The majority of people directly involved with the game would understand the importance of the P&R structure. It would be undeniable.
Question becomes how does it actually happen? Everyone is quick to point the finger at a single group, but every single group would need to undergo some serious changes and make varying sacrifices to varying degrees.
A-League clubs would need to accept that their licence would now have a on-field performance clause. Reasonable requirements for a promoted club would also need to be implemented. Club values would drop as a result. Many current owners would definitely look for a way out. Harder to get a good price for a club that could be relegated the following season.
NST would first need to exist and then the clubs would need to pretty much accept the same terms as above.
State feds would need to work together. Unlike other places in the world, our (current 2nd), 3rd, 4th, etc tiers are fractured across the states. Who gets promoted into the NST? Number of ways of doing it, but you can guarantee a consensus amongst the states feds and the FA would never be made.
Then there is the FA themaelves. They technically have the power to implement P&R if they wanted. However, seeing as they can't even seem to get a 10 team NST off the ground or a proper domestic transfer system running, P&R seems pretty much unobtainable at this point in time.
So realistically for a complete P&R pyramid to happen, we either need all the decision makers to actually magically agree on everything. Or, the state feds need to be dissolved and absorbed as departments within the FA, the FA then can make decisions on the structure of all NPL's, the NST need to created and have proper P&R clauses in their licence agreements from the beginning, the A-League needs to accept the relegation part of their current licences or have it added when licence renewals happen (whenever that is).
Yeah, not gonna happen.
Then the question becomes, can P&R happen between just the AL and NST or just the NST and NPL? What is involved in each scenario? What is more likely, the APL and FA working together or the State feds and the FA working together. Before I wrote that sentence I would have assumed an NST/NPL pyramid is more obtainable, but reading that out loud I'm not so sure. APL are greedy soul sucker's but so are the state feds. There is also just one APL board, whereas there are a bunch of state fed boards, each with their own agendas and egos. Some of them actively acted against their own clubs simply applying to join the NST.
Maybe one day. Not anytime soon though.
