Instability, infighting and mounting debts: The death of the NSL

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From 1977 to 2004, the National Soccer League was the top level of football in Australia. For the majority of its history, it battled against instability, fighting and mounting debts. This is the story of how the NSL died.
References:
- Canberra Times
- Sheilas, Wogs and P*******: An Incomplete Biography of Johnny Warren and Soccer in Australia
- The Death of and Life of Australian Soccer by Joe Gorman
- Sydney Morning Herald
- The Age, Melbourne
- OzFootball
- Trove
- Socceroos
- Getty Images
- Australian Financial Review
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Опубликовано:

27 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 77

@masteryoda498 4 месяца назад

The NSL fell on its own sword, and yes soccer was (and still is),the most mismanaged sport in Australia.

@TOTN17 4 месяца назад

I would say Rugby Union is on par with Football for Mismanagement ATM

@masteryoda498 4 месяца назад

@@TOTN17 True, but the biggest problem with Rugby Union in Australia, is that it’s an elitist sport confined to the snotty nosed private schools, it’s a not working class man’s sport.

@presntnow 4 месяца назад

Football just needs to be more affordable at grass roots level.

@Firedogies 4 месяца назад

@@presntnowit’s the most played at grass roots level that’s not the problem

@presntnow 4 месяца назад

@@Firedogies True, yes highest participation rate of any sport, makes us wonder where the money goes however? APL and FA have to put it back into the game, Be more transparent. MORE FUNDING FROM GOVERNMENT TOO, PM gets his free box seats at the Football, the FIFA Womens World Cup 2023, and last week at the semi final 2nd leg- Central Coast Mariners vs Sydney FC...so put money into the MOST POPULAR Sport Australia and the World, Albo! (211 Nations play Football). Moving forward too- Expansion A-League (16 teams) and The Championship/Second Division (12 teams initially). Make sure they do it right, APL and FA!

@yyytttwww 4 месяца назад

The real glimmer of hope was in the early and mid 90's when interest and crowds were rising due to rivalry, but the media doused that flame, with massive negativity!

@mcaudery 4 месяца назад

It happened again 2010-2015

@GaryHabsburg 4 месяца назад

Go back to State Leagues. Soccer thrives on localism. Australia's cities have vast multicultural outer suburbias full of potential. Have a post-season national finals series and a Grand Final.

@Joe005 4 месяца назад

A-League is now a shell of its former self. One day, they will join this video.

@andrewrollason4963 4 месяца назад

Fun Fact: The 2004 NSL Grand Final was not actually the last NSL match. The last match was between Northern Spirit v Football Kingz at Gabbie Stadium; on the Tuesday night after the Grand Final, at Gabbie Stadium. It was supposed to be in mid-February but there was a pay dispute and in the end, the match was held after the league had officially dissolved.

@ALeagueCouchCritics 4 месяца назад

Wow, didn’t realise that. That is a really good fun fact

@flicksbyhans 4 месяца назад

Ange P worked in this league right?

@chad2321 4 месяца назад

I see you’ve gone down the HITC Sevens photo essay approach, not a bad idea, it works 👍🏼

@fordfalcao9061 4 месяца назад

Sadly for me, the A-League after the impressive years having Del Piero here who lifted the game to its highest heights was a missed opportunity, since then, the game here has slid down and down. Those responsible for the running of the game have no ''real'' heart for the game, its the usual political approach when their promises fail. If they did, the A-League should be competing with the likes of Cricket and AFL by now. We have a huge number of registered juniors but poor development strategy & opportunities for them. The Socceroo's should be in the top 20 FIFA year in and year out but we aren't......go figure.

@amee4231 4 месяца назад

Fantastic video, I got into football in season 2 of the aleague, so this is a lot of history that i missed. Really enjoyed it cheers

@ArachKing 4 месяца назад

Bandwagoner

@sonofportsmith4435 4 месяца назад

It amuses me when people try to spin the narrative that the NSL was some kind of “glory years” era for football in Australia. There were highlights, for sure, and so much of our football origin can be found within that time period. But the fact remains it was actually a dark period for football growth. Hyper exclusive, huge financial losses and no attempt to grow the game beyond minority fan bases. It was doomed to fail, and it’s an experiment that is right to be behind us.

@ArachKing 4 месяца назад

Mate, the vast majority of ‘skips’ and Indigenous Australians don’t and never will GAF about ‘the sokkah⚽️’. That’s just reality and it’s *way* past time the game in this country made its peace w/that fact and just moves on from bending over backwards to suck up to those ppl to no avail💡

@sonofportsmith4435 4 месяца назад

@@ArachKing simply not true. Within the female game, the vast majority of participants are Anglo/Celtic Australians. And the male game has seen a surge of non-Mediterranean players in both Anglo and African participants. The NSL era delivered one World Cup in 50 years - a dismal failure, yet the ethnic clubs insist the game was in the right hands all along. The glorification of the NSL is a fanciful attempt to pretend the game should be played by minority groups, specifically Balkan peoples.

@ArachKing 4 месяца назад

@@sonofportsmith4435 Agree to disagree. I’ve followed the game here for a long time and I’m not going to be told that my firsthand&ongoing experiences weren’t real by some stranger on the internet💡 All I’ll say in closing is that I used to share your optimism in believing the game could become ‘mainstream’ here..but reality set in. It’s just never going to happen and honestly, it doesn’t even need to in order for 🇦🇺 to keep growing as a ⚽️ nation punching above its weight.

