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Was the nationality ban on Aussie clubs necessary to build our future?

Monoethnic Social Club said:
Sorry mate, the juice is NOT worth the squeeze, it never has been with Soccer being a 3rd tier sport here... Wogs or Skips., the game will always be un-Australian.. 70-80 years of racism doesn't disappear overnight.

I wanted to comment on the latest G and G podcast thread but couldn't find to draw parallels to your post above... Even a young bloke like Alex P (not having a go Alex) who in his own words would JUMP at a call up from the Italian national football squad, agrees with APL that any "effnikz" flavour in a football club is problematic... 20 years of these clubs being vilified and STILL the narrative perpetuated by Frank Lowy for his and his mates financial gain is being thrown around by people who SHOULD know better....

If there ever was a serious desire by ANYONE in this country for soccer to be for all of the country, then who, what or where a club represents should become irrelevant. WE ARE ALL AUSSIES.
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yeah his response definitely interested me. Though I understood him as saying that the APL would find it problematic because they are weird, not agreeing with them
 
grazorblade said:
2. Is clearly true. To quote Joe Gorman - no club has done more to appeal to a broad base than Sydney Hakoah and it didn't make any difference

3. This therefore follows, there clearly is a market for broad based franchises that have had no historical connection to grassroots. I think it makes sense to still invite franchises to go straight into the top division even after p&r is introduced as much as people hate it
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2) St. George Budapest/Saints would dispute that claim, but in in any case your point still stands

3) Literally the only places in 🇦🇺 I can think of that hypothetically, demo-geographically 'merit' a 'broadbased franchise' created from scratch joining the A-League(therefore this excludes already-existing sides like Canberras City & Utd, Sunshine Coast Fire, GCU etc.) are Geelong, Tasmania and the Northern Territory(almost certainly Darwin-based). That's literally it💡
 
grazorblade said:
yeah his response definitely interested me. Though I understood him as saying that the APL would find it problematic because they are weird, not agreeing with them
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He's a very young buck compared to most of us, to be fair - he would've been what, 2 or 3yo when the NSL popped its clogs?
 
grazorblade said:
question I'm obsessed with since it is in the background as a support plank in the structure of arguments against p&r in Australia. The argument goes like this

1. Broadbased entities get bigger crowds than those started by migrant communities
2. Changing traditional clubs started by non anglo migrant communities into broadbased clubs fails to draw a bigger crowd
3. From 1 and 2 the only solution is new franchises that start in the top league
4. Franchises cannot survive relegation
5. Franchises cannot thrive in a league where there are also clubs associated with a single ethnicity
6. From 3-5 you cannot have large crowds coexist with P&R since the majority of clubs in lower divisions have history associated with a non anglo migrant community

It's not the most moral argument, it wouldn't be accepted in any other industry on moral grounds even if the pragmatic case is correct. However, it has convinced people who reject xenophobic expedience on moral grounds. Joe Gorman appears to have walked away from the game after concluding that Australia's too racist for football to be its multicultural self. It also ignores some big tradeoffs - traditional clubs do more for youth development than franchises. I believe the academies only exist today because they are forced to have them and they only go down to u13s (someone correct me if I'm wrong). They also don't have a nyl unless forced I believe? Having said that some of these premises are shaky

1 appears true but flattens some nuance. Plenty of franchises have had small crowds then died, franchises have tended to have their crowds shrink over time and the occasional traditional club can get big crowds. Having said that, the clubs that have gotten the biggest crowd averages are definitely dominated by franchises.

2. Is clearly true. To quote Joe Gorman - no club has done more to appeal to a broad base than Sydney Hakoah and it didn't make any difference

3. This therefore follows, there clearly is a market for broad based franchises that have had no historical connection to grassroots. I think it makes sense to still invite franchises to go straight into the top division even after p&r is introduced as much as people hate it

4. Is shaky. Historically, we have only had 6 clubs attempt to join a lower division after getting kicked out and/or going bust in the top - Strikers, Canberra city, Northern Spirit, Woolongong Wolves, Gold Coast United, NQ Fury. Of those 6, only NQ fury has died, so superficially the survival rate of franchises joining lower leagues is higher than the top division and certainly higher than the survival rate of clubs that don't try. Having said that, in two cases (NWS Spirit and Gold Coast United) the change was so significant that you could reasonably consider them new franchises. Even if that is the case, they are still franchises that have survived in a lower division. Since franchises depend on top down investment more than traditional clubs, the survival rate is likely to be even higher if there is a path back to the top

