National Soccer League (NSL)

[Zidane98]

I also think it's quite easy to forget some of the elite quality that was developed via the NSL - in fact if you look at the calibre of top level players who came through the system/were produced by the NSL throughout the 90s in comparison to what's been produced in the first 10 years of the A-League, it compares quite favourably.

Viduka, Bresciano, Grella, Emerton, Zelic, Culina, Schwarzer, even Cahill was plucked from Sydney United's youth ... for the time being, Kruse probably being the exception, the A-League is still to consistently produce players excelling at the top of English, Dutch, Italian, German leagues.

A couple of posts back there's a small youtube package from one of the greatest domestic games ever played in the country, a prelim from 1995 between South Melbourne and Melbourne Croatia, with Viduka scoring a hattrick - there were over a dozen internationals on the park at the one time.

There was a similar thread on this site about 7-8 years ago (when the A-League was in its infancy), and the NSL tended to be denigrated and shot down with ridicule. If this thread is anything to go by, I'm glad that it appears that that attitude is slowly changing to at least give the NSL some level of respect in its quality and the role it played in serving the code in this country across a number of decades (despite quite a number of factors working against it).

Footballing standards have improved massively since the golden generation of 06 though. The A League now has an excellent youth development system and it won't be too long before we see more results. I think the best career path for a young aussie footballer now is to play first XI football in the A League at a relatively young age, consistently dominate and then join a dutch/belgium/championship level league. The ones that kick on from there will go to EPL/Germany/Spain and the ones that don't' will end up back in the A Leauge still as decent quality footballers.

 

[CURVE]

Parramatta Melita Eagles fan.
I enjoyed watching the NSL back in the 90's, but haven't been able to get into the A-League at all. That's entirely due it having no Canberra team.

 

[giggler99]

Found this very good article about the old Brunswick Juventus and their 1985 NSL championship. Also gives some great insights about what football and the NSL was like in the 80's, Great read.

The forgotten story of … Brunswick Juventus’ 1985 NSL championship
Joe Gorman
Strewn across Melbourne’s northern suburbs are the remnants of a once-great football club. Juventus, one of the most successful Victorian sides during the 1950s and 1960s, has gradually been whittled away to nothing. Thirty years ago to the day Juventus lifted their one and only National Soccer League trophy, yet within three seasons the club was relegated from the NSL, and by 1996 they were kicked out; this time for good.

A few years ago, a family tree of the Italian clubs in Victoria was published online. Trying to follow the maze of splinters, mergers and breakaways makes for head-spinning reading. Triestina, for example, became Essendon Royals by virtue of mergers with Fiorentina, Moonee Ponds, East Brunswick Reggina and a host of other clubs.

Formed out of the predecessor club Savoia in 1949, Juventus was supposed to be the great unifier. According to the official history book, Juve! Juve!, the name “Juventus” was chosen for its neutrality, and because black and white striped shirts were “always easy to find in Melbourne”.

Published in 1990, the club history book – half in English, half in Italian – is out of print, out of date and long forgotten. The little poem on the inside cover – “To the fans of yesteryear, those of today, and to the ones of the future” – is both beautiful and haunting in the current context. These days the trophies, pennants and memorabilia are housed at Whittlesea Ranges; Moreland Zebras have the photos, host the anniversary events and officially trade under the name Juventus International Soccer Club; while Brunswick Zebras play at Juventus’ junior ground at Sumner Park, Northcote. All the clubs claim a link to the original Juventus, based either on colours, history and shared memory.

Fabio Incantalupo, 51, was the favourite son of Juventus. His father Greg was the mayor of Brunswick, served on the club committee in the late seventies, and helped Juventus secure a training base. He took Fabio to see Juve play from a young age, and at 10 years old, Fabio started his career with the club. Although he had the chance to trial for Australian rules side Collingwood in his late-teens, he always loved football, and it was from this platform that he represented the national team at youth level, and in 1989 was named Italo-Australian Sports Personality of the Year.

“It got ripped apart,” he says of his childhood club. “They went from Juventus to being the Bulleen Inter Kings, then the Thomastown Zebras, then Whittlesea… everyone claimed a little bit of nostalgia of the club. The ones that play in the black and white are still a little bit connected, but it’s symbolic. It’s sad.”

