NZFC or A-League?

 

I think we just have to keep raising the standards across the board in the NZFC and aim to have a team of kiwis playing for the Phoenix.  That would be a good goal for the next 5 years

The level of ability of available Kiwi players is another matter altogether.

The FFA would be very cautious of letting it happen after the Knights debacle. But if it did happen Christchurch looks like the logical location.

I still say that Aucklanders would follow a team that was run well a la the Nix, the problem with what went before was that it was so dire at all levels most of us simply had no interest in it at all.

 

Based on your previous postings, even I am tiring of your inane drivel where this "us versus them" nonsense is concerned, and that's saying something, 'cause my patience levels are rarely tested to such an extent.

 

If you keep it up, we'll have to start referring to you as Colin ... as in Chin, of Goalnet infamy.

 

Do yourself a favour and let sleeping dogs lie. Everyone knows where you stand on the issue. Others are at polar opposites. Then there's the likes of me, who don't give a monkeys either way, 'cause the game here's too small to be bogged down by the pursuit of such mind-numbing trivia as "My league's better than your league, nanananana!", which is what this whole issue effectively boils down to.

 

Surely we're all mature enough to accept, appreciate and enjoy both competitions, which both strive to serve the good of the game in this country?

 

 

Cheers,

 

JR

 

 

One day...?

Like you I enjoy both competitions but the NZFC is in danger of imploding due to the top heavy nature of the Big Two, and the inability of the smaller provinces to up their game  to the level of ACFC and Waitak.

Funnily enought, I would add two new teams, with Auckland having four teams (including North Shore and Eastern Auckland), which would revitalise the competition no end up here, where nearly half of the players liveThere is a really good rivalry between ACFC and Waitak, although their spectators need to know how to become fans and not pseudo rugbyheads. Shore used to have decent support, while Bill McKinley is a great venue for a team. Wellington, would make five sides with decent support.

I think natural attrition should take care of the others. Just because a hick town has a federation, doesn't mean it has the players to compete in a decen league. And those sides are bringing the NZFC down.

Provincial teams may have three or four reasonable players (Hawkes Bay had Brockie last year), but their best are typically Pacific Islanders esp Solomon Islanders. Some supplement them with Auckland players, but they don't have the depth to be competitive.

And what we are talking is standards. Most NZFC sides out of Auckland would struggle to beat Northern League Premier teams.

ACFC and Waitak have set the bar so high, only Wellington can match them, although there is enough talent and support in Auckland to get possibly another two decent teams.

Whichever way you cut it, it is hard to see a decent sustainable league here with the talent for perhaps five good teams.

When we get kicked out of the WCC, I can see the NZFC folding.

The A League is drawing crowds, but they recognise they need to improve the "product" and frankly, it is probably the minimum quality you need to have a pro team.

I suspect that the two top teams in NZ would struggle to match it in the Australian State Leagues, while the other teams are only really park teams, and the only people who go and see them are family and a few sad old farts remembering their glory days which is about what you get turning up at most provincial games. There are no kids, or teenagers, or twenty something lads. So there is no corresponding atmosphere or passion, and no place for it to develop.

 

From a purely selfish, less far to travel, point of view I'd like to see a Counties-Manukau/South Auckland franchise in there somewhere

I've often wondered whether it would be perhaps worthwhile to talk to the Fijian national body to locate a Fijian team in the South Auckland area, in a similar way as Chivas does in the US. Perhaps Ba could have a team based in Auckland playing in the NZFC, and there are 10,000 Fijians who would turn up and watch.

 

Would mean I wouldn't have to drive to the ends of the Earth to watch a NZFC game!

 

South Auckland isn't exactly in my backyard, Buffy but it's closer to Pukekohe than your mob or Ytak are.

 

Only the best players would play in that Auckland team. For all those others that think they are good enough, they would end up at other NZFC sides making them stronger. Granted 1 super Auckland team would most likely dominate, the rest of the competition would be more interesting....

 

Newmarket Park in Auckland used to have regular crowds of 4000 plus. It was great.

Canterbury was a joke last year, and  they will be even further behind with the signings that ACFC and Waitak make to their squads this season.

How many of the Manawatu team were from the area, and the team Canterbuy put out from their catchment area are simply not up to it.

Waitak and ACFC set the benchmark for the NZFC, and the other clubs are just going to fall further and further behind, which is not good for the league and not good for football in this country.

When NZ gets kicked out of the WCC after next season, the money will stop, the NZFC will implode into the petty little park clubs and its politics that have pulled this game back for the past 30 years.

