National League review and future

I think football in New Zealand needs to re-assess how they structure scheduling of the leagues, with maybe an over-lapping of club football and the franchised national league. With them currently running into one another, it creates a full year of football for the majority of the good players in New Zealand, leading to potential burn out.

My opinion is that they should look to move towards the style of league system that NPC rugby runs, having players associated with clubs in their respective leagues, but then if they are good enough they get the call up to play for a franchise. This would give players a reason to perform weekly for their clubs, in the hopes that they could get the call up. It would also give the fringe players of the franchises - or the players playing poorly, a chance to drop down and play a club game or two to regain their form.

I would have the club football leagues start earlier in the year, i.e early February, and then have the national league start around May, and run through until October- November. That gives players chance to play for their clubs, and coaches can scout and pick sides based on the best players in the best form. It also creates a tier that players can push towards playing for.

This obviously has both positives and negatives, but what potential system won't.

Club - franchise - I don't care as long as it's played in summer or what that eff am I supposed to write about for 6 months of the year??? :-)

Yes.

3 team tournament played over Waitangi weekend each weekend: ACFC, Wanderers, WeeNix. Winning team enters OCL. WeeNix and Wanderers ineligible to enter OCL, so if either of them win the next best eligible team goes into the OCL.

Can I get some sort of consulting fee from NZF?

 

I also like the idea of a "champions' league" type format played at the end of the winter season through to Xmas. But I think it has to be centrally funded (if you get into it, all costs are covered). 

Otherwise we will repeat the mistakes of the past and cripple clubs with costs as a punishment for being successful.

Would the "champion's league" take place at one venue in a condensed period of time? that would significantly reduce costs and make it easier to broadcast. 

i think one thing that shouldn't be that much of an issue (initially) is croud numbers - it's not an indication of quality of the league.

Instead focus on getting exposure for the league (1 game per round per region) on TV and if the product is good enough then interest in the league will follow and from there croud numbers will increase.

I like the idea like i said previously of regional premier leagues with 2 rounds of say 18 teams in a league (it could be split after 2 rounds and a championship/relegation 3rd round, like scotland if the league is only say 12 teams).

Once the season is over then there is a centrally funded "national league" either 1 round or champions league format over say 2 months - so then we have football from Jan to say October - couple of months off and then back into it.

Having a break for me is just as important as having a longer league - someone mentioned it above that the best players are doing back to back seasons and it's not great for them in the long run or the quality of either league.

Sounds good actually.

Is this possibly about a negotiating position with some of the larger franchises? Or is he deadly serious?

He's deadly clueless

ACFC  hold a lot of power when it comes to  National League. 

Never cross the money men.

Read this from Bidwell

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/domestic/685...

As far as broadcasting goes, I'd suggest you start start with a well-made, high quality highlights show, to build interest in the league... some of the games might not be great viewing, but they'll be way more interesting in a 4 minute hilite format... broadcasting full matches, especially if the football is pretty average (like the curtain raisers last year), would do more harm than good in the first instance... the highlights show a few years back started small, but had an OK following by season's end - and would've had even more if allowed to continue the following year...

Rumour is if this happens Auckland City will become a club in its own right and will compete rather than Central United.

Wouldn't surprise me if Central United changed their name to Auckland City as the Auckland City name is better known on an International level

I know politically it is completely impossible, but for me, the sensible way to run a national league is a centrally funded summer league with regional rep teams.  Will never happen I know, but would theoretically have the best players playing, would give regional rivalries (Canterbury v. Wellington v. Auckland etc...) and would have much more credibility for TV coverage than Melville  v. Cashmere Technical.

Central stalwarts may not embrace that.

The franchise system actually makes a lot of sense. Having a club style league just won't work. People have their clubs and aren't going to start supporting another one just because they are playing clubs from Auckland. 

The original concept is that you have the club season and the best players from the clubs are combined into a franchise. The problem seems to be that various clubs gained control of the franchises. When I lived in Wellington, I didn't have a car. Getting to Miramar was just too much effort compared to going to Newtown.

It's all about sustainability, club football on the whole is sustainable and only partly reliant on grant funding. Franchise is obviously not sustainable and fully reliant on grant funding. We need taxpayer input to make a sustainable, successful and progressive game in NZ. Someone needs to let Winston know that there's votes for him if he gets on board ad make it his new campaign. I like the franchise league and would love to play in it - but a Chatham Cup semi is way more exciting and historically significant than the final of the ASB Prem in my opinion - irrespective of who plays. Also Chopah... it'll be Mosgiel repping the south not Dunedin Tech...he he.

I'd love to see football get more significant government funding but the reality is that NZF (the sports body, not the political party!) gets significant money from FIFA that other codes don't get so we aren't seen as a terribly deserving case.

