Decentric said:

Don’t think you can hold your liquor sufficiently to drink with me!

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grazorblade said:

yep if the criteria was transparent and a grassroots club met it then yes. The point is to prevent long term investment which would be discouraged if you don't have a buffer conference league (or some other solution to the problem). Who cares who is doing the long term investment

You could also just expand the league in seasons where a protected team gets relegated and then when enough teams meet a threshold in their academies get rid of the protections

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grazorblade said:

I'd be amazed if they dropped to just 200 in an nst

state league sure, but they probably keep a big chunk of their crowd in an nst imo

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Alex M said:

Some interesting discussions. I'm not sure what the best way to introduce Pro/Rel in Australian Football is. I had a suspicion that attempts to introduce the NST would fail mainly because it was a stand alone thing and the way it was proposed looked more like an attempt to compete with the A League rather than compliment it. I don't think we can have a proper P/R system to the A League until the second tier is fully professional (or at least has some degree of full professionalism within it).

As a way of introducing P/R I think we would be better off expanding the A League but not with the current approach of accepting new franchises but with the approach allowing existing clubs to enter. I would do away with the approach of forming a club that would (and probably could only) exist as an A League club from its inception. The current mode of expansions seems very biased against existing clubs. The selection of new clubs should be based on both performance on the field (they should be Champions of one of the many NPL leagues) and meet minimum standards of professionalism (I'll make no attempt to define what that means). The aim should be to expand the league to 20 teams over time (no relegation, just promotion up till that point).

Others have identified a problem with what relegated teams do and where do they play with the fragmentation of the many NPL's. I think in the meantime while the A League is trying to expand that the various State and sub state federations work on running combined competitions so that we have a second tier that consists of 2 conferences. This makes things more expensive for clubs, but would also better prepare them for the top level that they aspire to.

Whatever happens there needs to be some sort of plan. Right now I don't think the A League wants any form of P/R or anything below them to provide any sort of opposition to them. Without a long term plan I think you will still be discussing this after I'm gone and I'm hoping to be around for another 20 years or so.

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