5. Is also shaky and is probably the morally bleakest argument. Incredibly it has even been defended using racial hygiene metaphors "dirty water and clean water can't mix". Perth glory, Adelaide united evidently got big crowds while playing in the same league as traditional clubs in the late nsl era. Having said that, the modest evidential basis for it is that no Sydney or Melbourne franchise was successful in the long term until the a league era. Some of the Sydney/Melbourne franchises were associated with nrl/afl clubs, so they weren't really broadbase clubs as fans of other nrl/afl clubs might be dissuaded from joining. So really we are just comparing Northern Spirit - which declined dramatically after initially pulling large crowds - with Sydney FC, Melbourne Victory, Western Sydney Wanderers, Melbourne Heart, Macarthur and Western United. There are other plausible explanations for the differing outcomes of Spirit compared to SFC and Victory. Having less teams in the city probably boosted crowd averages. There was also the big boost that came from launching a league around the time we made the world cup for the first time in 32 years.

So accepting 6 means accepting that the stuff you miss out on by not having p&r is worth it for bigger crowds, but even believing there will be bigger crowds means accepting premises 4 and 5 which have shaky evidence and basically means giving up on the ethics of anglo Australia as well as believing the ends justify the means!
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Well summarised but I believe your #point 5 is a little flaky for one particular reason... in Melbourne franchise attempts were NOT Melbourne Victory but rather heavily AFL connected which turned a largely parochial AFL (other clubs) mad target market off those clubs from the very beginning.. Try the "experment" with a Melbourne Victory or even a Melbourne Heart and I think, even back then, the local NSL market may have been a little more receptive...
 
Monoethnic Social Club said:
Great chat and blog BTW.... keep em coming...
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blog?
Monoethnic Social Club said:
Well summarised but I believe your #point 5 is a little flaky for one particular reason... in Melbourne franchise attempts were NOT Melbourne Victory but rather heavily AFL connected which turned a largely parochial AFL (other clubs) mad target market off those clubs from the very beginning.. Try the "experment" with a Melbourne Victory or even a Melbourne Heart and I think, even back then, the local NSL market may have been a little more receptive...
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incidentally that was actually what I was trying to say :D. I probably worded it poorly!

As you say, with the exception of Spirit, they weren't broad based clubs, because they were associated with a club from another code which limits their appeal. It's a shame there wasn't a victory/sfc/wsw back then to give more data
 
Monoethnic Social Club said:
Its NOT as Unique as you think,, Chile's top flight is riddled with a mixture.

en.wikipedia.org

Club Deportivo Palestino - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

Audax Italiano - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

Unión Española - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org


Its gonna take far to much time to go through ALL the other top flight, migrant founded clubs around the world.

The ONLY way we are unique is the complete hatred some people have towards these clubs...everywhere else in the world celebrates multiculturalism here we despise it in football yet love it in restaurants?... go figure.
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Yes but football is by far the biggest sport in Chile and just about everywhere else. In countries like Chile, Brazil or Argentina where there is ethnic European diaspora clubs everywhere it really has nothing to prove...

In majority white British Commonwealth countries like Australia, Canada, etc football is basically a cultural afterthought and these ethnic identity clubs are often up against the local sporting and social cultural norm.

That’s kinda what I meant and what tsf meant too I think..

tsf?

I actually love the idea of mono-ethnic football. I love seeing the different flags and other cultural identity signifiers at the clubs....
 
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The national names ban is being eroded anyway, esp. in SA. In the last two or three years, White City Woodville have reverted to FK Beograd, and Raiders are now Croatia Raiders. Nobody cares.
Ghan Kilburn have always had that name, there was no ban on ethnic names in the SAASL. There was even a team called Maiwand, named after a battle where the Afghans defeated the British in 1880!
 
Random thought, moral expedience arguments are always going going to be controversial. Not everyone will think that the end of getting the public to accept football justifies the means of xenophobic policies. But ignoring that, what is the tangible benefit of football not being viewed as "w&gball"?
We seem to have less media, fans get just as demonized, it hasn't led to attracting the best talent from other codes, we do have better crowd averages, but that was already happening for the franchises pre a league
 
grazorblade said:
Random thought, moral expedience arguments are always going going to be controversial. Not everyone will think that the end of getting the public to accept football justifies the means of xenophobic policies. But ignoring that, what is the tangible benefit of football not being viewed as "w&gball"?
We seem to have less media, fans get just as demonized, it hasn't led to attracting the best talent from other codes, we do have better crowd averages, but that was already happening for the franchises pre a league
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The tangible benefit I imagine would be a place where everyone can have a club that they choose to follow.

