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The Football Australia Thread

NicCarBel said:
For transparency - given the vote of no confidence on Monday - and now that I have time in my personal life to follow this up:

To Capital Football:

I am writing to follow up on my email dated 31 July 2025 regarding the decision to block me across multiple Capital Football social media channels, and the lack of clarity around the reason for that action.

As I have not yet received a response, I'm hoping this matter can be clarified in a way that reflects the principles of stability and fairness that guide our football community.

As mentioned previously, I am still unaware of any specific comment or behaviour on my part that would have breached your standards or required removal. No notice, warning, or request to amend or delete content was provided before the block was applied, despite your social media policy outlining a clear process for such situations.

To ensure the matter is properly resolved (considering I am still blocked from the NPL Capital Football page on Facebook, I gather this page doesn't enact gestures of goodwill), I am again seeking clarification on the following:
  1. What specific comment(s) or conduct led to the decision to block me from ALL channels;
  2. Why no prior communication, warning, or takedown request was issued; and
  3. Why I remain blocked from the “NPL Capital Football” Facebook page while being unblocked on other platforms.
As per Capital Football’s own Social Media Policy:
• Clause 3.3 requires consistent and equitable moderation.
• Clause 4.1 requires users to be notified of an alleged breach and given the opportunity to respond or remove content.
• Clause 4.3 sets out the steps to be followed before suspension or blocking occurs.

These steps, from my perspective, were not followed.

I want to reiterate that I would have complied with any moderation request had I been notified. My intention is simply to understand the basis of the decision, and so that this can be appropriately finalised at the local level.

I wish to resolve this matter directly with Capital Football and understand how the relevant sections of your own policy were applied in this instance.

I would appreciate your response at your earliest convenience.
——
Following this, a non-response (or a response absolving them of blame) should give me sufficient reasons to follow up with FA as they have stated that: the Complains Procedure is to request to review whether the process undertaken by the lower level was in accordance with this Complaints Procedure.
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ok I finally have an update

I received this on Wednesday morning (it went to Spam, so I only saw it today)

--
Good morning Nicholas

Thank you for your email.

As the owner and operator of its digital platforms, Capital Football reserves the right to manage participation across those platforms, including restricting access where appropriate. This is a standard approach across many sporting organisations to ensure respectful and productive engagement within their communities.

We have checked our current records and can confirm that the name “REDACTED” does not appear on any of the blocked lists for NPL Capital Football or Capital Futsal platforms. If you are using a different name or handle on social media, please let us know so we can look into this further.

Kind regards
--

I've redacted the name as it's my full name (even though I've shared screenshots before), but.. well, my Facebook screen name is just Nic, compared to Nicholas (which would have been in my email signature).

However, lo and behold, I just searched "NPL Capital Football" on Facebook, and look what I can access now?!
1775212315165.png

So I've obviously been unblocked as a result of this - because, ironically I searched "NPL Capital Football" on Facebook the night before this email it turns out (because when I searched it, it gave me a chance to see if I was unblocked, and also that's how I would find the "Unofficial NPL Capital Football Banter" page or whatever it was called, because I wanted to send them the thing about the scoreboard colours still being inactive despite the new scoreboard that I brought up in the NPL Thread.
 
grazorblade said:
I know too little about the quality of her leadership to comment positively or negatively, but the conflict of interest issue looked pretty dodgy
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Yes, the conflict of interest issue did not look great, and there was one other public issue which I can't recall the details of at the moment where she also did not come across in a positive light. I think it may have been when she was being interviewed on a podcast, or something like that.
 
Keeper66 said:
Yes, the conflict of interest issue did not look great, and there was one other public issue which I can't recall the details of at the moment where she also did not come across in a positive light. I think it may have been when she was being interviewed on a podcast, or something like that.
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Something about the way she worded registration increases from memory
 
Keeper66 said:
Yes, I think it was something like that. Something like saying that rego fees hadn't increased but she was only referring to the Football Australia portion while the question was aimed at the total rego cost.
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Yep, I found the stuff now:
--
Football Australia has hit out at reports claiming that its participation fees have been increased by 20 per cent.

The nation's governing body for football looked to clarify that, while there had been an increase in the National Registration Fee levels, the rise represented a "modest" increase of $3 ($18) for juniors and $7 ($42) for seniors in 2026.

This is paired with relatively stable registration fee levels between 2020 and 2025, with juniors seeing a $1 increase in that period and seniors seeing a $2 increase.

Interim FA CEO Heather Garriock called out the reports of a 20 per cent increase in a statement.

“It is simply incorrect to suggest participation fees have risen by 20 per cent,” said Garriock.

“Our National Registration Fee adjustment equates to a few dollars per player. This modest adjustment ensures we can continue to fund the vital programs and safeguards that underpin our game from the grassroots up.

“Let’s be very clear — there’s a big difference between paying $300 to play at your local club and paying $5,000 a year for a private academy. One is community sport. The other is a private business product.”

--
Essentially, she was English right - right in spirit, but not in word. (the FA portion was small, but was still a 20% increase on what it was)
 
NicCarBel said:
Yep, I found the stuff now:
--
Football Australia has hit out at reports claiming that its participation fees have been increased by 20 per cent.

The nation's governing body for football looked to clarify that, while there had been an increase in the National Registration Fee levels, the rise represented a "modest" increase of $3 ($18) for juniors and $7 ($42) for seniors in 2026.

This is paired with relatively stable registration fee levels between 2020 and 2025, with juniors seeing a $1 increase in that period and seniors seeing a $2 increase.

