So what were the "troubles" you're referring to? They didn't have anything to do with the old ethnically-based teams by any chance?
Matra2 -
Yes, the violence of the "ethnics" was one of the troubles I was alluding to. The other was the financial viability of clubs and their ability (or lack thereof) to attract sufficient supporters to remain in business.
Let's begin with "ethnic" violence, which I've discussed before in other threads. This Balkan bull**** was blackening the name of the sport here in Australia for decades. There's no need for me to go into detail - the following clips sum it all up (N.B. the audio is a bit low):
SOUTH MELBOURNE HELLAS v MELBOURNE CROATIA - NSL, 1989/1990:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdzjRKP7a8Q
SYDNEY CROATIA v SOUTH MELBOURNE HELLAS - NSL, 1996/1997:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80gFhjj5jp8
Look at the shirtless flex-head ****** at 0:22. What a reeking piece of refuse. As usual with these shaved garlic-gorilla types, the moment that You'd start walking over, informing him that You were going to kick his greasy ****ing head all the way to the Aegean he'd swiftly back away saying "Ah sweah ta God, if ya fukin' touch meeeee, ah'll take ya to court and fukin' soo ya!"
Another well-known example of this "Balkan disease" was the "Bobby Despotovski" incident of 2001. Despotovski - whose real name is Slobodan and, despite his Macedonian surname, is of Serbian parentage - was a Perth Glory striker who made the Serbian "three fingered salute" in a match against the Melbourne Knights (formerly named Melbourne Croatia...). The Melbourne Knights fans viewed this as an insult and went nuts, lobbing flares onto the field and engaging in other such nonsense. After the game, a group of "Croatian Australians" attacked Despotovski, Perth coach Bernd Stange and several other Perth players as they boarded the team bus. A couple of reports on the whole farce are in the following video:
[video=youtube;4LswqYtG-H8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LswqYtG-H8[/video]
Now, let's have a look at the issue of fiscal viability. As there is no promotion or relegation in the A League, it was intended to comprise of eight clubs that were financially stable and sustainably supported, thus avoiding the embarrassment of organisations succumbing to "financial difficulties" and dropping out of the competition.
Well, that obviously worked a treat as the single non-Australian "franchise", the New Zealand Knights, folded after a mere two seasons - "boasting" average attendances of something in the vicinity of 3,500. The Knights were promptly replaced by the optimistically-named Wellington Phoenix.
The 2009-2010 season witnessed the addition of two "expansion" teams: North Queensland Fury (based in Townsville) and Gold Coast United.
So, the future of the league was looking up, eh? Not really, because North Queensland Fury only lasted two seasons before going bust (Robbie Fowler was their foreign "marquee" player, whose contract is exempt from the salary cap). The club was losing money from the outset and it quickly became apparent that their crowds were far lower than the executive management had anticipated.
They finished dead last in their second campaign, had an average attendance of about 6,500 in their inaugural season, which fell to just over 4,000 the following season, before having their license revoked and unceremoniously biting the dust. What a towering monument to strategic planning...
So, how did that other expansion club - Gold Coast United - fare? In terms of performances on the field, Gold Coast started admirably, finishing third in their debut season (being knocked out on penalties by Newcastle Jets in the playoffs). However, just like North Queensland Fury, their Achilles' heel was consistently low gates, as Gold Coast drew the smallest crowds in the league (which is really saying something...). Their first -season average was about 5,400, which dropped to about 3,500 in each of the following two campaigns. They still managed to claim fourth place in 2010-2011 (reaching the "preliminary final" - i.e. one step before the title-deciding "grand final"), before things went truly pear-shaped in 2011-2012. Gold Coast's license was revoked with four games remaining, but they were permitted to play those final matches and finished with the wooden spoon.
Gold Coast's billionaire owner Clive Palmer became embroiled in a feud with the FFA's (Jewish) chairman Frank Lowy, threatening to form a breakaway league and even a separate soccer governing body but that was all hot air.
Returning to the subject of international football, alarm bells should be pealing (and bladders releasing) throughout the Australian football establishment in response to the failure to qualify for the current Olympic tournament. That Australia couldn't get out of a group containing the likes of the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Iraq is bad enough. That Australia didn't win a match out of the six they played is even worse. That Australia failed to score a single goal in those six matches is nightmarishly blood-freezing.
The humiliating Olympic "non-qualification" campaign has provided a grimy window on the direction in which Australian football is heading. For a start, the following creeps were in the squads - note the ethnicities (I've just double-checked the number of appearances each of them made):
Aziz Behich - Turk (4 starts):
Kofi Danning - Ghanaian Negro (1 start; 2 appearances as a substitute):
Mohammad Mustafa Amini - Afghan-Nicaraguan hybrid (1 start; 1 sub):
Kerem Bulut - Turk (2 subs):
Isaka Cernak - Negro (no appearances):
Bernie Ibini-Esei - Nigerian Negro (no appearances):
The starting lineups were therefore still obviously almost all White but the presence of the abovementioned Muslim and black dross in such numbers is something altogether novel and indicative of the attitudes of the "new generation" of naive, brainwashed coaches suckled on European TV images of the supposedly superior "ghetto-minority" footballer. The "fruits" of two decades of meticulous western European-derived propaganda (in turn, itself precipitated by another prior couple of decades of American-derived propaganda) are now poisoning Australian sport.
Non-Whites are being funnelled into the "youth" game at an alarming rate and this shall have the usual deleterious effects on standards in both the A League and senior national team. As we all know from the French and English "models", the more non-Whites in junior and youth football, the more anti-White the "football culture" becomes and before one can say "leftist arseholes" White kids are basically forced out of the sport or, at the very least, "discouraged" from taking part.
The sad thing is that despite more Australian kids playing junior soccer than any other sport, the "establishment" increasingly feels the need to disproportionately draw professional players from non-White "communities" in the belief that this is the formula for success. The results are beginning to speak for themselves...
