New Zealand's qualification for the 2010 World Cup is the direct result of 2 actions by the FFA.
1. The move of the Socceroos from Oceania to Asia, thereby giving New Zealand its 5th spot. Also the '5th spot' moving from South America to Asia.
2. The A-League lifting the performance of players who otherwise would only have achieved local experience on the small NZ scene. Click to continue reading...

Morning all, welcome to the blog.
Well, Mile Sterjovski didn't feature for the Socceroos - which in a way is good news, because it means he's injury free for Perth Glory. Seems like a selfish way of looking at things, but meh.
Meanwhile, congrats to the Kiwis for joining the party in South Africa - we couldn't dream about going there without ya. Click to continue reading...

Brisbane Roar are on track for a full squad v Melbourne Victory next Saturday 6pm. The international has helped a lot. And Ange is putting the time to good use - slowing down the tempo to improve the defence and accuracy of crosses into the box.
Perhaps we could see Henrique, Reinaldo, Van Dijk, Mitch and Tommy on the park together? Click to continue reading...

So I flagged it months ago on here and it seems like Katie Gill is finally back in the country and set to play for Perth Glory this weekend. Well according to the FFA snapshot they sent out yesterday, which suggests she will be a prime candidate to score the leagues 200th goal when it goes off this weekend. Click to continue reading...

The financial crisis has highlighted a dilemna in capitalist society, especially so in the United States. Simply put, some corporations and institutions have been deemed just too big to fail - the damage of letting their poor decisions break them would be so great for society that it is deemed in the public interest to bail them out. Click to continue reading...

Hmmm. At the start of the season this was supposed to be the blockbuster that Gold Coast would steal from the Roar. But with only 5,400 watching and quite a few of those in Sydney colours you would have to say Gold Coast have a long, long way to go build a fan base.
Shame really as this game was won by Jason Culina who was at his best. Click to continue reading...

Last week, we reported on exhibit A in how to alienate fans in Australia by A-League expansion team Gold Coast United's billionaire owner Clive Palmer. The club closed three sides of their stadium, Skilled Park, and capped capacity to just 5,000, forcing supporters out of their usual position in the stadium.

Click to continue reading...

Has there been a better team goal in this season's A-League than Wellington's second against Newcastle last night (about two and a half minutes into this)? If Paul Ifill's surging run down the left was typically impressive, Costa Barbarouses' nonchalant flick was sublime. And Chris Greenacre's finish was no less classy. Click to continue reading...

Brown's in the box dive for a penalty should lead to a suspension - despite the spot kick being missed. Referee Ben Williams should be ashamed of himself the number of times he has waved on legitimate penalties from the Roar, and give this one.
What has become obvious is the home ground advantage for Wellington. Click to continue reading...

The FFA have taken over marketing and ticketing at Gold Coast. I think the owner will be pleased. Meanwhile over at the Roar FFA assistance seems to have been knocked back again. The messages from the top there are very confusing. Brisbane is the City with the opportunity. Meanwhile the coach is now saying that the team will grind out results until the need of the calendar year. Click to continue reading...

The good news was Robbie Fowler combining with Dave Williams, and a pen, to get to 8 goals this year.
The transport charges issue for the Gold Coast is a furphy. This type of direct cost - ie it is charged per ticket - is simply included in the ticket pricing model. At the start of the season Gold Coast's accountants - who worked out how to get the best squad in the A-League under the cap - would have assumed that crowds were going to be above 5,000 for every match and popped the $3. Click to continue reading...

SO it's matchday. Welcome to the preview blog, boys and gals.
Melbourne have won five of the last six games, though they haven't won in four games at ME Bank Stadium against Perth.
This week, Glory have fallen over themselves to give respect to their opponents, while Victory coach Ernie Merrick admitted that Perth are their bogey team. Click to continue reading...

At 86:35 minutes Orangecrush leaned over to me and said 'Do you think the players realise that this is the most important 3 minutes of the club's history and they have to score?' I agreed with his sentiment and said 'And they aren't going to score.'
The low crowd didn't help. This was a dull game. Click to continue reading...

I was genuinely excited when the FFA announced that one of the new clubs to join the A-league this year was to be Gold Coast United. Here was a team to be based in the fastest growing area of Australia, was backed by one of Australia's richest men and would have one of the more interesting (if slightly insane) characters of the game here in Australia guiding them in Miron Beilberg. Click to continue reading...

Clive Palmer, The owner of new Australian A-League club Gold Coast United, is sick and tired of people not coming (they have the smallest average attendance in the league at 4,500) to see his team play in the 27,400 seat Robina Stadium that he's overpaying to rent for home matches, so he's opted to go with perhaps the dumbest PR move a club owner has ever attempted by closing all but one side of the stadium and only allowing a maximum of 5,000 people in for each game.

Click to continue reading...

One of the points in Frank Lowry's speech I failed to touch on in my last blog was the idea of moving the start time of the A-League Season to the first week in October.
After a honeymoon that was the first three seasons it has become blindingly obvious in the last two that the A-League struggles to make any impact in the mass media in the August/September period. Click to continue reading...

Where is the refing consistency? Fox, who have now clearly turned to supporting the Roar after ditching them after game 3, clearly need to write to the FFA that the Refs need to be re-briefed. Well maybe not. But apart from Miller's punch, how was the Roar's treatment of Kruse worse than Sydney's treatment of Oar? Click to continue reading...

The alarming drop-off in A-League crowds was surely the main impetus behind these comments by Frank Lowy this week.
The A-League on free-to-air TV? A worthwhile aim, but wishful thinking at the moment. It is hard to see any of the commercial networks being willing to fit even a single game into their crowded weekend schedules, and coverage on the ABC or SBS would not bring in anything like sufficient revenue. Click to continue reading...

