A-League confusion

a-league rocks. for a nascent competition it has done remarkably well. crowd figures have been on a steady incline and the quality of football is slowly improving as the requirments for a result demand it. the nz phoenix side was the story of the season, and to have the national competition grandfinal (should be a cracker!) comprise two teams outside a capital city is filip the football boffins ought to pounce on.

a canberra team would be well supported if the groundwork was in place. i’d be a season holder, too, stan. the demises of other teams cited in the thread are due to lack of appropriate investment. as stan notes, an attractive product well-managed here would be sure to draw consistent crowds. sure, we’d not get near melbourne or sydney no.s, but i rekkun a couple of consitent seasons would see the canberra koalas or whatever we’d be see near-full houses most weeks, especially as the opposition sides would comprise, more and more, players of the stature of kalac, kewell, viduka, etc coming back and, hopefully, scott mcdonalds or tim cahills not going off o/s so soon if the domestic product quality – and money – increases. the public exposure also has to grow, but it will as pay-tv becomes more ubiquitous. in ten years time people without it will be like people without a mobile phone (think back to 1998 and tell me how many people’s mothers had one…)

and we need the a-league to grow to encompass mebbe an indonesian and malaysian team (would inject a huge amount of foreign investment), with the bolstering of state leagues to maybe eventually have a genuine two-tier comp with relegation… dreams…

Canberra does seem to be home to fickle fans, but it would be interesting what kind of crowd a well run, community connected club, playing in a fully professional league (ie. the antithesis of the Cosmos and the NSL) could pull. The fact that an A-League friendly at Bruce pulled a bigger crowd then the Cosmos ever did points to the fact that the A-League is a far more attractive product.

There are more registered football players in the ACT than AFL, league and union combined. That’s not a bad starting point. The problem of course is money, namely (bad pun warning) the lack of capital in the ACT.

Fitzroy!

Ah yes. Canberra’s support of teams. Remember the Canberra Cannons, Canberra Bushrangers (baseball) and Canberra Arrows(soccer/football! And if the Brumbies and Raiders don’t perform this year, there’ll be even fewer spectators affected by the smoking ban at Canberra stadium

I am a huge A-League fan and avidly support Adelaide United (as this is where I grew up and went to all but one of their last NSL season games).

Sadly the FFA has overlooked the nations capital to give first dibs to 2 Queensland sides. I realise this is probably entirely due to the fact there are no major commercial backers available in the ACT.

If a team was created in Canberra I would definitely buy season tickets. But as already mentioned the number of people turning up week in week out would suffer if they didnt do too well.

Canberra has the population base to warrant a team, but I think the lack of financial support is the killer …

True RAGD. When I saw the Raiders vs Sea Eagles match last year, the Eagles fans outnumbered the Raiders fans. As much as I want the Raiders to do well, I was very happy to see the Sea Eagles give them a good thrashing in the second half.

The problem with Canberra is the crowd/fans. They are so fickle with their teams. A Canberra team would have to be fairly succesful to keep Canberrans interested enough. It has happened before with the Cannons, Raiders and more recently the Brumbies.. It is not like europe where you alligiance to a team is based on historical fans.(Your great grandpa, grandpa, dad followed the team) You will always have your true die hard fans that will support their team no matter what, but unfortunately in a place as small as Canberra they are not enough.

So even if they did manage to get a team here they would have to be always up for contention in the finals.. otherwise their first year that they didn’t make it, would signal the beginnig of the end.

I couldn’t agree more with stan_bowles. The Mariners are a great example of how to build a grassroots following among the community, which would be essential for a Canberra team. We have enough registered footballers in the ACT and the population to be successful, now we just need the organisation and the money.

When I head to Sydney I try and go to a Mariners home game. It’s great watching football at Gosford Stadium where one end of the stadium is open and you look through palm trees out over Brisbane Waters. Pure magic!

Ralph

The standard is always going to be lower due to the best Australian players being cherry picked to play OS – guys like Carney have shone in the A-League before getting picked up to play professionally.

It will never be a Serie A, but when guys like Aloisi, Vidmar, Zelic, Moore etc come back at the end of successful overseas careers, it will help develop the future players for Australian football.

Betting on the A-League – go the home side!

Interesting that Gold Coast and Townsville consortia have now been accepted – while Canberra still dribble the ball around.