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442 before my time

grazorblade

grazorblade

World-Class Star
Staff member
3rd Monthly Contributor
Joined
Oct 17, 2024
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10,615
football360 bought the forum and it appears old spam is removed and we can read old posts. I was curious to scroll what the forum was like since I tell the history on the pod a bit but only joined around the time anarchy and a league reddit started.

Thought I'd jot a few thoughts down

It was way more xenophobic at the start, even more xenophobic than a league subreddit. Don't really know which post to pick on, but saw a post from a football anarchy poster. Fairly mild post gets a frothing at the mouth reaction
https://forum.insidesport.com.au/43575/AustralianfootballowestheOzCroatiancommunityeverything

I only ever knew @Benjamin as someone fairly pessimistic about our talent development, I never realised he started quite optimistic! Check out this thread

forum.insidesport.com.au

Inside Sport - Australia's premier sports magazine and website

The home of Australian sports news, intelligent journalism and stunning photography.
forum.insidesport.com.au forum.insidesport.com.au
 

Young Roos See Red In WC Loss [FFT Article]

forum.insidesport.com.au forum.insidesport.com.au

Jan verjeilson getting blamed for us being outclassed which didnt age well. We wouldnt qualify again for ages after we got rid of Jan who consistently qualified with mediocre cattle

Comments about mooy were correct mind u!
 
Brett holman hate article

forum.insidesport.com.au

Inside Sport - Australia's premier sports magazine and website

The home of Australian sports news, intelligent journalism and stunning photography.
forum.insidesport.com.au forum.insidesport.com.au

Cant remember if i ever hated on holman. Watching old replays he was real quality, especially the rare time he played with viduka. We didnt have any other players who could feed the ball to his feet in the box, he really balanced the team and proved critics wrong

Plenty leap to his defense mind u
 
Last edited:
grazorblade said:
Brett holman hate article

forum.insidesport.com.au

Inside Sport - Australia's premier sports magazine and website

The home of Australian sports news, intelligent journalism and stunning photography.
forum.insidesport.com.au forum.insidesport.com.au

Cant remember if i ever hated on holman. Watching old replays he was real quality, especially the rare time he played with viduka. We didnt have any other players who could feed the ball to his feet in the box, he really balanced the team and proved critics wrong

Plenty leap to his defense mind u
Click to expand...
Yeah, Holman was such a punching bag. He was probably much better than I thought.

 
HappyGuus said:
Yeah, Holman was such a punching bag. He was probably much better than I thought.

Click to expand...

Funny thing is even before fan opinion changed he was playing well

I rewatched a game a while back where years ago i thought he played bad, but years later i couldnt for the life of me figure out what people were talking about at the time haha
 
grazorblade said:
I only ever knew @Benjamin as someone fairly pessimistic about our talent development, I never realised he started quite optimistic! Check out this thread

forum.insidesport.com.au

Inside Sport - Australia's premier sports magazine and website

The home of Australian sports news, intelligent journalism and stunning photography.
forum.insidesport.com.au forum.insidesport.com.au
Click to expand...

Optimism dies pretty quickly when you see the system in operation rather than in principle. This is why the pessimism set in...

Not long after those posts they re-zoned the Victorian youth system, from memory they went from an elite level structure with 2 top divisions, to a structure with 6 (I think), meaning that the best players were no longer training with, and playing against, the best of their peers. You have to be an exceptional talent to improve without the best players around you. From a scouting point of view, this meant that I went from being able to see just about every kid at the top level 3-4 times a season, to being able to maybe see them all once - which isn't enough. If I was having this problem, then so was every 'scout' working in the A-League. At that point it becomes about friends telling friends.

Not too long after that the AIS program was shut down... Again, another process where the best could mingle with the best was gone.

The launch, and execution, of the A-League youth teams was delayed, then the league ineffectively operated... Again, stunting development.

They also didn't follow up with 2nd division, to give the remaining talent somewhere to pool and improve - 18 years on, we're still waiting (the Championship is a step forward, but in it's current format it's a tiny tiny step).

Add to this, the Dutch system, which promised much, turned out to be a robotics unit, designed to create players for 4-3-3, who'd pass safe rather than attack... Possession without forward movement is pointless.

There was a glorious opportunity, which appeared to be starting very well, which was bodged. People who understood talent development were saying what needed to be done - but certain figures at the FFA, and the majority of A-League owners, were genuinely only interested in their franchise league - believing that if they could grow that, everything else would magically fall in place for the game. A house built on sand.

The saddest thing I can say, from my point of view, is that once everything I had predicted began to actually happen - I completely lost interest in the Aussie game. I haven't been to a game, seniors or youths, since before lockdown. Rarely watch A-League, or even South Melbourne games, when they are available free on tv or youtube. It's a dead duck. I'd love to say different, but unless it's Sunderland, or directly related to Sunderland, I'm no longer interested.
 
