV is pretty significant) and cost of hosting games (i.e. a med sized stadium vs an large all-purpose edifice), so places like Canberra and Hobart could be feasible.

I think you completely missed my point. 

I was saying that the geographic distance in Sydney, coupled with an established football culture out west, coupled with 4 million people, coupled with a purpose build stadium, coupled with huge sponsorship dollars meant WSW would always be a success.

However, there is not the same geographic distance in Adelaide, West Adelaide does not have an established football culture, does not have the population and does not have their own stadium. Therefore West Adelaide will never be a success.

look how Heart/City have gone.

It's a very interesting debate. Enjoying the read.

Technically, Hindmarsh is on the western side of Adelaide. A second club in Adelaide would need to be based probably in the northern suburbs, which would require a new stadium in somewhere like Salisbury. Unless of course there really are people in Adelaide who are not engaged by AU but would be by another team based centrally.

This is the problem with second teams in Brisbane and Perth as well. There is little obvious catchment for a new team in any of the current cities,. Melbourne had a significant number of people who did not like the Victory, and Western Sydney was effectively an entirely new city. Woolongong/the Illawara makes sense because it is a similar situation to Western Sydney, but apart from that they surely have to look at places like Canberra and Geelong.