Not enough that Charlie Miller, last year's fan favourite, has disgraced himself, now he is back on the injured list. So is Danny Tiatto. Should have let them go.
Moore is out too - sorry he shouldn't be our marquee (I understand he is paid what so clubs pay players inside the cap).
Now we will probably play the A-League's worst player - Bob Malcolm. Click to continue reading...

So the girls took on Thailand in the final of the ASEAN under-16 girls final in Myanmar, and though it's not up on the FFA website yet, you can read all about it here on the ASEAN website.
Australia ended up winning 8-0, but the scoreline doesn't reflect that it was pretty close. Up until the 67th minute, it was 2-0, but Sam Kerr then scored and it seemingly opened up the floodgates. Click to continue reading...

What's there to say?
The coach is sacked, a whole lot of laundry is aired, some no doubt utter bullshit, other true. Frank is scapegoated for a long period of administrative incompetence in the Roar and the FFA.
At the same time - quick, someone mentioned a 50% hike on the already most expensive tickets in the league might have 'contributed' to the disappearing crowds - the Roar announces a 15% price cut and a special promotion letting kids in free. Click to continue reading...

Dear Frank Farina,
You were the best coach the Roar has had and if we find a better one in the current circumstances we'll be lucky.
The board were stupid to sack you, and you are clearly correct to point out that you are being scapegoated - to the extent that you didn't need to say it. Click to continue reading...

"I wish it hadn't (lost some edge) because it was always good for the game," Rudan said. ....
"It's really been timid and a little bit boring (since), there's not enough characters in the game. "I've been away (overseas) for a couple of years and this season there haven't been any outrageous comments or anything like that to give you a good laugh. Click to continue reading...

The Board and the FFA made the decisions that impacted the Roar's crowds. The ill disciple against Melbourne had nothing to do with it! How could it? The poor crowds had already happened.
Why did the crowds fall:
1. Gold Coast - split the Roar crowd and have no fans of their own (FFA have admitted this with typical club fisted approach ). Click to continue reading...

Ange has said:
"If we lose tomorrow night I think people will legitimately turn around and say well it's been a tough week, you don't blame them,"
He is wrong. If we lose fans will say: "The Board and FFA has stuffed our team 2 weeks in a row."
Ange is about to find this is a tough game. Click to continue reading...

Its been just over a month since I last put fingers to keyboard and tapped out a paragraph or two for this blog and a lot has happened in that time. Crowds continue to be a major talking point and I was very pleased to see Gold Coast and Brisbane take steps to reduce their ticket prices and make them more affordable for the general fan. Click to continue reading...

I watched the replay. The ref waved play on 5 times when Brisbane players were brought down in the box. At least 2 were no argument penalties. Even the Fox commentators who were going on and on about how bad Brisbane were admitted this.
There were Gold Coast and Brisbane fans on my bus on the way home and the only conversation was how bad the ref was. Click to continue reading...

It is Ange Postecoglou a football insider, contrasting to Frank Farina sitting outside the football paradise club.
I would be very surprised if many people in Brisbane know who he is. He has 4 Socceroo caps and won 2 NSL titles as a player and 2 as a coach.
Club Chairman Chris Bombolas more or less conceded in a heated interview with ABC Radio host Kelly Higgins-Divine that it was the 4 owners who voted as a block of the 7 board members to determine Frank Farina's fate. Click to continue reading...

An interesting article in the Courier Mail on Monday. The story was that some Roar directors regretted not accepting FFA help at the beginning of the season. The reason given for the regret was that the FFA would have been able to control Frank Farina via a director of football - and stopped poor player behaviour. Click to continue reading...

SO it's been a couple of days since Perth's win over Adelaide and as a result of some other scorelines in the other games this weekend, the Glory find themselves in third place on the ladder.
They are now unbeaten in their last 5 games (three wins and two draws).
Most of the pundits reckon the Glory were lucky to get the 1-0 victory over the Reds, and for the most part they'd be right - though the Glory had a number of chances, particularly in the first-half. Click to continue reading...

Ben Williams gave GC 24 free kicks to Brisbane's 12. Yet it was GC's defenders that seemed to be flying in.
To have 2 50-50 penalties turned down is disappointing. To have 4 is suspect or disappointing. This keeps happening to the Roar and you can see why fans stop coming.
In last years grand final an elbow to the head was a red, here Thwaite only got yellow. Click to continue reading...

How can you not love these guys? That run in the '06 World Cup was a blast.
And led by awesome-dude Tim Cahill the team is going to help out the earthquake and tsunami victims in Samoa and Indonesia.
Not just a neat goal celebration.

Football Federation Australia (FFA) said it will donate one dollar for every fan who attends the Socceroos' matches against the Netherlands in Sydney on Saturday and against Oman in Melbourne next week.

Click to continue reading...

FFA: Show us your plan for elite football in the capital region.....
you do have a plan don't you and what part of the strategic plan covers the Capital Region...do tell! Click to continue reading...

Canberra Times journo David Jean has told the FFA to "get stuffed," in his Saturday article re;further A-League games in Canberra; although I don't recall David being front and centre as a Canberra A-League football supporter, perhaps not as anti as his mate Peter (I hate Canberra Football) Fitzgerald. Click to continue reading...

Ray Gatt and his team at the Weekend Australian have done some great work and uncovered that FFA registered Sydney Rovers FC name, colours and trademark some weeks before saying that this Sydney bid had the 12th license. Ooops. Of course the other bidders are cheesed off. The Sydney Rovers bid seems to have been given the inside track and has a real paradise club feel. Click to continue reading...