Hahaha I remember I use to lurk these threads. I too use to hate Holman until that Serbia goal. All he use to do was run around like a headless all game 🤣
 
Pasquali said:
Hahaha I remember I use to lurk these threads. I too use to hate Holman until that Serbia goal. All he use to do was run around like a headless all game 🤣
Click to expand...
I never hated him per se; if anything I thought he was just average. That being said, if he were in his prime now he’d walk straight into the current NT.
 
a damn very good summary of way back then Benjamin and pretty much spot on and here we are.......
Should start up a Black Cats thread in the UEFA section or keep posting in the EPL thread for you guys are doing a ok on a beer budget compared to my LFC :(:)
 
LFC said:
a damn very good summary of way back then Benjamin and pretty much spot on and here we are.......
Should start up a Black Cats thread in the UEFA section or keep posting in the EPL thread for you guys are doing a ok on a beer budget compared to my LFC :(:)
Click to expand...
I suspect I'd be blogging, with the occasional pat on the head from other members, if I had a Sunderland thread. Happy to keep to the EPL thread.

With regard to the summary - the worst thing about it was that I was predicting it as it was happening - not with hindsight. I was talking about the desperate need for a second division early on, as well as expansion based on football needs rather than business needs, I was talking about the failures of the youth system, and the pish talent identification system. Worse still - I'm not the only one who knew it was happening. All of the 'football' people at the FFA and the franchises (not so much the money men and the professional adminstrators), and a lot of the supporters could see it happening. You had to be super ignorant, or blinded by the flashy lights of the early years of the league, to not see the inevitable.

I wanted football to take off here - really wanted it to grow off the scale... But I'm not the kind of person who sees that the train tracks are buckled, and waits around to see the train crash. We tried to raise the alarm, no one was listening.
 
Benjamin said:
Optimism dies pretty quickly when you see the system in operation rather than in principle. This is why the pessimism set in...

Not long after those posts they re-zoned the Victorian youth system, from memory they went from an elite level structure with 2 top divisions, to a structure with 6 (I think), meaning that the best players were no longer training with, and playing against, the best of their peers. You have to be an exceptional talent to improve without the best players around you. From a scouting point of view, this meant that I went from being able to see just about every kid at the top level 3-4 times a season, to being able to maybe see them all once - which isn't enough. If I was having this problem, then so was every 'scout' working in the A-League. At that point it becomes about friends telling friends.

Not too long after that the AIS program was shut down... Again, another process where the best could mingle with the best was gone.

The launch, and execution, of the A-League youth teams was delayed, then the league ineffectively operated... Again, stunting development.

They also didn't follow up with 2nd division, to give the remaining talent somewhere to pool and improve - 18 years on, we're still waiting (the Championship is a step forward, but in it's current format it's a tiny tiny step).

Add to this, the Dutch system, which promised much, turned out to be a robotics unit, designed to create players for 4-3-3, who'd pass safe rather than attack... Possession without forward movement is pointless.

There was a glorious opportunity, which appeared to be starting very well, which was bodged. People who understood talent development were saying what needed to be done - but certain figures at the FFA, and the majority of A-League owners, were genuinely only interested in their franchise league - believing that if they could grow that, everything else would magically fall in place for the game. A house built on sand.

The saddest thing I can say, from my point of view, is that once everything I had predicted began to actually happen - I completely lost interest in the Aussie game. I haven't been to a game, seniors or youths, since before lockdown. Rarely watch A-League, or even South Melbourne games, when they are available free on tv or youtube. It's a dead duck. I'd love to say different, but unless it's Sunderland, or directly related to Sunderland, I'm no longer interested.
Click to expand...
have they changed the vpl system to have more best v best?
 
BA81 said:
Hmm, I always thought Natasha Stott Despoja was Polish and Ivan Milat Hungarian(as well as Lenny Pascoe being a Maco, not Cro)
Click to expand...
yeah didn't check the list, was just noting the reaction
 
Benjamin said:
I wanted football to take off here - really wanted it to grow off the scale
Click to expand...
As did I(& I'm sure, most of us despite what differing views we held in how to make it happen)...but it's not about 'giving up' on football in this country per se; it's just about realising that the milquetoast/bogan-friendly route that Lowy&O'Neill were selling us was never gonna cut it in the long-run.
 
BA81 said:
As did I(& I'm sure, most of us despite what differing views we held in how to make it happen)...but it's not about 'giving up' on football in this country per se; it's just about realising that the milquetoast/bogan-friendly route that Lowy&O'Neill were selling us was never gonna cut it in the long-term.
Click to expand...
killed the golden goose. A lot of people came in probably with the assumption we were getting good at football. So if there wasn't effort to keep talent coming through it was going to be a bubble.

Having said that, my next fan view article seems to suggest that even today the a league actually overperforms when it comes to crowds
 
Just a bit of a browse there and I saw 'localstar'. Has he signed up here? Has someone reached out?
 
Muz said:
Just a bit of a browse there and I saw 'localstar'. Has he signed up here? Has someone reached out?
Click to expand...
not sue, can't remember him/her but I think if you dm him/her s/he would get an email?
 
Pasquali said:
Hahaha I remember I use to lurk these threads. I too use to hate Holman until that Serbia goal. All he use to do was run around like a headless all game 🤣
Click to expand...
I thought that at the time, would be curious how people felt if they watched replays of his roos matches. I ended up confused why he was ever hated on

carle had a good back of tricks and holman had no 1v1 which maybe made him less flashy, but he was very dangerous
 
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