The solitary success story of Brunswick Juventus in 1985 can only be understood within the context of football in the mid-eighties – the lost years of the NSL. The original, commercially oriented ideals of the competition, which began in 1977, had been forgotten or simply ignored. The league’s main sponsor, Philips Industries, withdrew in 1982, while Channel 10 stopped broadcasting games after just two seasons. No crowds, no money and no exposure forced the league to revert to a ridiculous conference system in order to survive. In 1984 the league expanded from 16 teams to 24, split into a so-called “Australian” or “Northern” Conference and the “National” or “Southern’ Conference”.

The conference system was a cost-cutter. The idea was that less interstate travel for clubs would save money and more local derbies would draw in the crowds. In reality it was total anarchy. Both conference had sub-sections relating to the city the teams came from, and there were occasional inter-conference challenge rounds. The Australian or Northern conference was basically the teams from NSW, the National or Southern conference was the rest, including Brisbane, who of course were geographically the furthest team in the north.

The much-vaunted “local derbies” between Blacktown City and Penrith City at Cook Park, for example, drew less than 1,000 people, while the first ACT derby between Canberra City and Inter Monaro in Queanbeyan was played in front of just 2,100 people. There was promotion and relegation, but it didn’t extend to Newcastle, Canberra or Wollongong, who were were granted development status by the NSL. In the latter half of the 1985 season, Fairy Meadow, a tiny club from the sleepy coastal town in the Illawarra, looked to be a real possibility for promotion to the national league.

The striker was one of the game’s first stars, a legendary goalscorer for club and country whose international career ended abruptly and in controversy

Looking back, even the names of the teams that entered in 1984 seem to forecast the impending downward spiral: there was the Croatias of Melbourne and Sydney, the most difficult of all the ethnic communities in Australian football; the Maltese teams Sunshine George Cross, Green Gully and Melita Eagles; Blacktown City and Penrith City from Sydney’s outer-western suburbs; and Inter Monaro, who were backed by the Italian Marco Polo Club. And, of course, Brunswick Juventus, the third-placed team from the 1983 Victorian State League season.

The clubs held sway over the federation, and after Melbourne and Sydney Croatia resolutely refused to change their nationalistic names, the labels Hellas, APIA, Juventus and Makedonia crept back. While Australian rules and rugby league were looking to expand beyond their traditional geographic boundaries, football was doing the reverse.

In a sense, this was reflective of the times – it was the European migrants and their children that gave Australian football its unique character. SBS, the multicultural television station, began screening the games, while in Melbourne, the premier football newspaper Soccer Action dedicated space every week for foreign-language columns. The author of Juve! Juve!, Egilberto Martin, wrote: “For the European migrant the code of soccer, besides its essentiality as a sport, represents also a piece of that gigantic mosaic which makes up his socio-cultural structure and has retained it in spite of the mockery, the popular derision, and the powerful hold of other football codes, and in Victoria, by Aussie Rules.”

Brunswick Juventus entered the 1985 season led by the well-connected Italian-Australian triumvirate of Tony Schiavello, Sam Manenti and Vince Verducci. The team manager was Joe Caruso, a colourful local identity who owned an espresso bar in Coburg and a travel agency in Sunshine. Rocco Di Zio, a journalist, administrator, volunteer and raconteur was, as usual, omnipresent in the club operations.

They were coached by the late, great John Margaritis. A former South Melbourne Hellas player, Margaritis had been sacked and re-hired several times by South Melbourne and West Adelaide Hellas in the early years of the NSL, and returned to Juventus in characteristically chaotic circumstances. He led Brunswick Juventus to the National League in 1983, stayed on in 1984, left at the end of the season, but when Tommy Traynor was fired after just three pre-season games, returned in time for the 1985 campaign.

It was an argument with Incantalupo that sealed Traynor’s fate. He told the team he was under pressure from the press to pick Incantalupo because he was Italian. “It wasn’t like I instigated it,” remembers Incantalupo, “I just think it was supporters who were upset because we weren’t winning. I was sitting on the bench, things started to get a bit heated. They said to me, ‘why aren’t you playing’, you know? I said go and ask him… he’s the coach. It just snowballed from there and he got the sack. The vibes weren’t good from the start.”

