Welcome!

By registering with us, you'll be able to discuss, share and private message with other members of our community.

Sign Up Now!

Those who saw p and r in australia

grazorblade

grazorblade

World-Class Star
Staff member
3rd Monthly Contributor
Joined
Oct 17, 2024
Replies
10,606
Why do people say it didnt work?

I get it was ad hoc, but usually the convetsation goes

"P and r didnt work in the nsl"

To which the other person says
"Yeah but it wasnt real p and r"

Thats True, it wasnt real p and r, but im curious why people say it didnt work? Crowds certainly dont seem worse for the traditional clubs during pand r compared to after. Player development steadily improved with the national team elo improving steadily until around 1998 and plateuing for about a decade before declinging. Clubs didnt fold more regularly during that era

At minimum it doesnt seem a disaster?
 
grazorblade said:
Why do people say it didnt work?

I get it was ad hoc, but usually the convetsation goes

"P and r didnt work in the nsl"

To which the other person says
"Yeah but it wasnt real p and r"

Thats True, it wasnt real p and r, but im curious why people say it didnt work? Crowds certainly dont seem worse for the traditional clubs during pand r compared to after. Player development steadily improved with the national team elo improving steadily until around 1998 and plateuing for about a decade before declinging. Clubs didnt fold more regularly during that era

At minimum it doesnt seem a disaster?
Click to expand...
That phase of the NSL’s history was before my ⚽️ing time, admittedly…but I have to come to its defence nonetheless, in light of how Joe Gorman in his book bad-faith framed its failure as empirical proof that pro/rel of any kind can never work in Australia.

As I’ve said in the past, the fact it wasn’t buttressed by a 2nd division of any format(nor was there any plan whatsoever for one in future, AFAIK) was simply never gonna cut it in the long run - not to mention that the league ballooned to 24 clubs during this period👀

Even allowing for the context of the league being divided into two 12-team conferences@ the time, it was always going to be a battle of attrition in ensuring something that overstretched could live within means.
 
BA81 said:
That phase of the NSL’s history was before my ⚽️ing time, admittedly…but I have to come to its defence nonetheless, in light of how Joe Gorman in his book bad-faith framed its failure as empirical proof that pro/rel of any kind can never work in Australia.

As I’ve said in the past, the fact it wasn’t buttressed by a 2nd division of any format(nor was there any plan whatsoever for one in future, AFAIK) was simply never gonna cut it in the long run - not to mention that the league ballooned to 24 clubs during this period👀

Even allowing for the context of the league being divided into two 12-team conferences@ the time, it was always going to be a battle of attrition in ensuring something that overstretched could live within means.
Click to expand...
I dont see Joes comment as bad faith, just wrong since he credited p and r with the drop in crowds that came due to the conference system. If they had 24 teams that could play in a national league its surprising they didnt go for an nst at the time instead!
 
grazorblade said:
I dont see Joes comment as bad faith, just wrong since he credited p and r with the drop in crowds that came due to the conference system. If they had 24 teams that could play in a national league its surprising they didnt go for an nst at the time instead!
Click to expand...
The clubs at the time voting for P/R, was akin to Turkeys voting for Christmas. It would have been a suicide vote to most clubs.
 
Sutherlandbear said:
The clubs at the time voting for P/R, was akin to Turkeys voting for Christmas. It would have been a suicide vote to most clubs.
Click to expand...
Was it because the clubs were in charge of the system then that it got scrapped?
 
My first memory of nsl relegation was wollongong macedonia going down and replaced by wollongong city (wolves) and Sunshine George Cross going down and Newcastle breakers coming up. Where it lost me was the following year Apia being relegated from mid table even though i think Preston came last. Then the year after that Preston did go down and i think Morwell Falcons replaced them.
 
southmelb said:
My first memory of nsl relegation was wollongong macedonia going down and replaced by wollongong city (wolves) and Sunshine George Cross going down and Newcastle breakers coming up. Where it lost me was the following year Apia being relegated from mid table even though i think Preston came last. Then the year after that Preston did go down and i think Morwell Falcons replaced them.
Click to expand...
yeah it was pretty chaotic
 
grazorblade said:
I dont see Joes comment as bad faith, just wrong since he credited p and r with the drop in crowds that came due to the conference system. If they had 24 teams that could play in a national league its surprising they didnt go for an nst at the time instead!
Click to expand...
TBH it is pretty bad-faith in how he tries to play both sides throughout the book - he oscillates between praising the European ‘monoethnic’ clubs for their contributions to 🇦🇺⚽️ but makes it pretty clear he doesn’t reckon they should have much of a future(if at all). It’s particularly disingenuous in the final chapter where he’s w@nk1ng over the Asian migrant-communities during the Asian Cup 10 years ago, giving the impression they need to be catered to ASAP bc they’re not going to punch on w/each other in the stands like the Euros..which is a total misread if he seemingly reckons the cultural-historical rivalries of Asia are more chill than those of Europe🙃
 
