Who s next for A-League expansion? A Set the default text size A Set large text size
Replay A Set the default text size A Set large text size
A lot has happened since the last round of expansion and even a lot since last year. But one thing that hasn’t changed is discussion about expansion. Given that, maybe it’s a good time for a bit of a look at where things stand.
In the last round of expansion there were 15 bids that stuck around, which were then cut down to a shortlist of ten for consideration. The list of 15 were Western United, Macarthur, South West Sydney, Southern Expansion, Team 11 in Dandenong, Wollongong Wolves, South Melbourne, Western Pride in Ipswich, Canberra and Capital Region, Brisbane City, Gold Coast United, West Adelaide, Belgravia Leisure, Tasmania and Fremantle City.
The Australian Professional Leagues has made an impassioned plea to all football lovers of this country to get behind the club game as it enters a new phase of its long and tortured road to sustainability.
Growing up on Sydney s northern beaches, anyone sport obsessed knew who Bob Bozo Fulton was.
I was no different, and after landing a dream gig writing for the Manly Daily in 2008 as a budding junior sports journalist, our paths soon crossed.
Plenty of colleagues and other scribes were quick to tell me not to get Bozo offside - he knew people from all walks of life and had contacts galore, they said.
Eventually I took on a senior sports role with the newspaper of record on the Sydney s Northern Beaches, with the daily movements of the Manly Sea Eagles the most crucial round for my job.
It truly is a little bit of everything.
The pandemic, for one, has undoubtedly contributed to a selectively restrained economic climate – families are wary of where their dollars are being spent and it doesn’t help that venue ticket prices have been a sore point for years.
Perhaps the ultimate crescendo came in the form of this season’s debutants Macarthur FC charging an eye-gouging $50 per person for Sydney FC active fans to attend Bulls matches, which club director Sam Krslovic attributed to COVID and an unanswered voicemail.
But Australian football’s problems existed well before the COVID-19 outbreak - all the shutdown period did was put our longstanding issues under the microscope.