Aside from the dressing-room dramas, Caruso had signed well in the off-season. At the time, Lou Sticca, the man responsible for bringing Alessandro Del Piero to the A-League in 2012, was a 25-year old fan. “Led by a good committee, [Caruso] was able to build a football structure and team and attracted the right players and coaches,” he remembers. Soccer Action’s Lawrie Schwab wrote that without Caruso, Margaritis “would be like a man with one arm”.

Signing a contact with Caruso was an experience in itself. Incantalupo remembers going to his cafe, hopping in his white, beat-up Mercedes and being taken to the races, the customary cigar always hanging out the side of Caruso’s mouth. “Friday night at Moonee Valley, just to negotiate my contract for the following year,” laughs Incantalupo.

The big name recruits of Peter Lewis, Paul Wade and Yakka Banovic, complemented the solid core of Brian Brown, Mike Petersen, Joe Sweeney and Eddie Campbell. The young starlets were Reno Minichello, Mehmet Durakovic, Andrew Zinni and Incantalupo. Sticca says the captain, Brown, was “the main reason Juventus had any success at all”, while Incantalupo was the “love child” and the “flagship” of the club. Yet at the beginning of the season, Margaritis told the press: “we are not saying we will win the championship this year”.

Juventus’ first win came over Green Gully at Olympic Park in March, and in April Incantalupo scored his first goal of the season in a 2-2 draw with South Melbourne. Elsewhere, a two-game stint by England international Kevin Keegan at Blacktown City drew large crowds and media attention, and a scintillating 3-1 Juventus victory over South Melbourne drew rave reviews as “the game of the season”.

But things took a turn for the worse in July. Incantalupo got into a heated argument with team-mate Richard Miranda during a match against Brisbane Lions, and was sent off. Things escalated quickly after the pair started arguing over whether to press high or drop off while defending a throw-in. “It was just one of those things in the heat of the moment,” says Incantalupo now, “I might be the first time a player has been sent off for swearing at his own player!”

A week later in Sydney, the infamous Pratten Park riot saw the referee punched, kicked and spat on by unruly fans in a match between Sydney Olympic and Sydney City. “At long last, soccer has grabbed public attention,” lamented Andrew Dettre in Soccer Action. “True, it needed the prodding of an ugly riot, the mindless savagery of a few dozen or perhaps hundred lunatics – but we’ve made it.”

Indeed the crowds just would not show. By 1985 the clubs barely attracted fans outside the various ethnic groups, and furthermore, they didn’t even have full support from their own communities. Consider the “game of the season” between South Melbourne and Juventus in June – held at the best football stadium, Middle Park, between two of the best Victorian sides who purported to represent the state’s largest and most vibrant ethnic communities. Only 5,000 people turned up.

Fernando Spano is illustrative of this dilemma. His father arrived from Calabria in 1956 and became a Juventus fan, his cousin played for the club, but Fernando’s first sporting memories are of watching Australian Rules side Collingwood. Spano followed his father to Australia in 1965, and although he followed Juventus through the Italian newspaper Il Globo, he was instantly attracted to the roar of Australian Rules football at Victoria Park. Without much English, he says Collingwood helped him fit in to a new society, and that the violence and hatred at the football put him off. “You couldn’t go and not be taunted,” he says. “It’s not in the spirit of the sport.”

Sticca also had an affection for both football and Australian rules. “I’d go and watch Carlton play in front of 30-35,000 people at Princes Park, and then I’d go and watch Juventus play in front of 2,000 at Olympic Park,” he says. “To me, I loved it. Same same.” Still, by the early nineties, Sticca also realised that football needed drastic reform. “There was only one way I could see soccer progressing in this country, and that was to break away from the little ethnic club model,” he says.

The only thing that remains of Juventus is memory, and the best memory is the 1985 grand final victory. After defeating South Melbourne in the major semi-final and Preston Makedonia in the conference grand final, Juventus faced Sydney City in the national grand final. Sydney City, known by most as Hakoah, were run by current FFA chairman Frank Lowy and were the best team in the NSL, having won four national titles in eight seasons. But Juventus had an extra incentive – Schiavello had promised an all-expenses-paid end of season trip to Italy to play Roma if they players brought the title home.

