Does the NZFC need promotion/relegation?

Does the NZFC need promotion/relegation?

I was talking to a friend of mine who has followed national league football for the last 20 years in all its various forms. He was of the opinion that the NZFC is a great idea except for one area: Promotion/Relegation.

I agree with him but I am not sure if you can have promotion/relegation with a franchise league. Manawatu were pretty average under Colin in Year 1 but then really hit their straps the next two years but now dropping off. We have had Napier very ordinary and now coming better but we now have Canterbury going the other way. Does the lack of fear of no relegation allow teams to be average if they want?

Would we be better with another team from Auckland or allow another team from a region to fight their way in. My opinion is that if NZF were serious about developing young players they would put a 3rd team in Auckland for one reason alone, this would force the 3rd Auckland NZFC side to pick the very best young players in Auckland to compete. I dont believe that a NZ age group team in the NZFC works for anyone. IF they are good enough they will be playing anyway, if they arent good enough to play in an NZFC are they good enough to represent us internationally.

Maybe it isnt promotion/relegation but a threat that is needed - it worked a treat for Manawatu.

What do you all think?

at least let waitak get all the things their supposed to have had in year one before you throw them out!

It's only an 8 team league, it would need a lot of expansion to one division before you ever had promotion/relegation. 

Maybe in a hundred years, and based on NZ Football history, the league won't last anywhere near that long.

In short no

No

Wouldnt a ten team league be a better watch with maybe a side from North Shore and another, 2nd Wellington team spread the players out specially in Auckland a little?????

No

So a 3rd team in Auckland and a 2nd in Wellington wouldnt spread out the players?
So where would the players come from?

 heard romours of a 3rd auckland team and maybe bay of plenty

*Nods* agrees totally with SiNZ.

Expansion from the 8 team league to 12 teams with 3rd Auckland team like North Shore, Bay of Plenty, a 2nd Wellington side and maybe Nelson.

Perhaps later in the future . . . . when the time and level is right, . . . a quality franchise application from Christchurch and Auckland would be ideal package to the A-league. . . . I always fancy to have three NZ A-league teams that was reflected the old Northern, Central and Southern League regions rather than the one team reflecting NZ.. . . maybe one day.

couldn't have said it better myself

In Auckland most of the NZFC players don�t play in the winter leagues sighting fatigue and other lame excuses.

 

An idea for thought hey you never know,

NZFC could create 3 local (Christchurch, Wellington ,Auckland) franchise leagues consisting of 6 teams. The competition only runs after Christmas like the U19 league the 3 local Franchise winners and last place in the NZFC play a round robin winner takes last spot in the NZFC (promotion / Relegation)

 

To get the six local teams 

Each year prior to the start of the NZFC the local leagues receive proposals (similar criteria as NZFC) and the six teams are announced first weekend in December. This should help lift the level of football in new Zealand due to the six + teams who have applied in there area for the chance to play all still training until at least 1st of December .

 

Any local winners who cannot afford to join the NZFC will not be able to compete in the NZFC promotion relegation Playoff but could still play in the local league.

 

Any feed back is welcome (it is just an idea that in my opinion encourages the level of local and national football to increase)

 

 

Yes so Southland can have a play-off with Otago

TKU WOT, what you are proposing of 3 sets of 6 local franchise teams that reaches NZFC franchise criteria is not going to happen, for a few reasons.

1.) You just said that there are 18 franchise that can reach NZFC franchise criteria. The reality is that there was noone ready to reach that level. The other bids for the application to replace YH Manawatu was nowhere near YH Manawatu resubmitted application. Only 3 of the 4 groups that was asked to bring their bids, submitted their applications last with the 4th group knew they were not up to scratch for the bid. Only YH Manawatu had the best bid by a landslide.

2.) The franchise model criteria includes the need to cover all regions of NZ. So having 3 local franchise and bottom NZFC team in a playoff can upset that criteria and be anti-football development should a region is not able to be covered by region in the NZFC.

