Have asked APL re: the claim that there will be no VAR in the A-League Men this season. While they won’t comment publicly APL are adamant there will be VAR for round one.
Have asked APL re: the claim that there will be no VAR in the A-League Men this season. While they won’t comment publicly APL are adamant there will be VAR for round one.
Terrible news if true. Also, doesn't matter if it's not in place by Round 1. There have occasionally been games without VAR for one reason or another. Get it in ASAP and go from there. Better to have some than none
Townsend was a friend of the Nix, and NZ football as a whole. His legacy will always be the total miscommunication of selling the Grand Final to NSW. But he was given a bit of a hospital pass of Covid and a League that had it's income slashed (end of Foxtel TV rights), so he tried to do something and it backfired. The Unite Round in Sydney a pretty good outcome if it brings in millions extra from the NSW Govt.
But yeah wherever he's heading in the Middle East, he's likely going into an opposite environment of football cash to burn.
The F3 Derby in 8 days has been swapped to a CCM home game, who could have expected tons of dirt being dumped on the Jets stadium' turf for a motocross event would cause an issue ...
hate to think what state Sky stadium will be in whan they leave after this weekend.
They use plywood ramps/run ups rather than dump tons of dirt on the surface iirc?
Yeah they do, all of this covers the pitch for a week or more, added weight lack of rain and sun kills grass really quickly. As per the McDonald Jones Stadium pics.
hate to think what state Sky stadium will be in whan they leave after this weekend.
They use plywood ramps/run ups rather than dump tons of dirt on the surface iirc?
Yeah they do, all of this covers the pitch for a week or more, added weight lack of rain and sun kills grass really quickly. As per the McDonald Jones Stadium pics.
Think they are mostly off to the side of the pitch IIRC from last time.
Tbf it’s probably worth delaying as the quality isn’t there to support expansion yet imo. The league has already dropped back in quality a bit. And it’s struggling to support the teams that exist now.
Tbf it’s probably worth delaying as the quality isn’t there to support expansion yet imo. The league has already dropped back in quality a bit. And it’s struggling to support the teams that exist now.
It seems that Canberra is still behind the eighth ball on this. They were very ready several years ago and the refusal to let them in caused a lot of good people to give up. I am not sure if the current bid is based on the same people. So Auckland has more legs to be ready in time, mostly because of the good luck of us having a seriously competent millionaire ready to sink his money into Auckland team.
Tbf it’s probably worth delaying as the quality isn’t there to support expansion yet imo. The league has already dropped back in quality a bit. And it’s struggling to support the teams that exist now.
It seems that Canberra is still behind the eighth ball on this. They were very ready several years ago and the refusal to let them in caused a lot of good people to give up. I am not sure if the current bid is based on the same people. So Auckland has more legs to be ready in time, mostly because of the good luck of us having a seriously competent millionaire ready to sink his money into Auckland team.
Bill Foley's worth US$1.7billion. So in $NZ 2.900,000,000.00 i.e $NZ two thousand nine hundred million. Probably a bit more than Terry could put his name to in 2007.
Bill Foley's worth US$1.7billion. So in $NZ 2.900,000,000.00 i.e $NZ two thousand nine hundred million. Probably a bit more than Terry could put his name to in 2007.
That really is an insane amount of money for one person to have when half the world survives on SFA.
Bill Foley's worth US$1.7billion. So in $NZ 2.900,000,000.00 i.e $NZ two thousand nine hundred million. Probably a bit more than Terry could put his name to in 2007.
That really is an insane amount of money for one person to have when half the world survives on SFA.
I am happy he likes football more than owning spaceships or social media companies.
A-League content folly strategy is a warning for NZ Rugby and Silver Lake
‘We’re a football business, not a media business’: A-League bosses explain job cuts.
I read that headline with incredulity in the Sydney Morning Herald this week.
It was delivered by new A-League commissioner Nick Garcia (back to him in a minute) as an explanation as to why Australasia’s premier club football league was in dire trouble bleeding money and had sacked half of its 80 staff.
It’s hard to know where to start with the A-League debacle across the Tasman but let’s link a few things together that should raise acute red flags for sport on this side of the Ditch.