Brunswick Juventus won 2-0 on aggregate over the two legs, with one goal in Sydney and one in Melbourne. After just two minutes of play in the second leg at Olympic Park, Juventus player Robbie Cullen received a head-knock and was taken to hospital with concussion. In the reshuffle, Incantalupo was moved into the forward-line. When Cullen woke up, he immediately asked: “did we win?” and “who scored?”

The answer, of course, was Fabio Incantalupo. After missing the entire 1984 season after a knee reconstruction, an argument with the coach in pre-season, an on-field skirmish with his team-mate in round 18 and having scored just three goals all season, it was Incantalupo who scored the winner in both legs. The first, in Sydney, was a shot from outside the box; the second in Melbourne a tap-in from a corner. In the crowd, his father watched on proudly, and his girlfriend cheered for the man she would later marry. “They looked after me,” says Incantalupo, who had his knee operation paid for by the club. “Maybe because of that I had to repay them, and that was the best way I could do it.”

Later this month the 30-year anniversary dinner will be held at the Casa D’Abruzzo Club in Melbourne. The playing group will reminisce about the good old days, the colourful characters like Caruso, as well the hard-working volunteers like Di Zio and Joe Castelli who would fork out their own money to help players settle, or mortgage their family home in order for the club to have financial security. Sticca, who remains one of the most influential figures in the Australian game, still credits Di Zio as a central reason he got involved in the administration of the game. He learned a great deal watching the older guys, “their love of their sport, their community and their love of their club”.

But apart from the memories, there is little else to hold on to. Incantalupo believes the failure to set down firm roots with a social club and a home ground is the cause for the demise. Juventus’ plans for a $3 million sports complex at Clifton Park never eventuated, and the site is now home to a council-owned synthetic field. “If they had owned a club, a home ground, and a club room,” says Incantalupo, “I think Juventus would still be going.”

Others, however, believe that the Italians assimilated quicker than the other ethnic groups, and thus no longer needed their club as a social lubricant. In 1990, Victorian Soccer Federation president, John Dimtsis, wrote: “The story of Juventus in Victoria tells us a great deal not only about a successful soccer club; it tells us much about Italian life in Victoria. Juventus was for many years… one of the main foci of Melbourne and Victoria’s Italian community.”

Those days are long gone, for the Italians and increasingly also for the other European migrant groups and their once-mighty football clubs. With the A-League and its non-denominational clubs now firmly entrenched, perhaps Juventus are the canary in the coal mine for the ethnic clubs. “Juventus,” says Sticca, “is a club that lost its community.”

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/bl...-brunswick-juventus-1985-nsl?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

[Silent Alarm]

Great article again from Joe Gorman. I don't like fawning over journos and rarely do, but Joe and Russell are so interesting and well researched for their Guardian pieces on soccer and footy. It's really interesting to see that most people comment on Italian assimilation – a fresh but agreeable point. I actually know a few small Italian clubs now just either owned by state league sides or who've gone extinct.

 

[werner]

Lived in Morwell for a year and a half, which was a year and and a half too long, but really did enjoy going to all the Morwell Falcons home games. Remember Archie Thompson and John Hutchinson making their senior debuts at 18 or so. Was disappointed when the club folded, but being a SA boy, well Adelaide City were my second side and that just naturally turned into being a big United fan now.

Good times but yeah, not a patch on what the A League gives us now.

 

[Scotland]

A big FU to whoever posted the highlights from the 2000 GF. I was at that game and the SF two weeks earlier when Ivan Ergic scored in extra time. I still don't know how we managed to lose from 3-0 up... I still think of poor James Afkos whenever I see someone take a pissweak penalty.

The NSL only came to Perth when Glory were formed for the 96/97 season and it took off out of nowhere. Perth Oval was still an oval with some temporary stands, the original Shed was just the existing terrace and the team started with state league players and NSL cast offs. It was great. I remember walking to the game from Claisebrook Station by climbing through broken cyclone fences across what was soon to be the Farmer Freeway.

1999-2001 were the halcyon days of Perth Glory. Regular 12-15,000 crowds which we could only dream of now. 1998/99 we finished third and made the finals for the first time. Temporary stands at the WACA for the finals, Bernd Stange kissing policewomen... those were the days!