I'm going to chime in on this one. My opinion is ASBP in its current state needs improvement. Current things football nz has to its advantage is the potential for growth, no other big codes playing in the summer and Sky not being able to hold it football to ransom (ie Rugby). During the ASBP there is really only one other code of sport playing that has average interest and that is Cricket. The ASBP needs to grow the franchise fanbase and establish a culture better than the clubs can grow. This can be aided by having a few live games per week on Free to Air TV1/2/3 to get the awareness out there (easier said than done), remember back in the days when sport used to be on free TV? Sky is declining to the point where they only have Rugby and racing so now is a good time to take a risk for the ASBP. Franchise fanbases must be established like yellowfever. We also need to improve the education of coaches and managers (See Football Aus). We cannot solely rely on pokie funding so we need to create a culture from the top down. Using the old firm of clubs is not going to work, short cuts leads to long cuts and as a neutral observer I can't see anyone else other than grassroots supporters identifying with clubs. Clubs work overseas because of the population base but we don't have the population for that. We are better sticking with franchises that represent clubs within a catchment area and improving the coaching, franchise management, refereeing and public interest. When I come back to NZ I would love to start up a fanbase similar to yellowfever for an ASBP club. Tickets are fairly cheap and the football quality is improving.

I tend to lean towards Sancho's thinking. Traditionally our football has been very tribal (club based) and while that might instill passion, because of our population, very limited in terms of attracting fans and tv spectators. I think what attracts people (above the die hard fans of either team) is the quality of the football. I don't think the quality is good enough to attract big numbers at the ground or on tv on a regular basis. In the short term you would need some quality players that would come at a cost and would that put our national league semi-pro status at risk and by extention, our A League participation at risk also? Doing so is also likely to have an impact on pokie monies and some other income stream needs to be found. That can really only come from a tv deal and there is unlikely to be sufficient $$ offered to do that. Just maybe, we can't afford a national league and have to live without one?

A more left field idea would be a proper sit down with Australia, AFC and FIFA and nut out a deal where we could have 2 or 3 teams in the A League and continue to run our club based regional leagues (Central, Northern etc).

I agree that this should be the long term goal but it's not going to happen any time soon unfortunately

I've said it before. Football political union. It's our best bet. Hitch ourselves to the Aussie bandwagon. NZ Nat league (franchise or clubs) becomes a state league of oz. ACFC A league entry. The auk team in the national league (let's call them Auckland Central) can go and chase CWC money. Game on.

Edit. Doh! sorry. CWC not an option in that scenario. ACFC in A league a better option for the game than CWC money in my opinion. It's pretty much proven that bonus of Oceania qualification World Cup cycles is not enough to take us to next level. The hard route thru Asia will be better for our players and coaches, long term . Also if we joined Asia FIFA would be forced to rethink Oceania anyway. So let's have Oz as our football overlords. 2 A league teams on 20 yr licenses. Our national League is another state league. Let's play. 

Their is another tv deal coming up so who knows what the plan is for FFA. We can either do the hard yards and create a sense of direction for the ASBP or pass the buck on to FFA and AFC to bring in another nz team. NZF needs to make a decision and commit to the plan to show their intentions we also need to keep our CEO to follow through with the planning as there has been too much musical chairs over the years. As other sports in NZ are struggling for attendances now is the time for football to progress and i believe we should maintain that momentum and eventually use the ASBP as a spring board for the All Whites. If we have the structures in place who knows maybe in 5-10 years we can have a fully self sufficient pro league much like the a-league. It starts from the top with quality coaching, franchise management and exposure. From there popularity and quality of the league increases and money will flow from gate takings, popularity, sponsorship, transfer deals etc. If we had a Ramon or Ernie coach at every club it would improve the quality of the league. And that's me rambling too much lol

Ramblings an understatement 

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Ramblings an understatement 

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I know but i can't help it, i just want whats best for football in nz and i understand my view may not necessarily be the best. We have nothing really to lose at the moment.

They will. They're the same people.

Edit: Auckland City Central. Then apply for sponsorship funding/shirt branding from ACC. Win/win. lol.

Martin obviously has a plan. He wasn't a Barclays exec for nothing. Until we hear what that plan is, we're just spinning yarns.

NZ can only sustain 2 professional teams. ACFC need to bite the bullet and step up to A league. Our national league should be a club or franchise mix as each area can afford.

fixed

 

I think you're right, but it's sort of amusing to see you say it because the whole origin of the franchise system was the lack of sustainability of the club leagues.

Be far better viewing than fourth division f*^&)(* rugby on SKY.....and if we can't beat that we're f^&*(&^.

At the risk of sounding naive.

Whilst there are all sorts of things to be done/could be done with a National League there is one thing I am curious about. That is, the marketing of the competition.  To me it seems like very little is done. What sort of advertising is done? Can anyone give me an idea?

Only marketing done that is seen regularly is local and cuts into travel budgets

Too many coaching severance payments to be made by NZF. Can't afford to market their own premier competition.

Just so it's obvious:

<sarcasm>

Too many coaching severance payments to be made by NZF. Can't afford to market their own premier competition.

</sarcasm>

Martin's a journey man. Only interested in his CV and financial exit. We've had so so many before him.

SOS to the few remaining passionate football people to take control and rescue us from these self serving corporate types?

clubs, sorry franchises pay $65k to enter and this covers travel and supposedly promotion. The franchises then do local promotions on top of that (well some do). Basically NZF get $65k from each franchise + a fair whack of the CWC money and what do they do with it? 

In 2013 they didn't even bother putting the grand final on TV (the classic game that ended Waitakere 4 Auckland 3 which was a great advert for the league and football in NZ). NZF really need to get behind their own competition or set the league up as a separate entity to raise its own sponsorship etc