For starters (and Super Rugby sides pursuing a similar-styled commission should be careful what they wish for!), over-zealous club owners forced a split away from Football Australia in 2020 in the belief they could take the A-League to a new level.
The chief ringleaders were Melbourne City who are owned by the Abu Dhabi-owned City Football Group in which Silver Lake paid US$500m for a 14.5 per cent stake in 2019, since upped to over 18 per cent.
Who was working for City Football Group, owners of Manchester City, at the time? None other than Nick Garcia.
Football Australia warned club owners to be careful what they wished for, cut the A-League loose and are now flush with funds off the astounding success of the national women’s team, the Matildas.
In the meantime, in 2021 the ambitious A-League club owners negotiated a A$140 million sale of a 33 per cent stake to Silver Lake.
That cash injection has been scandalously squandered as this SMH investigation outlines.
Now the A-League faces a potential nightmare scenario of being forced to buy out its largest shareholder by 2029 which would require the sport to fund hundreds of millions of dollars or a secure new investor to survive.
Effectively, that has happened because the A-League made a ridiculous decision to invest in becoming a content company. It spent millions creating a digital and content arm caked KeepUp which featured content from domestic leagues to European leagues and national teams.
Presumably, it did this with the endorsement of Silver Lake.
KeepUp has been a spectacular disaster.
Auckland's A-Leagues licensee Bill Foley may be wondering what he's got himself into. Photo / Photosport
Garcia had the hide to pass off his former employer City Football Group’s own contribution to a revolution that blew up in the owners’ faces. But in reality, KeepUp was the brainchild of previous A-League CEODanny Townsend.
He vacated his seat weeks before the full extent of the KeepUp folly was exposed and has somehow ended up with a plum job running Saudi Arabia’s notorious PIF sovereign wealth fund disrupting just about every professional sport.
In the meantime, it’s remiss if we don’t at least join the dots back to Silver Lake and its New Zealand Rugby investment.
The biggest noise we’ve heard from Silver Lake’s $200m investment in the national union (soon to be $262m) is the global content app NZR + which is designed to deliver All Blacks and NZR content to global fanbases (increasing revenue along the way).
If you think that sounds suspiciously similar to the A-League media venture, you’re not alone.
There are subtle differences between both, but by and large, it’s a content business strategy that is already showing signs of coming up short. New NZR ‘ComCo’ commercial boss Craig Fenton only needs to pick up the phone to any Kiwi media business owner to understand that.
Bill Foley's worth US$1.7billion. So in $NZ 2.900,000,000.00 i.e $NZ two thousand nine hundred million. Probably a bit more than Terry could put his name to in 2007.
That really is an insane amount of money for one person to have when half the world survives on SFA.
Don't think Briatore is worth that much, he has rich friends and always wheeled and dealed in F1 (and got banned for cheating) and owned a store called billionaire, but I think he's "only" worth a few hundred million.
The big problem which I have to keep reiterating is that if the APL hadn't split from Football Australia, the Nix would have been kicked out of the competition
The big problem which I have to keep reiterating is that if the APL hadn't split from Football Australia, the Nix would have been kicked out of the competition
Hard to say really but division of theA Leagues from Football Australia always had to happen but you do have to wonder how much meddling was done by Football Australia in the background leading to this mess.
.@CCMariners are the 2023/24 A-Leagues Club Champions! 🏆🎉
Brilliant seasons in both the Liberty A-League and Isuzu UTE A-League have seen the Mariners accrue 84 points, seven more than @gomvfc, @SydneyFC and @WgtnPhoenixFC on 77 points with two matches remaining 👏 pic.twitter.com/zwveDteQrr
.@CCMariners are the 2023/24 A-Leagues Club Champions! 🏆🎉
Brilliant seasons in both the Liberty A-League and Isuzu UTE A-League have seen the Mariners accrue 84 points, seven more than @gomvfc, @SydneyFC and @WgtnPhoenixFC on 77 points with two matches remaining 👏 pic.twitter.com/zwveDteQrr
The annual Dolan-Warren awards ceremony has been axed, with the A-Leagues set to announce the players of the season at halftime on grand final days. Other awards will be announced digitally. [aap]https://t.co/N0cG4bhHr2
/cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/DTJ26ZJ7WFBLLNCFIQ5F4PJ2AE.JPG)