When the 1999/2000 finals series was on you couldn't buy column space in the paper. It was all Perth Glory. Lead story on the news each night, Subiaco sold out for both finals. The only time soccer has seen the same level of hysteria here was the 2006 World Cup (and 2005 qualifier obviously). I remember shitty old forums like sbs.com.au/sport and goal.net.au and NSL fans from other states couldn't believe how much press we got and how the paper had an 8 page 'Super Soccer' liftout in it each Monday.

After the 2000 GF debacle the novelty began to wear off and even before then cracks were appearing. Tana and Afkos at odds with the ownership, Stange told he'd be sacked then re-instated then eventually sacked a year later, player disharmony, falling attendances. By the time the NSL wound up in 2004 we couldn't even sell out NIB Stadium for our first final and only 17k turned up at Subi. Looking back it's a shame that such a positive period for us coincided with such a shit period for everyone else. Northern Spirit came in and looked like another contender for mainstream support but their bubble burst overnight, Rangers bought them briefly then they disappeared. On the one hand we were getting record crowds and establishing a position in the WA sporting landscape the on the other teams were folding mid-season, we were playing away games in Morwell in front of 1,000 people, the only media in the East was when someone lit a flare at Edensor Park etc. Or Bobby Despotovski incited the Melbourne Knights...

I'm proud of the fact that Perth were a catalyst for change (not generally something associated with the city) but I lament that we couldn't build from it into the A-League era. Since this thread isn't about the A-League era I won't touch on the decade of mediocrity that has been our involvement in that comp, but the A-League is a vastly superior competition. The competition structure, coverage etc. is much more professional, I just wish people would stop playing with it. There was no need for NQ Fury, there is no need for a third Sydney team and a team on the Gold Coast in any code needs a LOT of support to work. It's the same mistakes all over. The balance now is OK. I don't really care if we have a NZ team or not but that should be decided once and for all so they can plan their future.

What I miss most about the NSL is the late 90s period when we became a force. Everyone likes a winner obviously but there were some strong teams in the league then that we had to beat. South Melbourne, Wollongong, Sydney United, Adelaide City were all very good teams - so it was not like we just came in as a power and beat up on weak teams. After that period the competition became more unstable and uneven and had a bit of a Premier League vibe where one or two teams (namely us and Parramatta Power) just buy up all the good players from the other teams and I don't think Aussie sports fans want that in this day and age. Also in 1999 your EPL fix was the hourly highlights show on Monday night on SBS rather than multiple games live in HD every weekend so local soccer provided a live experience.

If you've got 'NSL' and 'marketing' on your CV you're probably working in retail now, though. Olympic Sharks? Adelaide City Force? Eastern Pride? And I thought our name was cheesy...

Just give me back Boustsianis the armed robber and Troy Halpin over the dead ball and Bobby up front with Frogger.

 

[Silent Alarm]

Sydney Olympic is an awesome name though. Great way to show some sort of implied connection to your club's heritage while giving it a wider, meaningful title to your city.

Some great memories in that post though. I had totally forgotten about that soccer lift out in the paper. It was pretty crazy to think that a suburban competition was getting that much leverage through outlets usually pretty ambiguous toward the sport, yet nowadays, there's barely any attention thrown to Perth Glory.

Obviously the narrative of a brand new team with no stars succeeding straight out, and being this homogenised, western outlier in this mainly Sydney-Melbourne centric (even Adelaide had two or three teams at one stage) comp was a great way to bundle up fans. But I remember the novelty behind Mori, Despitovski, Burnt Snagger was a cult hero and was genuinely endearing. Even Nick Tana had an everyman vibe to him. There seemed to be a niceness to it all... the way Stange gave his Kappa tracksuit, worn to every Glory match he'd coached, to some kid at the airport when he took off really epitomised that. Bobby 10 Football World half-did: it was the antithesis of niceness but the epitome of that arseh*le as a person... I remember being about 10, getting my first ever proper soccer shirt (the blue, with yellow and red O2 Arsenal away shirt from about 2004/05) and he was acting like he was doing a kid a favour when I parted with $140 of pocket and birthday money. Prick.

