AAFC Chairman Nick Galatas has called Football Australia’s delay to its proposed National Second Division a ‘massive disappointment’ to his organisation’s clubs, while also labelling head office’s desired ‘Champions League’ model the ‘least financially viable of all options.’
Last week’s news that Football Australia had been unable to find an additional two-to-four clubs to join the eight initial participants announced in November last year, and would therefore push back its March-April 2025 commencement date, means the greatest puzzle in Australian football is still a long way from a solution.
Football Australia remain committed to running a second tier competition in 2025 but the continual floating of the Champions League concept, where clubs would remain in their respective NPL competitions and play nationally only on the side, seems to be driving them further from consensus with said clubs.
‘We’ve canvassed our clubs and capabilities, what they can and can’t do, and the Champions League is the worst of all possible models for them, the least financially viable’, Galatas told Box2Box.
‘People talk about expense and how they’ll do the travel [commensurate with a NSD], what they’re not looking at is the revenue it would bring. Playing good games against strong clubs, home and away – it would be more costly to fly around, but it’s what we’re looking for, aren’t we?
‘The platform for our players to play nationally, for fans to see a higher level is what will bring in the revenue, not some sort of Champions League model. The clubs haven’t signed up for it, and aren’t going to play in it.’
Perhaps most confounding is Football Australia’s inability to find additional clubs fit to join its NSD pool – still comprised only of teams from Victoria and New South Wales – a factor that feels deeply at odds with the annual clamour for higher opportunity when NPL clubs compete in the national Australia Cup.
Galatas acknowledged some State Federations (particularly Football Tasmania) have played a role in obstructing the passage of clubs out of their competitions and into a national tier, but still feels Football Australia’s modelling lacks the flexibility required to cater to the extremely diverse circumstances under which NPL-level clubs operate.
‘Football Australia has, to an extent understandably, been concerned with ensuring fair process, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what’s required here is a bit of nuance. From a Perth team, a South Hobart team, to a Marconi with massive infrastructure, to up-and-coming clubs like Avondale; these are different organisations with different challenges and characteristics.
‘Trying to throw a blanket over all of them doesn’t work. Football Australia had 26 entities that it considered met it’s criteria to put in a proposal, so I’m flabbergasted that of those we haven’t got more than eight, and I think that’s because we’re just too stuck on process rather than outcome.
‘When you’ve got existing clubs and a Federation that ought know it’s market and participants, it ought to have an idea of what things look like. I think they’ve been too corporatist about it, too strict in their commercial-type approach.’
On Football Tasmania and their public opposition to South Hobart’s aspiration to partake in the competition, as what would be the state’s only national representative football club, Galatas was unequivocal.
‘I think it’s extremely disappointing. The club’s gone out of its way to put its hand up, garnered government and community support, it’s a massive effort. You’d think one would reward that; why wouldn’t it be, at the least, unobstructed?
‘They’ve said things publicly like ‘we want an A-League team.’ Ok, but in the meantime, here’s a way into a national competition? Why get in the way of that? It strikes me as extraordinary, and is an obstacle we want to hopefully work our way around.’