Old school the club was not the attraction - the relevant community actually were the club.

New school and the clubs are an attraction. You do not have to physically belong to that teams community to be part of it - just throw your hat in the ring and you are a fan. Same as you could choosing a team for any other sport. Your team wins you feel good and brag about it. Your team loses and you curse, prepare for the mockery on Monday, and hang out for next week.

I am not talking about "you've got to have a club" - anyone, from any community or walk of life, can pick a club on whatever grounds they like and support it.

It was never the ethnic clubs that excluded anyone else from being a part of it - it was the public perception that those clubs were FOR that community rather than something that could be shared.

Now if we can bring together the two halves of Australian football there are historic clubs with ethnic origins and a following that is no longer tied to the one ethnicity (as in look at the number in this small pool of ours who have an interest in that rotten Greek club for one example), and you also have the established franchise teams competing on level ground with their own established support.

In the mix of old and new lies a result that I do not think we could have achieved on the NSL path alone.

People always had the choice of clubs - many of them did not feel that they had a club to choose. The combination of historic and franchise teams would give that.
 
theFOOTBALLlover said:
I think it is time to open up the pyramid and the best clubs (and usually the most supported) will rise to the top, whether it be a franchise club, association club or a club with ethnic roots.
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I think the aleague has enough legs to run for some time yet so I cannot see it simply folding.

But for financial and contractual reasons there has to be a period without relegation for the franchise holders in the current scheme when we head into our hoped for open future.

However long the licences run for now should be the deadline for safety. It is not reasonable to deprive any financial backers the commodity they have paid for. But open the damn gates and let the best teams join until then and you have secured a much stronger future.

Relegation then follows reasonably if the financial backers and clubs don't do enough to stay up - but they will have had plenty of time to get their ducks in order.

Sounds fair and reasonable to me.

Make it so.
 
The stick in the mud here is Auckland FC. While they won the premiership in their first season and raised average crowds across the league, the owner paid $20 million dollars which has made things very difficult for P & R in the near future.
 
I thought this would be a thread about when FIFA banned the Socceroos 😅

Maybe it was my sheltered soccer upbringing (barely knowing the existence of NSL), but I never understood the ethnic stuff that people went on about. When they said "it's football, but not as you know it", I took that as a dig at AFL and NRL, not NSL. My friends, who had nothing to do with NSL, thought the same. Different perspective I guess. AFL fans, like I was, thought it was about them. NSL fans thought it was about them. It was just a tagline for a new league.

And the new A-League clubs were about potential markets and bringing it all together, less "pigeonholed" clubs with nowhere to grow. That didn't filter through to me as anti-ethnic. But I did feel that sentiment years later with certain expansion rejections.

Times have changed and it's just about come full circle now where people are hoping these clubs get into the top tier. We've had to wait until 2025 to get some sort of decent competition to prove it can work. I'm still alive for it, so that's a bonus!
 
HappyGuus said:
I thought this would be a thread about when FIFA banned the Socceroos 😅

Maybe it was my sheltered soccer upbringing (barely knowing the existence of NSL), but I never understood the ethnic stuff that people went on about. When they said "it's football, but not as you know it", I took that as a dig at AFL and NRL, not NSL. My friends, who had nothing to do with NSL, thought the same. Different perspective I guess. AFL fans, like I was, thought it was about them. NSL fans thought it was about them. It was just a tagline for a new league.

And the new A-League clubs were about potential markets and bringing it all together, less "pigeonholed" clubs with nowhere to grow. That didn't filter through to me as anti-ethnic. But I did feel that sentiment years later with certain expansion rejections.

Times have changed and it's just about come full circle now where people are hoping these clubs get into the top tier. We've had to wait until 2025 to get some sort of decent competition to prove it can work. I'm still alive for it, so that's a bonus!
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I thought "its football but not as you know it" was just hype advertising like "its masterchef but not as you know it" when it is the same but a more exciting theme song :D
 
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