Don't get me wrong Ronaldino, I felt you made a couple of good points in that yes your league is much tighter then Dunedin's. I would much rather Dunedin adopt an 8 team format and feel that is probably the way forward, pending Canterbury's almost inevitable rebuttal to a South Island league (don't you think this would do both federations good?).
However, shouldn't your top teams as a result of playing tough games week in week out in what is supposdly a tight, high standard league simply run all over our Dunedin based clubs? My theory would be that a strong league should breed strong teams however what I have seen over the last 4 or 5 years hasn't been so.
The fact is both Otago and Canterbury NZFC teams don't have the depth for an U19 team. If they are any decent they will find themselves in the senior squad.
I think what Otago has done with regard to it's Milk Cup ventures etc is outstanding and is unrivaled by every province in NZ. If you ask any young footballer I think they would take that over the national league in a breath.
For me both Canterbury and Otago need to work together to make a strong South Island league which will benefit both NZFC franchises.
However, shouldn't your top teams as a result of playing tough games week in week out in what is supposdly a tight, high standard league simply run all over our Dunedin based clubs? My theory would be that a strong league should breed strong teams however what I have seen over the last 4 or 5 years hasn't been so.
The fact is both Otago and Canterbury NZFC teams don't have the depth for an U19 team. If they are any decent they will find themselves in the senior squad.
I think what Otago has done with regard to it's Milk Cup ventures etc is outstanding and is unrivaled by every province in NZ. If you ask any young footballer I think they would take that over the national league in a breath.
For me both Canterbury and Otago need to work together to make a strong South Island league which will benefit both NZFC franchises.
All good points. The south Island league is a must to strengthen the game down here. provided a point for much discussion at the the last MPL review meeting. Not sure where you get the idea all clubs and Mainland are against it here, that is not the case from my experience. We have a couple of clubs here that would prefer to spend money on players rather than travel (without success I might add). My personal preference would be for a local 8 team league in each region that breaks into top 3 which then combine to play a 2 round South Island League. Top 2 then go through with the top 2 in Central and Northern to play in National League.
While the spread of talent is fairly good here the standard is not that different from the top to the bottom team and probably because of that spread lower overall than say your top 2 or 3 teams, hence the results the past couple of years.
We also had a lot of players turn their backs on our NZFC team last season for whatever reasons, that won't be the case this time around so we should be considerabley stronger in that area and I recall that we have done quite well against you guys in representative stuff (can't recall the name of the cup) in the past few years as well. Also our NZFC youth team has done very well in the past few seasons.
The Milk Cup is an interesting one but don't you feel that in developing those players you are just providing stock for other areas? How many stay and go on to become regulars in your senior NZFC side? I see you have been going over for a few years now so there must be some around by now.
Ourselves we can only afford to go to Canberra for the Kanga Cup (1st and 3rd first time out!). Our club has taken this path for the same reasons as your federation, developing (and testing) players outside of the local competition.