3.) This sounds like the failed national league club competition years ago when the winners of the three regional leagues (southern, central and northern) had the playoffs with the last national league club. At that time, there were still bankrupted clubs happening (although you mention the franchise criteria needed) and the regional leagues had never enough crowds and never enough player catchment areas to raise the playing standard. Also the hard work and the point of making seven federation is remove the club to club fighting in the regional leagues grabbing players etc. E.g. having two Dunedin clubs in the old winner national club league depleted the playing standard of both club in the old national league because there was not really 24 players of national league standard in the region that two clubs could share. Having a small franchise league in those regions would also deplete the NZFC club standard.

3.) We really only have a population of 4 million people and only so much of them can play that playing level standard. . . . . and that playing level standard is very weak compared to other football leagues around the world. So although one step at a time may be an order, we are not able to justify that having promotion/relegation is best for our demographic or regional situations. We don't have large citys and the playing population is thinly spread over a country region that is bigger than UK.

4.) We only have 8 NZFC clubs at the moment because the lack of not having enough groups with franchise criteria and also not good enough player numbers of notable standard. So why expected another 18 franchise to get players up NZFC standard let alone attempting to make a world class standard league. Lots of the NZFC clubs are still struggling to reach a high standard in sponsorship before they could turn professional, so don't expect the other 18 local franchise to get to that standard and as a result in the future, these franchise will only serve to be feeder clubs to the NZFC clubs.

5.) Six teams in a localized franchise league is not enough games at a adequate playing standard and hardly justify inclusion into the NZFC, unless you have 8 teams with 21 rounds similar to the NZFC system. And when the NZFC is looking to expand, how are the local franchise clubs going to keep up to that standard to justify the promotion/relegation?

6.) The six team locaised frnachise league during the summer would not be a suitable consolidation step compare to the winter club system that still exist now. All it would be is that there would be even more players would be removed from the club system for the first half of the winter club season (there is enough NZFC players removed from the winter clubs) and hence there would be player development problems as new and existing club players are not able to play against top regional players and the elite player selection would be unbalanced in the long run.

A promotion/relegation can only happen if we have adequate playing ability standard that is comparable to other world football leagues as well as having enough players of that ability in the regions.

At the moment we should be look at building the NZFC to solid professional football standard with enough money on the administration side and then also to build enough players numbers that would of suitable football standard that would not be depleted by having a team expansion in the NZFC.

At least we need about 12 NZFC squads to provide adequate football games for the players and have a longer season. We need to then expand to at least 16 NZFC squads.

By having a franchise model for the NZFC and seven federation for the winter clubs has removed many of the club to club or even club infighting that existed in the old club system. This is a progression that shouldn't change back from.

My DREAM suggestion at the end of the day would be that we have 16 NZFC fully professional squads (with a semi-professional reserve squad in a similar competition as a pre-game curtain raiser alternating with the U23 academy squads to show crowd exposure to potential players to the game. This will develop the regional players rather than the six team localised franchise idea and balance up the regional difference for the next tier of players)

These 16 NZFC teams will play in a home and away Minor Premiership League, so they have a 30 league games. Then have the top 8 and the bottom 8 in two divisions, so that the top 8 complete for a Grand Premiership title and the bottom 8 will complete for a divisional title. (at this stage both reserve and academy competition would be finish and their players be part of an extended squad to be available for the divisional league games and knockout cup, the other players are available for the winter clubs) All teams, after the two divisional leagues, will have the their seeding based on their league placing for the next competition format which will be a couple of weeks of a knockout tournament of 16. This knockout tournament will have 4 groups of 4 teams based on a seeding lots for a tournament draw then 1/4 finals knockouts and then semi-finals and final.

So after the Minor Premiership and Divisional Leagues games, each team should have a total of 44 league games and then another 3-6 games in the knockout tournament. So all up in one season there is about 47-50 games. This amount of 44 league games are comparable with 42 games that the English championship games plus 2 weeks for a knockout tournament. For the top NZFC sides there are also the O-league games. So eventually a bigger squad would be needed as it would be with the EPL/championship sides in UK.

