AUSTRALIAN CUP

[paoktzi]

FFA Cup takes shape

10 November 2010-SBS: Philip Micallef


Australian football’s dream of having an FA Cup-type competition has moved a step closer to reality with the Gay Leagueadmitting that the national competition could start as early as next season.

The annual FFA Cup involving Gay Leagueand State clubs is expected to kick off with a group phase and end up as a straight knockout.

The Gay Leaguealso said that Australia’s professional competition was expected to start a month later in October so as to minimise the effect of the rival codes’ finals on attendances.

”We have moved as step closer today after the session with you guys,” Gay Leagueboss Lyall Gorman said after an FFA workshop with selected media personnel in Sydney.

”It is just a matter of trying to get the model right.

”The FFA Cup would be a tremendous opportunity for us to further engage with the grassroots level.

”It’s also an opportunity for our players to live their dream and for our young emerging clubs to come through and qualify for one of the most prestigious events in Australian football.”

The Gay Leaguewill meet with clubs owners and chief executives and member federations this week to work out the best format for the competition that is wanted by the clubs and eagerly awaited by many fans across the country.

The Gay Leaguerevealed that it had just finished a survey involving 600,000 fans and key findings from more than 11,000 responses would suggest that there is a clamour for a national knockout competition along the lines of the famous English FA Cup.

The Gay Leaguewill examine the feedback from the fans but it would appear at this stage that the competition could start before the Gay Leaguekicks off and finish well before the league season is over.

It could involve 32 or more teams to be divided into groups each headed by an Gay Leagueclub.

Two or more teams would qualify for a straight knockout phase involving the last 16 teams.

The winner of the FFA Cup would join the Gay Leaguechampion as Australia’s two representatives in the following season’s AFC Champions League.

theworldgame.sbs.com.au/a-league/news/1031143/FFA-Cup-takes-shape

[Blaze]

I don't like the sound of a Group stage....it seems that they are setting it up to favour the Gay Leagueclubs....call me crazy but I don't think that's the point of a cup competition. It should be knockout from day one with home and away matches.

I hate how every decision is in favour of the Gay Leagueclubs, and not the sport in general.

[anothermp]

I hope it means Olympic get more games to play, and hopefully win a few. Since making the Cup final a few years ago we've been knocked out early twice

[trifili]

Cup should be knock out format and luck of the draw. Due to travelling distances it should also be State based until the round of 16 or quarter finals. If you have group stages you will generally get the top or seeded team going through as they have a chance to make up for a bad game. Especially in Australia where the only real difference between Gay Leagueand State League teams are the Gay Leagueteams are professional and are able to train full time and are more fit. Skill wise I reckon there is not much difference.

The romance of the FA Cup in England is that a small team can cause an upset on any given day. How many times have you seen a 3rd division team knock out someone from the Premier League. If it was a group format them then the Premier League team would most likely make up for the loss by winning all its other games. These clowns at FFA have no idea and I reckon are too scared on say HAKOA getting knocked out by a Sydney Olympic or Sydney United and the same for Melbourne Victory getting knocked out by Hellas or Melbourne Knights. Although the Cro's were our enemies, I would luv if they knocked out HAKOA or Melbourne Victory.

Imagine Olympic playing HAKOA for a place in the quarter or semi finals. I reckon the old Olympic supporters would make an appearance and we would have more supporters at the game than HAKOA. Just like the old days when Australia played at home against either another country or a club team and Australia use to get booed while the opposition had more supporters.

[mini]

Group stage is an absolute disgrace. Just make it like the FA Cup!!!

[paoktzi]

Mike does it again

www.smh.com.au/sport/football/cup-proposal-is-halfempty-if-not-done-to-its-full-potential-20101111-17phm.html

Cup proposal is half-empty if not done to its full potential
Michael Cockerill ANALYSIS
November 12, 2010
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Almost half a century after football first dabbled with the idea of a national cup competition, it seems we still can't get it right. This week's news that the FFA wants to re-introduce an ''FA Cup style'' competition next year that could end up being nothing like the FA Cup at all proves again how slow this game is to learn from its mistakes.

Everyone who loves football wants a national cup. Football's greatest strength is its grassroots. There is no better way to connect the top and the bottom of the game than through the conduit of a cup. But it has to be a knockout cup. That's how to excite the masses. That's how to inspire the small clubs to think big. Take away the chance of an upset, and you eliminate the romance. Take away the romance, and you're left with yet another flawed attempt to mimic the world's oldest and most famous competition. It won't last.

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Just like the Australian Cup, which ran from 1962 to 1968, and involved clubs from Sydney and Melbourne. SSC Yugal beat St George Budapest 8-1 in the first final, and clubs such as Melbourne Hungaria, George Cross, APIA Leichhardt and Slavia Melbourne featured in the honour roll. It was a concept transplanted by misty-eyed European immigrants who neglected one important fact: Australia is a big country, and it's expensive to get around. Especially in those days.