Then again, the Wildcats play in a sport suffering the same woes as soccer (ie, huge popularity for an overseas comp, inferior product domestically) but consistently rack up these ludicrous crowds. Who knows.

 

[Scotland]

Sydney Olympic was clearly a Greek club. When they changed to Olympic Sharks I had no words. They just didn't get the memo. Their 'we are the Olympic Sharks' song was Angry Anderson batmobile-esque kitsch, though. Likewise Marconi Fairfield becoming Marconi Stallions. The actual ****?

The whole David Hill era de-ethnicifation of the NSL was never going to work. Sydney Croatia is still Sydney Croatia, whether you call it Sydney United or by another name. If a team changes their name to 'Knights' and wears red and white you know which community they are representing. Not many people were going to suddenly go 'hey Melbourne Knights aren't Melbourne Croatia any more, I'm becoming a fan'.

That's the main thing Perth showed IMO. It wasn't about kicking out the ethnics or alienating certain groups, it was about having a club that anyone could (and would) follow. The Perth state league (no idea what it is called now, NPL WA or something?) is no different to any other major soccer competition in Australia in terms of history. Italian, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, Greek clubs started from migrant communities following WWII. With Perth entering the NSL the difference was that people involved with all these clubs would support the Glory, as would people not involved with these clubs. You could play for Spearwood Dalmatia on Saturday then rock up to Glory on Sunday in your Davor Suker shirt and go for the same team as your hated opponent from Dianella White Eagles the day before and it wasn't a problem. We had the no dickheads policy well before the Sydney Swans. Perth entering the NSL mirrored West Coast entering the VFL to a degree. Rather than fracturing the state league a new team over and above that came in and the state league became a feeder competition. It works, and the NSL clubs in the East have dropped back to respective state leagues also in the A-League era.

People get nostalgic about Fitzroy, but would the AFL really be any better off if they were still in the comp? I feel the same way about the A-League. I don't think South Melbourne or Sydney United or any of the NSL powers of days gone by would add anything to the competition today. A competition with a small number of teams and a presence in each major market is what is needed. People rave about the overnight success of the Wanderers but they get crowds of 15,000 in a city of 5 million. There isn't enough latent support to just keep adding clubs and expecting people to support them.

I remember the coverage in the old days. Highlights on ABC, the odd game shown in full. Commentary from Steve Robilliard who I last saw calling lawn bowls. Les Murray hosting the panel show on SBS with Francis Awaritefe and Johnny Warren, Tony Palumbo coming in to stumble through the Serie A etc.

 

[Mr_Bojangles]

Tony Palumbo. An amazing troll on Champions League coverage when an Italian team played.

For anyone that gets warm and fuzzy about the NSL just head to one of the old grounds that houses an Olympic, Knights etc and see how far we've come with the A-League even if the FFA now seems to have been annexed by Westfield Corp. They really were horrible desperate times from around 2000 onwards for the league when Labozetta and his fellow crooks got back in but I still find we had better young players coming through the NSL than currently but it that might just be the cattle and not the system. In a way the end of the NSL saved a lot of those clubs who would've gone to the wall with the crowds they had and the outlay spent on travel, payments etc waiting for another Viduka or Emerton to come along and flog overseas for a million or so.

A lot of people of Croatian descent most certainly did support the Glory in Perth too. The most 'away' fans we got in the NSL were when United and the Knights were in town.

Ross Solly's book on the dying days of Soccer Australia and the NSL is a great read.

 

[Scotland]

I remember when Canberra and Carlton folded from the NSL. It felt like Soccer Australia were just making it up as they went along.

 

[Mr_Bojangles]

Canberra were a disaster. Never got anywhere near the finals. Carlton had an impressive team that had picked off players from other Melbourne clubs mostly and almost made the 2000 Final against us. They were gone within a year. Then there's Gippsland who don't even have a team at any level anymore. Stefan Kamacz was one of the cronies running the NSL then and was a complete simpleton. Thank god Afkos and his faction never got their wish of having a second WA team that would've have diluted the Glory's fan base and reduced Tana's power.

 

[Scotland]

Western Lightning.

Ugh.

 

[Scotland]

There are so many dullard sports administrators in Australia.