Then in the next season, the 16 NZFC sides starting another minor premiership representing their regions with a clean slate to determine who would be able to contend for the grand premiership competition title.

Then the minor premiership winners, grand premiership winners and the knockout tournament winners can playoff with maybe whatever the top A-league NZ side to determine the NZ O-league representative. (no runners-ups to apply).

A NZFC squad could try and go for a domestic triple; Minor Premiership, Grand Premiership and Premier Knockout cup and so they would only need to play the top NZ A-League team for an O-League representive from NZ. (I'm backing that there would be about 3 NZ A-League sides by then.)

Then it would be then truly a professionally competitive league in Oceania. Attracting better foreign players from the Pacific Islands, Australia and around the world with a foreign player policy of 5 on the field at any one time.

Well those would be my idea for NZ football future.

I would welcome any feedback and would mind if any one agrees to some of the ideas in that direction. Especially anyone in the football establishment.

Graham Seatter?
. . . I know you are busy at the moment and good luck at sort thing out this year, but I don't mind a PM from you on these ideas and exchange and bounce off ideas, I have plenty and have been researching plenty of different options for development and long term goals. i really appreciate the hard work you do when there are lots of people to negotiate with after experiencing some myself.

We currently dont have enough quality players for 8 teams so its not much use expanding the league and diluting the standards even more.

Who pays for it ?

NZ Football are $800k in debt, I'd be more worried about a premature death of the existing NZFC than proposals on how to significantly increase the expenses for NZF and the NZFC sides..

AWB, I'll give you some feedback. What you are suggesting is more ambitous than the A-League in a country of 4 million people. I think you have been playing too much championship manager, 16 fully professional clubs plus 16 semi-professional reserve squads in a country our size? Rugby doesn't even have that. That is pure fantasy.

As I have said and bolded the letters in my previous post, it is my dream suggestion.

However it does not stop Netherlands from having two divisions of 14 teams each with the same population numbers as we have, but as they are a regionally a much smaller country in terms of size, they can afford to have a promotion and relegation system.

But we can't have that system because football development in many regions would be neglected as it was under the national club league. So the best way to deal with that is to keep the regional encatchment system for the franchise going but to invest in a reserve championship for regional development. whether we have 8 or 10 or 12 or 14 or 16 franchises, we need to have a reserve championship rather than promotion/relegation system because we are not able to regionally cover the whole country. The whole idea of an promotion/relegation is for football development. That does not work unless soccer is the number one sport in the country and that there are an overflow of footballers of good standard.

BTW, Rugby NPC is fully professional and had "b" side that did well until the popularity of Super 12/14 and was mucked around by the change to the division one, two and three into only two divisions and endangerment to the weak division three team struggling in the new set up and in the division 2 and the previous division two teams in the division one set up. Anyway, there are still NPC 'B" or development sides under most of the main division one sides that play rugby, its just that noone hears much of them and they have done curtain raisers but Rugby uses a promotion/relegation system and the NPC "B" development sides are very weak because the second tier players goes off and play for the division two teams to get their gametime up and not play for the "B" sides because there is a lack of games that they play each season.

I don't think you are aware of the how weak the rugby system is with the two divisional promotion/relegation and they have allow promotion/relegation in some years and in other years they don't allow it because of the cost to the division two teams and the fear of losing their regional coverage. They could have redraw the regional differences like we have with the seven federation but they were fearful of the backlash from the provincial unions and public. So really if they wanted to, they could have remove the smaller unions from completing in the division two and thus removing division two altogether and bring the smaller union players in the "B" sides and make full flight "B" competition instead.

But like I have said, promotion/relegation system between divisions can only really happen with soccer being number one.

