Football Australia’s new Championship competition remains scheduled to kick-off in October, but Sunday’s press release outlining no additional clubs are yet ready to join the inaugural eight sides for the national second division ongoing has cast a pall over building excitement.
Head Office’s statement they ‘did not receive any fully compliant bid proposals’ despite having ‘actively engaged and evaluated as many as 25 clubs’ against its framework is another setback on the grinding road for those desperate to see a traditional football pyramid structure in Australia.
It’s also hard to digest for the layman, at a time when the Australia Cup is again showcasing the on-field talent and off-field passion of clubs desperate for a chance at higher levels.
South Melbourne Hellas have fought as long and hard as any club for a pathway back to the top-flight and will be a headline act when the Championship begins October 10, hosting Sydney Olympic in the opener. Chairman Bill Papastergiadis feels the only reason no further clubs have been accepted is the unreasonably high financial bar expected.
‘We need some transparency; what was submitted, which clubs submitted, and what were the areas of alleged non-compliance?’ Papastergiadis asked Box2Box.
‘Why do we need to have the criteria as currently set by Football Australia, for clubs to put in a bank guarantee of good hard cash people need to take out of their clubs to sit in a trust fund for I’m not sure what purpose? We need to know why they’re persisting with the bank guarantee of half a million.’
‘If all we’re doing is trying to ensure players are appropriately remunerated if a club falls over, half a million seems like an excessive amount. In NPL competitions around Australia lots of clubs have playing budgets above $500,000 and they’ve been surviving comfortably for years, while watching the A-Leagues go through its own struggles. So, where is the difficulty?’
November will mark two years since the eight inaugural clubs were selected to partake; equally it will also mark two years of Football Australia being unable to accept anyone else, have engaged in what now seem convoluted stages of expressed interest, requested proposals and debate on format, with a ‘Champions League’ style format agreed to for now.
The eight foundation members hold licenses to play in the Championship for five years, conditional on their continued meeting of standards. Even that feels like it flies contrary to the notion of opportunity this new competition is supposed to be founded on.
Papastergiadis was surprised no further entrants had been found on Sunday afternoon given the undeniable hunger that exists to partake around the country. He is also of the belief that Football Australia will be refunding the $500,000 stumped up by the inaugural clubs.
‘It wasn’t something I expected because the communication and chatter we were privy to was there was significant interest from a number of clubs from Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, so I was hopeful those bids would come to fruition. I suspect that [bank guarantee] is the sole and only reason for it. I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that’s the only thing holding [clubs] back.
‘Why are we setting the bar so high at this point? Do the A-League clubs have bank guarantees in place? Why are we doing that to foundation clubs? We really are one of the only countries in the world creating impediments for clubs to be aspirational.
‘We do require transparency because we are talking about the future of football in this country, particularly when the A-League has its own significant financial difficulties. Why is it we’re trying to create obstacles for what are the natural competitors in the landscape?’
In May, Football Australia recorded an $8.5million loss over the 2024/25 financial year at its AGM, which included the writing off of more than $4million in debt, some of which is said to be on behalf of battling A-League clubs via the APL.
Papastergiadis argues that it says all you need to know about Australian football politics that in seeking an inclusive approach in developing a second division, it has served only to illuminate that there are still firmly rules for some, and rules for others.
“Here we have privately owned clubs with a financial interest in a particular enterprise, having those interests being dealt with in a particular way without public consideration, waiving fees owed, while at the same time clubs that have been around for 50-60 years are being foisted with a financial impediment for the implementation of what should be a natural part of the football structure in this country.
‘On one hand A-League clubs are forgiven their losses, while on the other we’re saying to foundation clubs: ‘you need to put money in to be a player in the code in this country. Where is the equity in this conversation, what are the values we are rewarding?
‘Is it the death knell for us? Absolutely not. Do we still believe it will happen? Absolutely yes, because you can’t have a code being dominated by particular intetrets at the expense of the code as a whole.’