West Coast joined the VFL in 1987 then Freo came along 8 years later. Adelaide 1991 and Port 1997. Massive established markets combined with the most well supported and wealthy competition and it still hasn't been 100% smooth sailing. Took 25 years for a second team in Qld and 30 in NSW. Neither or the new entities are independently viable, and you could argue the same for the Lions and Swans...

Glory comes along and starts to establish itself in a new code (at national level) in a competition struggling to establish itself and there are immediate calls for another Perth team. Would have been a disaster and we'd potentially have seen both Perth NSL clubs not in existence now.

The NBL had all sorts of troubles doing the same thing. Canberra, Geelong, Hobart, Gold Coast (x2), Newcastle, Western Sydney... even Sydney Kings were out for a while, Brisbane have been out for years, Melbourne down to one team... 16 teams in the early 80s, 14 at peak popularity, just 8 now. Even the NRL has seen mergers, the Super League war, teams introduced to areas that can't support them then folded after a few years.

We've already seen NQ Fury and Gold Coast come and go, and we've seen NZ Knights fail. We've seen Perth and Newcastle in all sorts of off field poo. We've got 4 teams across two cities with a collective population approaching 10 million and the shining light of those gets 25,000 odd to its games. How on Earth is a third team in Sydney a good idea?

 

[fumbler]

NSL was about passion of the club and culture.

A-League is passion about money and exposure.

 

[Mr_Bojangles]

NSL was about passion of the club and culture.

A-League is passion about money and exposure.

And KPIs, brand recognition and television details..much like any national code really.

 

[Silent Alarm]

Western Lightning.

Ugh.

Fremantle City.

Young players don't have to leave for Europe as much as they used to. They can play it safe and keep making a decent living in Australia and still play in decent stadiums, with alright crowds, and you can probably get a better shot at the odd Socceroo match. In the NSL it seemed like you either stayed here and worked part-time as something else, but copped a lot of Socceroos games against Fiji, or you went to Europe and did all that for decent to pretty good money but didn't really make too much in the way of Australia caps.

You don't seem to see many Aussies spudding around in Scandinavia or third divisions that much anymore.

 

[fumbler]

And KPIs, brand recognition and television details..much like any national code really.

Television?
Fox now, the NSL was on SBS. Much the same exposure really.

The A-League has improved the quality of the teams, but have the truly made the game better than it was?

 

[Silent Alarm]

Television?
Fox now, the NSL was on SBS. Much the same exposure really.

The A-League has improved the quality of the teams, but have the truly made the game better than it was?

People always say some of the best NSL teams (Glory early 2000s, Carlton late 90s, the Knights/South Melbournes of the 90s) were some of the best teams the country's seen, and that they could rival the top two or three A-League sides. Probably true. But surely the smaller, more saturated playing pool means that the worst A-League sides are miiiiles ahead of even the average NSL teams?

 

[fumbler]

People always say some of the best NSL teams (Glory early 2000s, Carlton late 90s, the Knights/South Melbournes of the 90s) were some of the best teams the country's seen, and that they could rival the top two or three A-League sides. Probably true. But surely the smaller, more saturated playing pool means that the worst A-League sides are miiiiles ahead of even the average NSL teams?

I didn't mind the NSL only due to the amount of sides that were not generic, they had sides from all over the suburbs and i found that interesting in itself.
The A-League tries hard but just doesn't give those that really want it what they want. They should be pushing for areas that are crying out for a side in a national game than centralising it.

Sides i would have continued the tradition with
Marconi or Power
Spirit
M. Knights
SM. Lakers
Wolves
Can't remember why A. United got over City Zebras/Force?

 

[Mr_Bojangles]

Adelaide City were beyond broke and hence why they left the comp in 2002/03 with United taking over for the final A-League season being a huge success. Northern Spirit by the end was playing in some place that was like a local park up in North Sydney waiting for death by 2004 and Parramatta Power were a complete nonsense spending other peoples money to get that squad together for the final NSL season. Souths maybe from the NSL and that's a stretch. Take a trip out to the Knights home ground in Sunshine and you tell me that could be an A-League ground? It's like something from Basra.