Beside, it is time for it to make the bold step and allow more foreign players to lift the standard and expand the NZFC to 16 teams to include more New Zealand players. This way it would allow the standard being lifted by the foreign players and have homegrown players to complete against foreign players and in return lifting their playing standard. And when the homegrown playing standards are comparable with foreign players, then a restriction of 5 foreign players on the field is a must have.

In England, when full professionalism was endosed though the divisions and limiting foreign players was removed when changing from division one to EPL. The standard for the game lift them into the top three leagues in the world and their championship league was also the top second division in the world. Of course what bit them back was that when the level was lifted, they lacked a bit of football development at the elite end for homegrown managers and coaches and so need to have some restrictions like what the rest of europe are doing with the 6 foreign players on the field policy. However the homegrown players are still playing against very strong sides full of foreigners and that would only serve to lift their playing standards but would also make the rich clubs richer with foreign players and the poor clubs poorer with mainly homegrown players, which is really an necessary evil.

I would endorse the same but would not have a promotion/relegation system, that would be terrible system for us. Instead a reverse championship and development within the franchise rather than relying on second divisional franchises to do the development and then buy the players away and then depleting the second divisional franchise even more and hence allowing a huge gap between the two divisions like the mistake that rugby is doing.

Yes my dream suggestion is a bit out of reach but it is possible to have the system up. Even if the 16 NZFC squads are still semi-professional with the three competition formats with no reserve squads. This must be done first before making a reserve competition during the minor premiership competition. When there suitable enough money and sponsorship from these competition formats then the next step up is to make the NZFC fully professional and leaving the reserve squad semi-professional. This would help with the continuity of football development in the country. Once this is in place, it should not have the problems that other world leagues are facing in recent time. The format should be very sound and should be easily geared up to improve the "All Whites" and keep the NZFC standard very competitive without the "All Whites" on international duties. It also creates a very significant development pathway for budding football players.

A strong "All White" squad that is in the top 50 should open the four major revenue sources that most national football associations rely on around the world - broadcast rights, apparel sponsorship, gate takings and government funding �to NZ Football against geographical isolation and relatively weak World Cup Qualifying opponents because of the infrastructure in a tight and strong domestic competition format. International teams would line up to play us once we are in the top 50.

I believe we need to lift some of the restrictions to include 5 foreign players on the field at any one time and expand the NZFC teams up to 16 to include more New Zealand players, this would still retain the standard and should even lift the standard up. These changes needs to be done as quickly as you can. Having at least the minor premiership system going so that most teams have about 30 league games a season and then may be a tournament knockout cup as well. This is possible for semi-professional football at the present time. Then when it is possible, increase the football games per season by having a mid-season divisional split or introduce the reserve championship before the divisional split. either one or the other as a step, it depends whether NZF wants development established or and increase in elite football instead. I think that since the players are still semi-professional then a reserve championship should start first ahead of the divisional split. After those steps, then a full professionalism should be within reach, hereby lifting the standard, up. Actually it makes more sense to leave the mid-seasonal divisional split when professionalism is introduced, because the commitment time would be fair to the players.

Summary of steps:

1.) allow 5 foreign players on the field in the NZFC.
2.) gradually increase to 16 NZFC squads.
3.) introduce the end of season tournament knock cup.
4.) add reserve championship.
5.) make NZFC fully professional.
6.) introduce mid-seasonal divisional split for the professional NZFC and allow the squads to expand to include some of the reserve players for the grand divisional title and the knockout tournament cup competition.

dream up a few million $$$ and make it happen

What you are describing is so far from the realms of possibility as to not warrant a response

The population of the Netherlands is actually around 15 million, and the Eredivisie has 18 clubs.

With regard to the rest of your proposal, it's beyond fantasy.

Oh yeah, I was thinking of Denmark population-wise and Netherlands in their two professional league system. I always get a bit mixed up about those two systems. My bad. Denmark is only a 1.5 million more at 5.5 million and use a promotion/relegation, but I'm sure that does not stop my point coming across before about having two league level but not using a promotion/relegation system but by using a reserve championship instead.

