New a-league team

New a-league team

as soon as next season gold coast and ffa are considering putting a new team into the hyundai a-league

wont that mean with an uneven amount that there will have to be a bye every week

No they will add two - Gold Coast Galaxy plus Northern Thunder

This is all still up in the air

Gold Coast looks to be a good place for a team. Good stadium, good facilities,to bad they couldn't find a better name than Gold Coast Galaxy, almost as bad as northern thunder.

Gold Coast has the more advanced bid. I think if any teams were to join in 08 it would just be GC.

I hope so.

It feels abit short with 8 teams.

Not a great name but then neither was Phoenix - you get used to it after a while.

eh? Phoenix is a mean name... what u on about lol, its miles better than victory, mariners, glory n all that crap aussies come up with, and its a symbol 

Gold Coast Galaxy is a terrible name for me personally - I keep tabs on the LA Galaxy and don't want them to have a sister team relationship with any A-League opponents of ours! Could be worse though - Chivas Gold Coast! Be too easy for me to dislike them

I hope it expands to 10 teams next year, 8 teams is far to small.

Gold Coast Groinstrains perhaps?

goldcoast gooch's

it should be 10 and you play each team 4 times

It wold be alot better with two extra teams due to more home games!!!!

As much as i'd like to see that i doubt it would happen.

yeah...i duno good and bad

Thats 36 games a season..would have to do away with playoffs.

 there are 2 teams joining ..gold coast galaxy and northern thunder !!

Hmmm
With 8 teams its 21 rounds plus playoffs at the moment

With 10 teams will it be:
27 Rounds - play each team 3 times
or
18 Rounds - play each team twice (dont know if I'd want less games)

An extra 6 weeks may be difficult for teams who share a stadium with Rugby.

Has the A-league posted anything on this yet?


barts

Northern Thunder's coach seems to Wyton Rufer.

Yes Rufer was involved in their failed bid last time so I disagree with those that say the Tropical Thunder are not ready (I understand they are dropping the Northern bit). Rufers team was well backed and reasonably ready before.

The catchment area for Townsville is immense. The Cowboys get huge support and a football team would as well.

I wouldn't judge Townsville's capacity for football support based on their league team. Townsville is a rugby league stronghold, has been long before the NRL came around, it's one of league's strongest player development areas along with Newcastle, Wollongong and of course Sydney.

That being said, those fans are rabid and even more parochial and I'm sure that those who do give the Thunder a chance will give it their all. Despite being a Nowra boy (just south of Wollongong), I'd love to see Townsville get a team.

Plus that would be one HELL of an away trip to go to. Anyone up for watching the Phoenix play at Dairy Farmers, followed by a few scuba dives?

It would be hard to imagine big crowd support at Townsville....the population is only 150,000. You would need 10% of the total population turning up every week to get a decent crowd. There's no population base close.....Mackay and Cairns are 8 hours driving away.
It would be like having an A-League team in Dunedin!!!!!!

I was in Townsville for the Scotland v Japan game in RWC 03 - there are some interesting characters there to say the least - although they probably haven't seen a couple of hundred men in kilts before - the drunken redneck queenslanders had plenty to say about it though!

You will find that travel to aussies who live in places like Townsville means nothing, a 5 or 6 hour drive is the same to them as an hours drive to us.They have good support for their league and basketball teams and i would imagine a football team would receive the same enthusiastic support as those codes get.

Both bids from Townsville and Gold Coast seem pretty good, both saying they are investing more than the minimum required by the FFA. Gold Coast has a really nice new stadium lined up. I think both could get the go ahead for next season.

There is a segment on "The World Game" go to video highlights under local game:
http://www.theworldgame.com.au/wgtv/#

Bring Em On, the more the merrier!

10 in the league can only mean more games for us to watch the mighty phoneix fly high!

apparently Gold Coast would prefer the season after next, but could do this season. Townsville are ready to rock.

Fever trip to Gold Coast - bring it on

A 12-team league would be good.

Thats one i will miss last time i went there ended up locked up.

Nth Qld Cowboys and Townsville Crocs are up there with best supported teams in the respective
comps I think you'd get very good crowds up there

Id enjoy more teams in the a-league.

get together another nz team for the a-league

I'm unsure though about where this will end up. Threre will probably eventully be 2nd teams in Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra and Tassie have also expressed interest plus Woolongong (who have cash). What's the planned number of sides?

Rufer is director of football at Tvillejames dean2008-01-23 13:01:21

expansion is good

with rufer running things it may end up auckland

uiron2008-01-27 11:10:49

I remember those bad old National League days when a quarter of the league got relegated (Stop Out being one of them ). I seem to recall that before the reversion to regional leagues there was for a few years an 'invitation only' national league. Clubs had to submit proposals to be included and there was a lot of bad blood over the selections. Hutt Valley Utd were an unfortunately short-lived example.