 

[fumbler]

Adelaide City were beyond broke and hence why they left the comp in 2002/03 with United taking over for the final A-League season being a huge success. Northern Spirit by the end was playing in some place that was like a local park up in North Sydney waiting for death by 2004 and Parramatta Power were a complete nonsense spending other peoples money to get that squad together for the final NSL season. Souths maybe from the NSL and that's a stretch. Take a trip out to the Knights home ground in Sunshine and you tell me that could be an A-League ground? It's like something from Basra.

Ok didn't know they were in debt.
What does where their ground have to do with anything? Do you see the Victory playing where they train?

South could play against smaller drawing sides at the Lake and bigger games at either Ammi or Etihad, i'd like to see South Melbourne come in as Southern Swell or the likes and play some game in Melbourne/Sth Melbourne, some in Geelong and the rest in Tassie.

 

[Scotland]

NSL clubs in the A-League. LOLZ. The only 'ethnic' club that prospers in the A-League is Brisbane Roar because they don't make a big deal of their past - plus Dutch people in Australia don't tend to behave like hotheaded morons at sporting events.

If we had South Melbourne from day dot we wouldn't have Melbourne Victory.

If South Melbourne joined instead of Melbourne Heart they'd have been even less successful.

We don't need a third Melbourne team, so there's no point in them joining now.

Thanks to the popularity of the A-League (and Super Rugby) Melbourne now has a modern 30,000 seat rectangular stadium.

South Melbourne in the A-League would be nice for the few thousand people that followed them in the NSL and would give a few hundred people a temporary nostalgia buzz. That's about it. Melbourne Knights, Marconi etc. would fare no better.

 

[fumbler]

NSL clubs in the A-League. LOLZ. The only 'ethnic' club that prospers in the A-League is Brisbane Roar because they don't make a big deal of their past - plus Dutch people in Australia don't tend to behave like hotheaded morons at sporting events.

If we had South Melbourne from day dot we wouldn't have Melbourne Victory.

If South Melbourne joined instead of Melbourne Heart they'd have been even less successful.

We don't need a third Melbourne team, so there's no point in them joining now.

Thanks to the popularity of the A-League (and Super Rugby) Melbourne now has a modern 30,000 seat rectangular stadium.

South Melbourne in the A-League would be nice for the few thousand people that followed them in the NSL and would give a few hundred people a temporary nostalgia buzz. That's about it. Melbourne Knights, Marconi etc. would fare no better.

The Brisbane Roar may have started from Hollandia but aren't what they were when the entered the a-League, check the owners and where they now are based.

Why couldn't we have both?

Not sure if you are serious or just trying to establish a reasoning behind not liking the Hellas?

It's not up to you whether there needs to be a third Melbourne side or not, there is plenty of room in the market place in Melbourne it was the fault of the Hearts organisers in the first place not making proper inroads into a specific area in the first place.

Besides Victory who else has filled Ammi?

You misinterpreted my original post, the clubs i suggested on staying on would of and could of gained more followers if marketed properly. The old clubs were more tribal and had big supporter bases, you are saying a few thousand i remember going to a Olympic v South game and hearing the announcer telling us there was 15 thousand there.

I'm not saying that the NSL needs to comeback but it certainly had some good points that haven't been improved upon.

 

[Scotland]

I'm aware the Roar are owned by the Bakrie Group now, but there's no denying where they came from. Their current uniform and crest is about as Dutch as you can get.

There isn't plenty of room for a third Melbourne team. Melbourne has a population of 4.5m and two teams. Last season one team had an average home crowd of 25,000. The other 10,000. That doesn't exactly support the case for another team. There are millions of people in Melbourne not attending A-League matches now. Why would they suddenly support a new club, let alone an old NSL club with ties to the Greek or Croatian community?

South Melbourne's last home match in the NSL was a final against Marconi which attracted a crowd of 6,000. Who cares if a Greek derby betwen Hellas and Olympic once drew a crowd of 15,000?

The NSL clubs weren't 'real clubs' to the A-League franchises. They were minority community clubs which were always going to have a ceiling in a national market. Western Sydney Wanderers have been around for 5 minutes and as real as any other club going around because they represent their area and supporters identify with them.

 

[fumbler]

Look i've had enough back and forth, you say i say stuff.

Just for the record i followed South and am in no way Greek, or have greek heritage.