All quotes here from the Socceroos press conference. I am fudgeen angry now!!
http://www.foxsports.com.au/football/socceroos/soc...
Gallop: I think the ball is in (Phoenix's) court. We're ambitious for the growth of the A-League. You can't expect to squat on a license.
Gallop on Phoenix: If you want longevity in the competition you need to produce results.
Gallop on Nix: On any metric they're not performing at a level we like for the growth of the competition
Gallop: No one is suggesting on field performance is poor, it's off the field where it is poor.
Gallop: We're ambitious for the growth of the league, at the moment their metrics doesn't support claim for 10 year license
Gallop: (Metrics are) Crouds, television ratings, membership - those are the ones that are going to make us sit up and take notice
Gallop: I'm on the record that growth in big metropolitan areas is the right move for us in terms of building metrics around the game
Gallop on expansion: We're not considering anything that would damage our other clubs
Some interesting ones in there though:
"the ball is in (Phoenix's) court" - he could just be referring to the 4 yr option, or it could genuinely mean that they are prepared to look at another, beefed-up, bid for a 10 year licence (hard to tell without knowing exactly what communications have occurred between FFA and Welnix)
"We're ambitious for the growth of the league, at the moment their metrics doesn't support claim for 10 year license"- again, "at the moment" implies maybe the door still open?
"(Metrics are) Crouds, television ratings, membership" - OK, so we don't score well against all of those. I'd argue that other things are also important and the alternative strategy of setting up a new team in an existing market is also risky, especially when you can do that anyway, but whatever. We need to improve in all of those areas but what do we think it might do to our crouds and membership to make it as completely clear cut as "if you don't average 10,000 attendance and say 6,000 members within 4 years then you're out"? A target as clear as that might actually be helpful. I think the base support is there but part of it just needs the incentive to go from casual to a bit more committed. The ratings thing is trickier because the whole A-League is down, ratings in NZ don't get counted etc etc. But even there I'm optimistic that the Nix is becoming a much more watchable product on the field. Let's face it, both the Jets and CCM should probably be gone under those criteria also.