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The Football Australia Thread

Can you give a rundown and what it all means for the whole game? This governance stuff boring as it might be its also important to understand as well.
So in my view ideal governance is where the board of football australia is maximally accountable to the grassroots. Generally speaking the more this happens the less corruption is an issue and the more grassroots concerns are prioritized. In England there is a decent governance system, not perfect, but the result is a lot of money gets invested in infrastructure and they have the most open pyramid in the world

So there are 4 ways in which our system frustrates that accountability

1) the layers between the grassroots and the board. Think of the childs game of telephone. You vote for your club rep who votes for the zone rep who votes for the state rep who votes for the board who votes for the boss of fa. Thats 5 levels any grass roots complaint has to go through
2) the nomination process. Ideally you have an open nomination process with some criteria (e.g. around conflicts of interest). In our system, zones make nomonations for the state reps and state reps partly nominate the board of fa. This makes it very hard for the grassroots to make outsiders get in but consolidates power within a clique of insiders
3) the quorum process. In football tasmania for example you cannot force a vote on anything unless you have a quorum of 60 percent of clubs who say they want a meeting and a vote. Football victoria lowered this to 10 percent to make it easier for clubs to protest and hold the board accountable
4) the fraction of power stakeholders have that are not grassroots. In congress there are 100 votes that make decisions and 41 of those are either apl or apl connected. The member feds have 50 votes combined. But because of the nomination process a lot of apl insiders are apparently heads of mfs (most pubicly tony pignata from tasmania but other mfs as well). But the member feds have their votes split between zone votes and stakeholders 50-50. So the end result is that the grassroots is diluted twice to be worth 25 percent.

So the big picture is that the grassroots have their voice pass through multiple filters, they have trouble picking who represents them, they have trouble protesting due to quorum rules and they have their voices diluted to be worth nothing.

Those on the inside have managed to anger the grassroots by

1) creating minimum requirements on npl youth set ups as well as expensive npl license fees which drives costs up really high
2) have a system where those costs cant be offset by selling youth because a league clubs get them for free
3) threw out the aafc model of the nst for a model that couldnt get enough clubs to say yes.
4) fund the a league by stealth by around 10 million a year (remember grassroots pay license and rego fees which partly funds this)

And now it looks like the fa is being taken over by the apl as all non apl board members have withdrawb
 
So in my view ideal governance is where the board of football australia is maximally accountable to the grassroots. Generally speaking the more this happens the less corruption is an issue and the more grassroots concerns are prioritized. In England there is a decent governance system, not perfect, but the result is a lot of money gets invested in infrastructure and they have the most open pyramid in the world

So there are 4 ways in which our system frustrates that accountability

1) the layers between the grassroots and the board. Think of the childs game of telephone. You vote for your club rep who votes for the zone rep who votes for the state rep who votes for the board who votes for the boss of fa. Thats 5 levels any grass roots complaint has to go through
2) the nomination process. Ideally you have an open nomination process with some criteria (e.g. around conflicts of interest). In our system, zones make nomonations for the state reps and state reps partly nominate the board of fa. This makes it very hard for the grassroots to make outsiders get in but consolidates power within a clique of insiders
3) the quorum process. In football tasmania for example you cannot force a vote on anything unless you have a quorum of 60 percent of clubs who say they want a meeting and a vote. Football victoria lowered this to 10 percent to make it easier for clubs to protest and hold the board accountable
4) the fraction of power stakeholders have that are not grassroots. In congress there are 100 votes that make decisions and 41 of those are either apl or apl connected. The member feds have 50 votes combined. But because of the nomination process a lot of apl insiders are apparently heads of mfs (most pubicly tony pignata from tasmania but other mfs as well). But the member feds have their votes split between zone votes and stakeholders 50-50. So the end result is that the grassroots is diluted twice to be worth 25 percent.

So the big picture is that the grassroots have their voice pass through multiple filters, they have trouble picking who represents them, they have trouble protesting due to quorum rules and they have their voices diluted to be worth nothing.

