I let my guitar speak for me
I let my guitar speak for me
Normo's coming home
We Still Love You Colin We Do!
I�m sorry but I totally disagree with the steps taken by the NZFC. This has just been an exercise in papering over the cracks in a fatally flawed competition. The federation franchise system which is in place does not work, clearly. A purely geographically based league will not work in New Zealand, the sums simply don�t add up � just ask the rugby union, and if they can�t make it work with their huge resources, what hope does football have. If regional areas cannot afford to put out a team that can compete, and I mean compete, not just make up the numbers, then that is tough, and the progress of the game should not suffer because of it.
New Zealand had a fine national football league in the seventies, it was of a decent semi-pro standard, it drew crowds that are four to five times what you get today, and it worked. We should take some fundamental lessons from that and apply it to today. One of those lessons was that Auckland, which has more than a third of the population and probably half of the football playing population, should have at least half the teams. Then instead of having two mega clubs, you would have four very good, financially viable and competitive clubs and this would mean that the league instantly has a far stronger financial footing. There would be four other clubs, and they would be allowed into the league based on their ability to fund and sustain a semi pro club. If that means Russian-owned Gisborne City or the Ole Madrids, then so be it. If you can�t pay you can�t play.
But the most important thing is to have a league in place that is not perennially in fear of falling over, and is also not at the whim of the political feckwits in the federation committees, who promise big and deliver nothing.
That is why both Team Wellington and Waikato FC should have been given the bullet. The league should have carried on with six teams, or five if Canterbury had bellied up, with four rounds, and then new teams should have been lined up to take their place next year. This is what happens everywhere else in the world � witness the Australian National Basketball league which dumped two of their biggest clubs because they could not afford to compete. The league rejigged, and carried on as it has done many times in the past.
What has happened is that the league has failed in its present form, and that should have been recognised and hard decisions taken.
Reminds me of a piece written for Sitter Fanzine about 7 years ago...
I bet somebody moans about this
By Roger Moroney (Sitter! fanzine, October 2001)
My urge to drop a tenner on horses like Dobbin the Cripple in the third from Otaki in the vain hope he will improve on the eighth he posted a fortnight earlier at Avondale is both disturbing and inevitable.
I plunged to an all-time low in August of last year when I laid a $50 forecast bet on Southampton to win the Premier League.
Had they won I would have received something in the order of $7500 but... This year they saw me coming and really stuck enormously big odds on...Leicester!
So, $50 on Leicester to win the league-cup double. If they do then I shall inherit $173 million from the TAB. As I write this Leicester are at the foot of the table... I am one of those sad bastards who has difficulty picking his nose let alone a winning outfit, be it equine or footballine.
However, I think at last I sense what the terminally optimistic punter calls "a sure thing". The chance to make a few bob. The opportunity to get one over the bookies. The catalyst for a whole new era of wagering success.
I am prepared to lay a substantial wager on the format of the New Zealand national club championship (okay, the Premier League then) changing at least twice before the end of the year 2005.
At this point in time, the championship is set to revert to summer-league status...kicking off in the heat of January next year (which means Bluewater Napier City should get a flier given the experience of Papua-New Guinea).
This is summer soccer Mark 2. This is national league Mark 71, isnt it? Or is it 72? Gosh oh lawdy...there have been so many formats its hard to keep up. Has NZ Soccer FINALLY found the PERFECT script for the game�s premier competition?
Given the revamped revamps of the revamped original format I would say not, which is why I feel my dosh will be safe in my grubby, lager-stained little fist.
If (unlike The Field of Dreams) NZS build it and they do not come, then expect another think-tank session to find and alternative.
It will not be given a second chance. It will be deemed flawed and therefore must change to get the "crowds" in. The retreats, think-tanks, sessions, conferences (call them what you like) will resume. Ironically, in a format that, unlike the league has not undergone repeated change.
"Why not have a national soccer league through the winter...and have an automatic promotion-relegation set up like the Poms?" some misguided delegate will suggest before being consumed by a wave of laughter and derision.
"I reckon we should go to a sort of State of Origin setup...provincial teams made up entirely of locally-born players only," another delegate will offer.
This will be greeted with interest and a promise to "come back to that one".
Another delegate will also get a thumbs-up for his suggestion that there be one round in the summer... then a three month break... and the second, final, round in the winter.. .then a three month break and so on and on.
"I think we�re on to something," the NZS bloke says with a nodding of the head.
"I think every team should have at least one player of ethnic origin and a homosexual, given the per capita of the population and all that sort of thing," another delegate proffers.
"And going by that criteria at the very least four women," another will add...and the nodding will grow stronger. Devolution and indecision will be under way nicely.
Cynical? Of course this diatribe is soaked in cynicism.. .when the game�s premier competition changes almost as regularly as the seasons (ooh, how about a Spring League?) then it�s hard not to get frustrated.
