History for Yakcall

To be perfectly honest, this is a lot of bullshark in many ways. 

If we play like crap but always get 40K people to our games then we have assured future regardless (it is an exaggerated argument, I know).

If we play the beautiful game but nobody turns up to watch it or if SKY pays only a modest pittance to FFA to screen it, then there will be an ongoing stream of pay-for-post comments saying "cut them from the league". This is expected because FFA runs HAL as a business albeit in a bad way (in that they see it as a cash cow while the clubs would do better running it directly themselves). HA:L clubs are actually business franchises, and they make a business case to be part of HAL via franchise licence.  Obviously club performance on the field contributes indirectly to the business case but in a league of 10 (or even 12) clubs with a salary cap there should be room for almost any club to have a chance at finishing in the top four in any given year. Of the existing clubs I believe it is only CCM and WPX that have not done so, but please correct me if I am wrong.  If you tried to raise an argument to cut CCM from the league you will hear that they are an important Australian football development region (which is true of Northern NSW). But this is a conflation of reasoning. If we had a financially viable second HAL club in New Zealand and continued to employ and develop Australian talent, I would argue this would be equally suitable means of satisfying the argument of developing Australian talent, If this was the remit of HAL.

Developing Australian footballers of the future may be FFA's primary remit but not necessarily HAL's primary remit.  A-League primarily makes money from selling entertainment; and that is what Phoenix is part of.  Developing local football talent ranks distant third after making money directly (gate and advertising) and providing entertainment value which will make more money.