Those on the inside have managed to anger the grassroots by

1) creating minimum requirements on npl youth set ups as well as expensive npl license fees which drives costs up really high
2) have a system where those costs cant be offset by selling youth because a league clubs get them for free
3) threw out the aafc model of the nst for a model that couldnt get enough clubs to say yes.
4) fund the a league by stealth by around 10 million a year (remember grassroots pay license and rego fees which partly funds this)

And now it looks like the fa is being taken over by the apl as all non apl board members have withdrawb
Cheers mate, it certainly looks quite messy to understand.
 
three candidates - all nominated by A-League clubs and all men

Currently, all elected members are male. To receive funding from the Australian Sports Commission, and access to other government run programs, the chair and deputy chair of an NSO cannot be the same gender.

So, we can kiss goodbye the government funding? Can we not find one woman for this?
 

feedback – which was delivered to staff in November and has been seen by AAP – more than 70 per cent of the 39 respondents had “overwhelmingly negative” word associations with working at FA.

Staff were shown a word cloud which summed up their responses and among the terms used by staff to describe working at FA, were adjectives such as “hierarchical, bureaucratic and egotistical”.

It also highlighted a “toxic, chaotic, gruelling and unprofessional” culture.

Further feedback seen by AAP shows staff indicated that there was a “perceived favouritism” within the organisation and that FA was a workplace with “low psychological safety and trust”.

Additional concerns relayed by staff indicated that there were “meetings about meetings”, that decisions were “made on opinion not evidence” and there was an “avoidance culture”.

Workers also raised the issue of a divide between staff in Sydney and Melbourne.
 
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They are not up to the times of rego costs to Snrs !
Between $350-500 a season more like it for ages ! So double up the cash coming through the FA.
They quote below :
They are responsible for collecting player registration fees which range from about $200 for seniors down to about $100 for juniors giving them significant financial power
 
My understanding is that the portion of the player registration fees collected by Football Australia is relatively small, being $18 for juniors and $42 for seniors in 2026. The state feds then collect their portion of the fees, which varies from state to state. For example, Qld is $50 for miniroos, $66 for juniors and $130 for seniors. This article includes a breakdown of all state fed costs.

https://footballqueensland.com.au/2...ation-fees-to-remain-the-lowest-in-australia/
 
So in my view ideal governance is where the board of football australia is maximally accountable to the grassroots. Generally speaking the more this happens the less corruption is an issue and the more grassroots concerns are prioritized. In England there is a decent governance system, not perfect, but the result is a lot of money gets invested in infrastructure and they have the most open pyramid in the world

So there are 4 ways in which our system frustrates that accountability

1) the layers between the grassroots and the board. Think of the childs game of telephone. You vote for your club rep who votes for the zone rep who votes for the state rep who votes for the board who votes for the boss of fa. Thats 5 levels any grass roots complaint has to go through
2) the nomination process. Ideally you have an open nomination process with some criteria (e.g. around conflicts of interest). In our system, zones make nomonations for the state reps and state reps partly nominate the board of fa. This makes it very hard for the grassroots to make outsiders get in but consolidates power within a clique of insiders
3) the quorum process. In football tasmania for example you cannot force a vote on anything unless you have a quorum of 60 percent of clubs who say they want a meeting and a vote. Football victoria lowered this to 10 percent to make it easier for clubs to protest and hold the board accountable
4) the fraction of power stakeholders have that are not grassroots. In congress there are 100 votes that make decisions and 41 of those are either apl or apl connected. The member feds have 50 votes combined. But because of the nomination process a lot of apl insiders are apparently heads of mfs (most pubicly tony pignata from tasmania but other mfs as well). But the member feds have their votes split between zone votes and stakeholders 50-50. So the end result is that the grassroots is diluted twice to be worth 25 percent.

So the big picture is that the grassroots have their voice pass through multiple filters, they have trouble picking who represents them, they have trouble protesting due to quorum rules and they have their voices diluted to be worth nothing.

Those on the inside have managed to anger the grassroots by

1) creating minimum requirements on npl youth set ups as well as expensive npl license fees which drives costs up really high
2) have a system where those costs cant be offset by selling youth because a league clubs get them for free
3) threw out the aafc model of the nst for a model that couldnt get enough clubs to say yes.
4) fund the a league by stealth by around 10 million a year (remember grassroots pay license and rego fees which partly funds this)

And now it looks like the fa is being taken over by the apl as all non apl board members have withdrawb
Sorry Grazor, I should complimented this excellent summary before, well explained.
 
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