I shall win any wager taken of course, but I�d be just as delighted to return to my losing ways if I�m wrong.
I�ll even offer NZS some winning advice. Set the new summer league in contractual, immovable, unchangeable concrete for at least one decade. Give it every chance to live and for the love of Pele allow the fans, the media and the players the opportunity to experience the rare and unusual feeling of year-in, year-out consistency of format.
I bet they�d all like that.
You still don't get it do you. The bloody thing fails because those who want to be in it, can't afford it period. No amount of wishing for dollars is going to change that. And you can compare it to rugby because they to struggle to maintain a geographical league at any level, because the costs of doing so in a nation of 4 million are prohibitive of doing so. The league in the seventies worked brilliantly, before they started expanding it, and diluting the talent, and turning it from a workable semipro league to a glorified park team league.
You still don't get it do you. The bloody thing fails because those who want to be in it, can't afford it period. No amount of wishing for dollars is going to change that. And you can compare it to rugby because they to struggle to maintain a geographical league at any level, because the costs of doing so in a nation of 4 million are prohibitive of doing so. The league in the seventies worked brilliantly, before they started expanding it, and diluting the talent, and turning it from a workable semipro league to a glorified park team league.
I let my guitar speak for me
Introduction
Change and upheaval can almost be considered defining features of New Zealand soccer�s national league.
The league (also counting its bastard surrogate, the superclub championship) has undergone regular change since its trailblazing inception in 1970 as the first national club competition in New Zealand.
Since then it has become a plaything for soccer politicians. This chronology charts the various circumstances in which they would discard the national league one year, then reintroduce it two or three years on. They would happily increase or decrease the number of teams in it, scrap relegation and make it invitation only (or the reverse) or change the season it was played in at a whim.
Intertwined with this search for the perfect formula, soccer has dabbled with ideas such as franchises, regional leagues, North and South Island leagues, provincial entries, feeder clubs, federations, even a South Pacific competition, and been to the High Court on more than one occasion.
Eight teams formed the first league, and it was increased to 10 teams the following year, then 12 teams in 1977.
In 1987, in an effort to combat concentration of teams in the major centres, automatic promotion and relegation was scrapped and an invitation-only entry introduced, together with specific entry requirements. These included a minimum number of covered seats, a charge gate and walk-on changing facilities, with clubs able to combine to form composite teams with feeder arrangements.
But controversy wasn�t far away. Auckland side University, despite finishing mid-table, was dumped and replaced by the league�s first composite outfit, Hutt Valley United. Northern and Central league winners Mount Maunganui and Napier City joined them in boosting the league size to 14. Clubs were required to meet entry criteria and had five years to meet the new regulations or risk being excluded.
The necessity of meeting entry requirements by a mid-1992 date put extra financial pressure on clubs, and the demise of Dunedin City � at the end of 1987 � and the expulsion of Nelson in 1988 and last-minute rescue of Gisborne City in 1989 sparked the first calls for a scrapping of the league and replacement with a regional competition.
But in 1989, following the report of a taskforce, the NZFA reaffirmed its commitment to the club-based national league, passing a resolution saying the council "...remains committed to a national club-based league and the continued upgrading of this competition.��
Even against such a historical backdrop of "change" and apparent readiness to explore new ideas and structures to make semi-professional soccer viable here, 1990-2003 was a time of exceptional ferment in "national league politics".
We moved � often painfully � from a national league to regional leagues and back again, from winter to summer, and juggled with ideas such as franchising with a great deal of debate not just about what was best for soccer, but also about what was and wasn�t acceptable as methods of work in effecting change.
I�ve attempted to record the essence of the leading ideas of the day, both for and against, on just about everything that affected the national league during this period, from the sobering costs levied on participants to the sometimes surreal administrative hierarchies the league has operated (or occasionally failed to operate) under.
This is not a "told-you-so" compilation. I have no axe to grind either way with questions of summer v winter, regional v national soccer, or any of the myriad of stances adapted by the game�s personalities.
My motivation in cobbling together this chronology (which I started in 1995) has been to add to the social fabric of the game. Statistics can usually be tracked down, but so little seems to get recorded in terms of the social history of New Zealand soccer. I�d hate to see such a turbulent and interesting period, during which we surrendered then reclaimed a national league not once, not twice, but three times, ever be glibly recorded in a one-dimensional good-versus-bad manner.
But some ideas definitely do look worse for wear. The prevailing certainty and complacency of club administrators in 1991 that summer soccer was not what was wanted looks awfully dated against the mad scramble to be accepted into the new league in 1995 (and again in 2004 for that matter).