Interim FA CEO Heather Garriock called out the reports of a 20 per cent increase in a statement.

“It is simply incorrect to suggest participation fees have risen by 20 per cent,” said Garriock.

“Our National Registration Fee adjustment equates to a few dollars per player. This modest adjustment ensures we can continue to fund the vital programs and safeguards that underpin our game from the grassroots up.

“Let’s be very clear — there’s a big difference between paying $300 to play at your local club and paying $5,000 a year for a private academy. One is community sport. The other is a private business product.”

--
Essentially, she was English right - right in spirit, but not in word. (the FA portion was small, but was still a 20% increase on what it was)
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Sounds like someone is making a mountain out of a mole hill.
 
HonestSpursFan said:
Legend of the Aussie game, should be a great choice!


Low bar but yeah.
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my main concern is he wants to get rid of the member feds, which if done naively would just centralize power and make things worse. The current system is still broken, but it needs to be reformed carefully

The other concern is he critiqued the high junior fees but didn't seem to have the will or ability to figure out why they are so high (call a club and get a break down of fees then compare to a club in england. I did that). If he can improve his ability to understand issues and not just identify them, he has a great diplomatic gifting, a big platform and a huge passion for the australian game
 
grazorblade said:
my main concern is he wants to get rid of the member feds, which if done naively would just centralise power and make things worse.
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Yeah this is I highly disagree with. We need the member federations. Maybe they should be reformed or even redesigned but they don’t need to be axed.
 
NicCarBel said:
I haven’t listened to in a while - was this covered on the pod? Would be interesting to break down
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I can't remember lol. I probably should do it in a pod, I think in the coach rory interview? I also wrote a roar article but the formatting meant I was cautious not making it too mathy

Breakdown per kid was roughly follows in AUD (I need to look at my old documents for exact values)

ItemPrice in EnglandPrice in Australia
Field hire0*$300-$600
Kit,referees, training balls etc$700$700
Liscense and registration fees$50$333
Investment*-$2000
Youth Coaches0$1300
Total$550$2633-$2933

*This is major cost difference as the FA in England spend 30% of their budget revinvesting into the game, compared to 1% locally. They do not get subsidies from the EPL and they actually have less revenue per participant than we do, just different budget priorities. AFC stoneham split the cost of their fields three ways with the FA and the local council for example
**This is the figure it was hardest to be sure of the numbers. English clubs, being in an open pyramid youth is a way to get more revenue even low down the pyramid, as good youth could mean promotion, whereas youth in Australia are only subsidized out of a clubs' good will. Clubs in England usually have more amateurs which are used to subsidize the youth. As a result more than half of English players are adults, unlike Australia where it is mostly a kids game. More amateurs also means more fans. The exact numbers are likely to vary by club and some clubs in Australia claim to subsidize their youth and some are accused of profiting to subsidize the senior team but I couldn't confirm that. The numbers are likely to vary in England a lot too
***This was the biggest difference. Our licensing puts minimum qualification requirements on youth coaches and technical directors. While this is in principle possible to have with volunteers, it is hard and so clubs have to hire people. Wallsall united insisted on volunteers only and managed to get their costs down under a $1000 per kid. This is apparently tricky to scale, since you are forced to have people with certain coaching qualifications and there is not enough around to insist on voluteers.
 
grazorblade said:
ItemPrice in EnglandPrice in Australia
Field hire0*$300-$600
Kit,referees, training balls etc$700$700
Liscense and registration fees$50$333
Investment*-$2000
Youth Coaches0$1300
Total$550$2633-$2933
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Those prices are ridiculous. How are we supposed to achieve big things when it costs up to $3,000 just to play? Kits and balls cost the same since obviously the FA don’t control that but we’re higher in every other metric. This means you either have to be rich or make sacrifices for a kid to succeed in soccer. Didn’t the Irankundas have to pull their other sons out so they could afford for Nestory to develop into a star? While obviously they wouldn’t have been as good as him they coulda been decent enough to make it as pro players.
 
HonestSpursFan said:
Yeah this is I highly disagree with. We need the member federations. Maybe they should be reformed or even redesigned but they don’t need to be axed.
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I'm all for the member feds as long as they're answerable to FA, which they should be but evidently aren't.

Like how do we have situations where clubs want to join FA's NST but the MFs block them, and then FA says they know nothing about those situations?
 
HappyGuus said:
I'm all for the member feds as long as they're answerable to FA, which they should be but evidently aren't.

Like how do we have situations where clubs want to join FA's NST but the MFs block them, and then FA says they know nothing about those situations?
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and situations where clubs are competitive in an NPL competition, and have no where else to play when they're forcibly removed for no reason other than geography
 
HappyGuus said:
I'm all for the member feds as long as they're answerable to FA, which they should be but evidently aren't.

Like how do we have situations where clubs want to join FA's NST but the MFs block them, and then FA says they know nothing about those situations?
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Ideally the fa board are accountable to the grassroots with the mfs representing the grassroots and the mfs overruling the fa in that scenario would be a good thing

The problem is the mfs are not accountable to the grassroots for reasons im still learning about, so they act as fiefdoms serving peoples egos. But it seems that a lot of the issues are in the zone system which means neither clubs nor grassroots people can nominate members of the board or vote for them directly

VIc and tas i believe dont have zone systems but tas clubs seem nervous to use their rights according to victoria mortons blog but vic clubs seem happy. Id like to understamd the difference
 
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