 

That is a weird mixture of comments (eg. "Steve Sumner, Ian Park, and Bobby Almond who came to Christchurch United from clubs such as Preston North End" and  "How many of the Manawatu team were from the area"). Not sure of their relivance to the point you are trying to make. In fact what is the point you are trying to make?

Yeah, it's a bit hard trying to quickly dash out comments on a somewhat tricky subject when at work, so I'll try to explain myself a little bit more coherently.

As I see it there iis a difference between social football and football as an entertainment. Club football, the grassroots of egg-chasing fame - is a social activity, and the people who run it, and are very good at running it, organising the grounds, the kids, the fundraising for jerseys,  do it for totally different reasons than do those in the entertainment end of the scale, professional or semiprofessional football. In the early seventies NZ football instigated a semiprofessional football league to New Zealand, and initially it was a roaring success - especially in Christchurch, which is where I had emigrated with my family a couple of years before. The league was based around four or five strong Auckland clubs, with, from memory - it was  35 years ago - a team in Christchurch, Wellington and funnily enough, Gisborne City. The Christchurch team was based around some very good local players like Alan Marley and Ken France, but the club also brought out some fringe English pros, such as Ian Park and Steve Sumner (only 18), through some links with Preston as I recall. The point is that these English players, and later ones such as Bobby Almond - and Scottish ones such as Alan Mulgrew and later Alf Stamp, gave the league its star power, and people used to go and pay to watch them play. As I said, 4000 and 5000 crowds were the norm in the early days, and the national league was then envy of every sporting code in the country.

Such was the success that every town - and every club - wanted to be part of it, and the league was expanded, and then promotion relegation brought in, and the lines between the semiprofessional and the grassroots footballs became blurred. Local talent was stretched too thin, many of those ambitious grassroots clubs were never able to afford to bring in the star quality to improve both their sides and the spectacle their public could watch - it was a vicious circle. Eventually unfettered promotion relegation meant the league eventually lost its semiprofessional status as the grassroots clubs rose and at times there was the ludicrous situation of their being two clubs in Dunedin, which could not really support one semipro side. So by a type of osmosis, the national league went from being a successful semiprofessional league to a glorified grassroots league- and it withered and died.

This was the situation before the NZFC. And whereby they had a fresh start, with these franchise teams being effectively the semiprofessional teams, their distribution has been done on political grounds, and has created this flawed league we have now. With one third of the population in Auckland, and more importantly, at least half the football playing public not to mention the massivethan immigrant population who are brought up onfootball, there are only TWO teams in Auckland. That is crazy.

Those two Auckland teams have therefore managed to tap those  resources to produce teams which are of true semiprofessional quality, while the other sides, for whatever reasons, have been unable to match it - they are simply glorified grassroots teams, and not only that but putting up teams with players who are not even the best grassroots players.

Auckland should have AT LEAST four teams - a team on the Shore and a team in the Eastern Suburbs. These clubs would have access to the resources to match ACFC and Waitak in every way and would then provide the basis for a strong semiprofessional league. There would be two games every weekend in Auckland with crowds in excess of 2000 at each game - guaranteed. The league and NZ football would immediately be on a better financial footing - and the rest of the country could piggyback of that. Can you imagine the Premier League having just two London clubs.

Instead of bringing the semiprofessional league back to a grassroots level, it would give every side a benchmark of what they need to aspire to. I am sure Christchurch would sort itself out, and given the likelihood of top Auckland semiprofessional sides visiting every month, their public will get out and support it, given how much they dellight in beating any Auckland side.

Wellington too would delight in seeing top football, and their Yellowfever diehards would soon be rallying to the cause, and filling the stadiums.

So now we have SIX good clubs, all on a true semiprofessional basis, strong, with a quality that will probably not look too bad on TV.

And then you have the product to get Sky to come along, perhaps put on a Monday night or Thursday night live game - as the basketball does now. They've managed to piggyback off the ANBL to get regular Thursday night coverage, in a timeslot the Pay channels seem eagar to fill with live sport.

And then there are the two other francises. What to do with them. Logically Waikato should have a side given its proximity to Auckland, and perhaps a University town could house a NZ development side - (that could be Otago or Palmerston North).

Or you could just give a fifth side to South Auckland, come up with a deal with Fiji to base a team there, and attract 10,000 Fijian spectators every week - as turned up to watch Ba play in the Oceania final at Mt Smart.

There is so much potential for football here in New Zealand - and it doesn't necessarily need the A League, but it does need some clear thinking from our football politicos - although pigs will fly first.

 

 

just to be clear daikiwi, are you advocating for an expansion of the nzfc under it's existing franchise system with no promotion / relegation? would you cut otago and manawatu?