Soccer is not the top national sport so i would advocate football development responsibility with the franchise with their reserve team rather than let them steal from the second division franchise The second division club to restart their development system for the another new player as well as entering after a promotion much weaker football-wise and finding themselves being relegated the next season.

Anyway, if you don't have a grand vision with small pieces fitting together, then how do you plan for the future then?

"You can't be optimistic if you got a misty optic."AllWhitebelievr2008-01-23 00:10:34

It would be cool but I dont think it will ever happen

Why are we discussing this seriously?? This would put the NZ leage into the top 20 leagues in the world, above the A-League.

I think it would spice the nzfc up abit with teams like the Bay of plenty,taranaki and k fallons gisborne but as nz football wasted all the money on themselfs not even the nzfc youth leage this year is being run right so theres not a hope for anything to change soon

That is the whole point!! To create an infrastructure that players in this country can thrive on. Fantasy or not, there has to be an ultimate goal to work towards, or there would be no alignment of any sort and hence no progress. Once each step is taken well, the clearer the picture it would be for many.

We always have talked about having regional based teams for the national league since the beginnings of the club national league. We were the first in the country to have a national wide league, but we were very club orientated rather than regional orientated. Until the Canterbury, the hotbed of domestic football, decided to create a regional based club in the national league and after two years, two main clubs who were opposing the idea return back into the mainland league.

Than the onset of the NZFC with the seven federation regions made a secured regional based franchises that goes under performance review every 3 or 5 years.

It was never thought that it was possible for many, but the regional based teams are a reality, and it happen in a very short space of time.

It would probably be about 12 years until it seems close to doubling the teams from 8 to 16 if there are plans to introduce two teams every 3 years. Quite the hard sell but three years are enough to find some more sponsors and also to check whether the other teams are financially capability in securing bigger sponsors. Eventually by having 16 teams with built up core fanbase over the 12 years, then the lure of other sponsors and hopefully securing broadcasting rights would seal a professional league.

Then maybe then reserve and youth teams will follow after third or fourth NZFC professional season like what is happening in the A-League. Why not?

There are many paths to the goal, but by having one, means there is progress in a direction and it's really up to the NZFC board to make a direction step by step to ensure that the federations are in full agreement.

What really worries me is that the lack of movement between the federation with the board. I think that each federation should have a representative on the NZF board and so would they would have some decision rights on that direction.

Basically,

1.) federation seats on NZF board as part of the revamp.
2.) create the final resulting objectives. e.g. We want NZFC 16 teams, their reserves championship and youth championships and a Women national league to look like this with such and such.
3.) create steps for each final objective and place a reachable criteria for each step.
4.) combine a order for each of these steps from all the final objectives with flexible options and review of each step successfully or unsuccessfully being done.
5.) continue the path when it is financially sustainable. acquire new sponsors on the way when it is clear that the path and final product is shown to the public.
6.) increase order on the timeline if we secure money broadcasting rights. (call it the Z-League).

A comprehensive plan and doable. Take each step carefully is all that is required.

We're $800k in debt and people are worrying if the 8 team NZFC will exist next season and meanwhile others are advocating a 16 team A-League rival ?

You do have to wonder if these people live in the same Oval ball fixated country I live in.

Of course, first things first. If it dies another will take its place. And again new national league of some sort will happen again. Remember Soccer Australia was scathing by the Crawford Report ($2.6 million loss in 2002) and Australian Sports Commission threat to withdrew funding causing a registration of the board en-mass and then a new organization called Australian Soccer Association (ASA) under Frank Lowery was created and changed to FFA.

So we are in for a rough time and in damage control. The wind will blow and the rain will pour and the rainbow will appear. In what form, who's to know now. If NZF falls, SPARC/Government aren't letting whole football collapse it would be too much damaging to their policy. They may let a few thing damaged, but not everything. But I hope they feel a bit of a backlash themselves because they stink at supporting the senior level.AllWhitebelievr2008-01-31 01:57:06