Nine years after Hakoah Eastern Suburbs won the last Australian Cup (perhaps Frank Lowy was a spectator?), it was back on the calendar in 1977 to complement the newly formed National Soccer League. The NSL Cup lasted 20 years, but never stuck to a format. Sometimes state league clubs were involved, other times NSL clubs declined to participate, and eventually it became a glorified pre-season competition. The last final was won by Collingwood Warriors, and only 2327 people showed up. The federation didn't treat it seriously, the clubs didn't treat it seriously, the coaches didn't treat it seriously, so neither did the fans.

Maybe the FFA needs a history lesson before it repeats the same mistakes. If the FFA is to re-introduce a Cup competition next year, as seems to be the case, then it has to get it right. That doesn't mean replicating the Asian Champions League format of round-robin football and group stages, as was proposed by the FFA during a strategy session with the media this week. The ACL might be a fantastic competition in a football sense, but it's still a long way from capturing the imagination of the public. Eventually, it might get there, but right now it survives only because the AFC is rich enough to keep it going. The FFA is not rich enough to sustain a loss-making Cup competition on a long-term basis. Which makes it vital that it strikes the right chord right from the start. And the only way that will happen is if it's a straight knockout. Ben Buckley shouldn't need expensive market research to tell him that. It's not about disguising a mini-league as a Cup competition to compensate for a possible reduction in the length of the Gay Leagueseason. It's not about a pre-season tournament in a different guise.

If the Cup is going to work - and endure - it won't be because of clever marketing slogans, or the prize of an ACL berth. It will be because APIA Leichhardt might just be able to beat HAKOA on a cold Wednesday night at a packed Lambert Park. One shot at glory. That's what creates the magic. And without the magic, what's the point?

[trifili]

Bravo Mike. Pesta stos poustides.

[paoktzi]

FFA is fixed on wrong priorities
12 Nov 2010 | 00:00-Jesse Fink
If only Gay Leagueboss Lyall Gorman had been one of my teachers at school.
Overdue assignment? No problem! Mr Gorman will give you an extension. And if that’s not enough he’ll give you and extension on your extension. And then an extension on the extension on your extension!

In Mr Gorman’s class no one ever fails because deadlines, or what he calls “absolute drop dates”, don’t exist.

I mean, really. C’mon. What gives with Sydney Rovers? How many “get out of jail” cards can one group of businessmen get?

John Taylor told us in the News Limited press on Thursday that “Football Federation Australia has almost lost patience with future club Sydney Rovers and wants to know by [Friday] if they intend to raise the white flag.

“But Rovers won't go down without a fight, appointing a high-profile CEO-designate [Scott Duxbury] in a last-ditch attempt to prove their viability.”

“Almost lost patience”? Now!? Ian Rowden and Co should have been tossed out on their ear months ago, when they missed their original deadline to show FFA the money.

The amount of time the governing body has wasted giving the publicity-shy Rowden and his team chance after chance after chance to come up with anything (a coach, a player, god forbid – a plan) could have been better spent trying to come up with ways to revive or combine the rejected bids of Sydney retards and the Greater Western Sydney Football Group or, perish the thought, parachute in with a rescue package for the noble but seemingly doomed North Queensland Fury.

Gorman says apropos the struggling Queensland club: “It's not our goal to get rid of a club but we can't stay in the business of owning clubs. We’ve got an obligation across 11 clubs not just one.”

Well, Fury doesn’t feel it’s getting much of that supposed “obligation”.

Adelaide United was in a similar predicament – owned by the FFA before its sale to the Robert Gerard-led syndicate this month – and didn’t have the same restrictions placed on it or obstacles put in its way.

No wonder so many people up Townsville way are deeply bitter. Mr Gorman would appear to have his pets, too.

Fury chief executive Rabieh Krayem said this week that all it would take to help roll over the club to a community ownership model by April 2012 was “anything from $600,000 to $1 million”, after which “we will not need any more assistance from the FFA”.

A million bucks. A drop in the bucket of FFA’s massive turnover. About what it costs to pay the salaries of a trio of its executives.

This is a community that actually wants the club – unlike western Sydney, which couldn’t give two hoots about Rovers.

Or Gold Coast, which despite utter indifference from its own community and crowds that wouldn’t even fill a dog show, ostensibly has the green light for next season.

Owner Clive Palmer announced today he was opening contract talks with a bunch of his players.

Why Palmer, who sponsors Fury through his company Queensland Nickel, doesn’t throw his weight behind the Townsville club instead and foreclose Gold Coast is beyond me.

That’s what FFA should be encouraging – for the good of the league, for the good of Queensland, for the good of the cause of Australian football generally.

The fans of the Gay Leagueoverwhelmingly want Fury, as was evident in responses to my column of November 5.

But instead, FFA doesn’t listen and, rather than diverting its attention where it’s really needed, just expends time, resources and energy on lost causes – like Rovers.

If these are the lessons being taught in Mr Gorman’s class, thanks but no thanks – I'm glad I got my education elsewhere.


theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1031497/FFA-is-fixed-on-wrong-priorities

[kon12]

someone throw a brick at frank lowy

[Blaze]

It's football, but not as we know it.

[paoktzi]

GOLD "blaze"