A-League cannot afford to get it wrong on expansion again, warns Robbie Slater
North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast United may be long gone but their memory should live on for footballs fans. The A-League can’t make the same mistakes again, writes ROBBIE SLATER.
There is one thing we need to get clear on expansion: there’s no room for failure.
We’ve already had one crack at it with North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast United and it didn’t end well.
That both are defunct shows Football Federation Australia cannot afford to make another mistake on this front.
It means any bid carrying any long-term risk factors must be ruled out.
Of the NSW hopefuls, there are too many question marks for me around Canberra, but more on that later.
Looking specifically at the Sydney market, the clear winner must be Macarthur South West United.
It ticks the most boxes and makes the most sense with the huge growth potential in that booming southwest corridor, coupled with the fact it doesn’t impede on existing clubs.
If you look at a map of Sydney and Greater Sydney there would be a clear triangle separating Sydney FC, Western Sydney Wanderers and Macarthur South West United.
That said, I can understand the Wanderers’ concerns about their territory given they have played some games out of Campbelltown Stadium.
However, it's on a far smaller scale than Southern Expansion's impingement on Sydney FC’s turf which is clear and obvious.
That bid team can sing to the tree tops that a large portion of their supporter base will hail from the St George and Sutherland Shire regions, but Sydney’s turnout at Jubilee Stadium last Sunday told us all we need to know.
Their attempt to try and claim the Big Blue was actually a win for them is proven incorrect purely through the sheer the number of Sky Blues shirts in the crowd.
The southern Sydney catchment area has the biggest registration numbers in the country. Are we supposed to believe all those people haven’t already been supporting an A-League team? Of course they have, it’s Sydney FC.
The other telling factor is Sydney’s new Memorandum of Understanding with the Wollongong Wolves and the words of Wolves coach Luke Wilkshire that Southern Expansion is “not really welcome in Wollongong”.
Even if they were, the bid is fundamentally flawed.
I’m sure they’ve put together a good document and massive respect to them for doing so, but there’s no way you can split a fan base in that manner and expect it to work.
Likewise, Canberra cannot be considered, at least this time around.
The ACT has a proud football history dating back to the National Soccer League with Canberra City — and even Inter Monaro — and we've produced some of our greatest players in Canberra at the AIS.
Even so, they had a long go of it during the NSL and their crowds were poor.
We know they have the facilities but it’s still too big a risk. And like I said, mistakes are one thing we can't afford.
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