BA81 said:
TBH it is pretty bad-faith in how he tries to play both sides throughout the book - he oscillates between praising the European ‘monoethnic’ clubs for their contributions to 🇦🇺⚽️ but makes it pretty clear he doesn’t reckon they should have much of a future(if at all). It’s particularly disingenuous in the final chapter where he’s w@nk1ng over the Asian migrant-communities during the Asian Cup 10 years ago, giving the impression they need to be catered to ASAP bc they’re not going to punch on w/each other in the stands like the Euros..which is a total misread if he seemingly reckons the cultural-historical rivalries of Asia are more chill than those of Europe🙃
Click to expand...
That was definitely a different read to what I read!
A main difference is the word "should". My read of him was someone who gave up on football thinking that Australia was too racist to accept the clubs that built football and the a league was a racist endeavour. He seems to have left football altogether
I also didn't see any asian migrants contrasted with European (do you have any quotes?)
I thought he referred to the asian migrants as more evidence that football in Australia was afraid of ethnicity saying a palestinian football community locked out and Joe wasn't sure that if football australia wasn't more open minded we wouldn't have more clubs founded by Asians
 
grazorblade said:
That was definitely a different read to what I read!
A main difference is the word "should". My read of him was someone who gave up on football thinking that Australia was too racist to accept the clubs that built football and the a league was a racist endeavour. He seems to have left football altogether
I also didn't see any asian migrants contrasted with European (do you have any quotes?)
I thought he referred to the asian migrants as more evidence that football in Australia was afraid of ethnicity saying a palestinian football community locked out and Joe wasn't sure that if football australia wasn't more open minded we wouldn't have more clubs founded by Asians
Click to expand...
I guess we read into it what we want to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What I will say is that the book’s other great failure is its neglect of pre-WW2 Oz football; for the sake of contextual completion it was necessary to delve into that more deeply than was done. Ironic given it’s rather analogous to the later demarcation between old-sokkah and new-football.
 
BA81 said:
I guess we read into it what we want to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Click to expand...
I wasnt wanting to read anything into it. Ive never met Joe and knew little about the book and his views before i read it
 
southmelb said:
My first memory of nsl relegation was wollongong macedonia going down and replaced by wollongong city (wolves) and Sunshine George Cross going down and Newcastle breakers coming up. Where it lost me was the following year Apia being relegated from mid table even though i think Preston came last. Then the year after that Preston did go down and i think Morwell Falcons replaced them.
Click to expand...
I thought Wollongong City were "promoted" in 88? In fact both Wolves and Macedonia from Wollongong played in the 90-91 season didn't they?
 
Sutherlandbear said:
The clubs at the time voting for P/R, was akin to Turkeys voting for Christmas. It would have been a suicide vote to most clubs.
Click to expand...
A little bit from column A and a bit from column B... My read of the times was that the federation was "experimenting" with whatever would appeal to a broader market and they kept trying to tweak the comp to fit a geographic spread mould... At least Lowy went 100% all in on the MLS clone for Aleague, the NSL was a schemozzles... From memory, quite a few clubs at the time were 100% behind relegation to a second division as they were bleeding money, but there wasnt one... Pro/Rel was applied depending on who had clout at the board level for that season it was dogshit.... Real Pro/Rel has NEVER been done in Australia and any attempt to pretend so are false in my opinion.
 
I still can't work out how Wollongong Macedonia got into the NSL.
I can remember a promotion play-off between West Adelaide and Morwell Falcons. West Adelaide were a shambles only 2 or 3 years after their league title.
It was all so haphazard.
 
ashtongate said:
I still can't work out how Wollongong Macedonia got into the NSL.
I can remember a promotion play-off between West Adelaide and Morwell Falcons. West Adelaide were a shambles only 2 or 3 years after their league title.
It was all so haphazard.
Click to expand...
To be fair, it was the first true attempt at nationalising a football code of any kind in Australia.. All the kudos for that pioneering effort at least, but the NSL never got its act together in a consistent way...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top