But that was only half the story. By early 1998, when the national league was stumbling along under a cloud of mounting debt, dwindling crowd support and diminishing media profile, those sentiments had almost swung full circle and the general view was the league hadn�t worked. Not that any of this stopped a subsequent gut feeling that summer was indeed the answer again in 2001, following on from no national league in 1999, and a winter season in 2000.
Even for those of us who lived through the vacillations of this period, it all became a blur. Ten teams, 11 teams, 12 teams, North and South Island leagues, the dead-in-the-womb South Pacific Cup, winter, summer, the implosion of some clubs, a third re-invention of the summer league... it just goes on.
You may note several of the leading characters and clubs in this chronology pop up with vastly changed points of view from year to year. But then "soccer" circumstances fluctuated wildly during this period as well.
Likewise, at times the processes employed to try and effect change seemed brutally abrupt. At others it they were tediously protracted.
It�s a frightening thought, but the things people said, the varied arguments and recurrent themes recorded here, will, in all likelihood, be debated all over again one day. On soccer�s track record so far, we�re bound to get a "revamped revamp of the revamped original format" (as is cynically predicted in one of the chronology entries here). Or there will a be think-tank session to find an alternative. There have already been so many of these, both actual and proposed, that it�s hard to keep up without a chronology such as this.
Meanwhile for clubs at least, there has been one element of consistency: a continual battle for survival within whatever the governing structure is. As one chronology entry from Sitter!, May 1997, notes...
It is hard work being a national league club. By its very nature, the national league attacks the onion of a soccer club, removing layer after layer of club life until it gets down to the little sliver of ambition and commitment at the core.
Similarly, the bedrock of addicted national league diehards must drill their ambitions like an oil well, down and sideways, through the muck and thickness until they strike a club layer solid enough to allow them to eke out another year.
Then, when the season begins, the motivations of dedicated club officials are thrown on the pinball machine of the league and bounced around on crazy administration, prima-donna players, dodgy refereeing and bare-faced luck. What an existence!
There is a decided "Waikato-Bay of Plenty" slant to my chronology.
But that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is my home region and I know of no other where the soccer issues were/still are so passionately and equally aired and argued.
This precis of events is far from exhaustive, but is drawn from a wide range of source documents. These include my own interviews and personal notes, match programmes, fanzines, minutes from various bodies, and newspaper clippings from several major New Zealand newspapers.
In the case of the latter, I am indebted to the work of a host of sports reporters who have tried to make sense of the ups and downs of national league politics since 1990, through to my cut-off point of December 2003.
We pick up the scent in mid-1990...
Bruce Holloway, editor, Sitter!, December 2003.
promise of youth and the thump of leather on wally...Normo's coming home
Look Wellington has already got a football team, it's called the Phoenix. It might be that that is all the town can afford to support. I can think of two leagues where the second biggest city does not have a team. There is no NFL team in Los Angeles, despite it being the second biggest market in the US, and that league is the most successful in the world. The second example is the League of Wales where there is no Swansea team or Cardiff team in the league, perhaps a closer example to the NZFC. People generally support just one club in a town, and Wellington may not be able to financially support two teams. It would be nice to have a team from Wellington, it used to have two good uns in he good old days, but it should not be allowed to bring the league down, as it has. As I have repeatedly said, the big thing now is to regroup, retrench and get the league on a solid financial basis. The franchise system as it stands, on a geographic basis, is a politically correct nonsense. At the moment there are only two successful teams (on all fronts), so there is a hell of a lot of work to do. If a Wellington group can organise a team that can genuinely compete with those two, on all levels, good luck to them - perhaps the Ole Madrids mob - but we need people who can do it properly, with the financial wherewithall to thrive and not just survive, and not bring the league down with their often well-meaning but financially unsound governership - and there are so many in this league who are really struggling. With fuel prices and the economic downturn, it just got a whole lot harder, and we need to have a league in place which is has a chance to survive. Its survival of the fittest in all football leagues and we need to find clubs that have the player base and financial backing to compete. There are probably three more such groups in Auckland (two on the Shore, and one in the eastern suburbs). What has happened over the last few weeks, is that those clubs that can't compete have severely damaged those that can, and we all know close this league is to folding. It can't be allowed to continue and tough decisions have to be made.
it's sad that team wellington have contributed to the undermining of the nzfc. i understand that it is not entirely the fault of the current administration, but i would still like to know why this has happenned.
I let my guitar speak for me
"Auckland City and Waitakere will hate it - but it's about time they have to suck some cold sausage.
"Waitakere and Auckland have picked the best of the players around the country and around the Pacific when it suits them.
"They haven't shown any great desire to further much of the local talent. "They've grabbed three guys from Waikato this year. They decimate Waikato and then start moaning when Waikato have problems. They've invested heavily but they've got the Oceania [Champions] League to keep themselves entertained.
