Wow how surprising, who could possibly have seen this coming?
SerTahu
joined 11 months ago
Our bid is probably better without a nation that's actively committing a genocide in West Papua, tbh.
Replacing them with NZ to make it an Australia-Malaysia-New Zealand-Singapore bid would be great.
I know more peoples who watch Italy / England league rather than J-league since it's still young.
This seems to be a trend in most countries that have younger leagues, and I'll never understand it. Instead of supporting their local clubs, some people would sooner wake up in the middle of the night to watch a billionaire's plaything on the other side of the planet that they have no real connection to, who have squads full of prima donnas and stands full of tourists because they've priced out the locals they're actually meant to represent.
Devastated that I won't be getting the dream Maldives away trip :(
I think majority her view it as being a great idea... emphasise on the word 'idea'.
When it comes to actually implementing it in practice, most are sceptical for a number of reasons.
Australia is the size of a continent, but only has a population of 26 million, with those 26 million mostly concentrated in the 5 biggest cities. And even then, the two biggest cities by far are Sydney and Melbourne.
So one common concern is cost. For any clubs coming up from the state leagues to a national stage the travel cost jumps dramatically. You go from needing to book a bus/coach to get your squad/staff to away games, to needing to book a plane.
Another concern is that in an open pyramid the top flight would essentially become a Sydney and Melbourne league. That's already one of the major complaints with this NST - 7/8 clubs are from Sydney and Melbourne, and the 8th is from one of Sydney's satellite cities.
There's also a fear that, should relelgation be introduced, the smaller A-League clubs (Central Coast, Wellington, Newcastle) would fold if they went down.
Finally there's the New Zealand question. The A-League currently has a club from Wellington in NZ, and they're soon to be joined by an Auckland club next year. There's currently no answer about where they would go if relegation was introduced, and what their pathway back would be.
TL;DR: Most common view is that promotion and relegation would be great IF they can make it work on a financial and logistics level, BUT most doubt that it's possible to make it work.