@biot_travel 4 месяца назад

awesome episode. the NSL was a strange beast - you could almost describe it as dysfunctional functional :) the ethnic origins of some of the teams didnt help things, nor did some of the teams power brokers and their .... well .... associates and associations hmm. (what happen to prahran hehehhe ?)

@Lupi33z 4 месяца назад

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

@Hereticals 4 месяца назад

One of the biggest problems with the old NSL was the teams were linked to different nationalities. Pretty hard to cheer for the Greek, Croat, Serb, Italian etc. team if you're not from one of those backgrounds (which the majority of Australians weren't).That's what the A-League got right but what I fear the national 2nd tier will bring back.

@biot_travel 4 месяца назад

the whole 2nd tier concept is interesting - my 2c is that some of the state league teams should be merged to form new entities to represent a region (based on council boundaries) and not suburban based like a lot of metro teams are so at least the resources can be pooled to form 2nd tier clubs with some solid base behind them. the other issue is do they need a caveat to make sure all states are represented ? whats happens to soccer in some states if perth glory and no other WA team make the cut for a few years and the same with SA and QLD (as they are 1 team states) ? lots of questions :)

@Dnvk-xy5xr 4 месяца назад

Would you have supported an Irish, Scottish or English team , they did exist in the nsl, you just mentioned all the non English speaking clubs. Racist and you don't even know it.

@Hereticals 4 месяца назад

@@Dnvk-xy5xr What a dumb comment. No I wouldn't have supported an English, Irish etc club. You either missed my point or were going for ragebait.

@Hereticals 4 месяца назад

@@biot_travel Good points. I think if they limit the pyramid to the 2 tiers, and ensure representation across the comps it could work. Finances could be a challenge though if a WA team in the 2nd tier needs to travel every second week.

@aussieboy77 4 месяца назад

The ethnic clubs made an effort to become more inclusive later on. They dropped the ethnic names and banned flags from other countries. Not sure if it made any difference though.

@seanbuchanan5402 4 месяца назад

What was the bit around 3.33 ?? Crystal Palace and Rangers were mentioned while referencing attendances at northern spirit, am I missing something ?

@hilipoplo 4 месяца назад

Amazing!

@therealkuta 4 месяца назад

The line about 18k northern spirit crowd being the biggest is wrong. There were Glory games where I'd say around 2-4k people couldn't get a seat and were crammed into the corner of the stadium. 18k capacity but I'd say a few regular games were pushing over 20k

@ALeagueCouchCritics 4 месяца назад

It isn't wrong. That crowd is statistically recorded as the highest NSL regular season crowd. It is fact.

@mbos322 4 месяца назад

Nothing has changed. But also a reminder that there weren’t any so called golden years.

@adrak91 4 месяца назад

wow and I thought the A-league was bad

@blinkusfishus2052 4 месяца назад

The A-league isn't bad, it's just Australian's have an inferiority complex.

@adrak91 4 месяца назад

@@blinkusfishus2052 it's the lack of producing talent like Kewell and Cahill etc these days that's the worry

@Lupi33z 4 месяца назад

@@blinkusfishus2052 nah its bad

@peterkotsonis2535 4 месяца назад

Oh if only someone could answer the question of why A-League clubs need to play in rugby stadia with massive overheads and few fans. More need to take the Western United approach of having their own ground, either owned by their local council or themselves. It kills me what the Victorian government did to the stadium of my beloved South Melbourne, that athletics track around the field is the biggest insult to football anywhere in the world and means the fans are so far away from the action. I was there for the first game against West Adelaide when Jimmy Tsekinis tore us apart and I can tell you the more than 20,000 who were there (ignore the official attendance figure, it's wrong) were loving being so close to the action!

@Ozscreamer 4 месяца назад

I’d love to see a short history of the clubs that were in the nsl and a where are they now/ ambitions

@ALeagueCouchCritics 4 месяца назад

Great idea 👀

@aussieboy77 4 месяца назад

The bit about the Channel 7 deal was hilarious. The Soccer Australia board should have been publicly flogged for signing off on that deal. Imagine being stupid enough to think that Channel 7 would promote soccer.

@thegraveyardshift8521 4 месяца назад

I remember at the time the excitement that a mainstream commercial channel like 7 bought the rights, it felt like soccer was about to hit the bright lights.... before it was just ABC and SBS who would show games.

@presntnow 4 месяца назад

Surely they would have Learned and avoided that Sh!t Station Who did nothing but try and Bury Football in Latter Years of NSL Hiding the weekly highlights program on Channel 7 at Midnight on Monday. **The FIFA WOMENS WORLD CUP 2023 tv deal was abysmal! Only 15 match shown out of 64 matches, on CHANNEL 7. (Why not SBS as always is??) I was glad I got Optus Sport for the Womens World Cup, Comparing the tv coverage, Channel 7 had no idea!

@aussieboy77 4 месяца назад

@@thegraveyardshift8521 If something is too good to be true, it probably is.

@justincase5124 3 месяца назад

Thats the sabotage from within......

@fatstorvolay2243 4 месяца назад

The NSL era was the era when football in Australia was authentic, even if mismanaged. Not the phoneyism of the A-League and its set of franchises today, equally mismanaged, but mismanaged differently.

@FrankieBlueEyes 4 месяца назад

The similarities between the history of the sport in Australia and the U.S. are very noticeable. The A-League and MLS were pretty much on par with each other around 2011, 2012, and then MLS took off, and the A-League stagnated. I've always felt the A-League should have taken some notes from MLS on how to market and grow the league.

@biot_travel 4 месяца назад

MLS had some different dynamics tho - $$$$ and some of there clubs have interesting origins and have over 20M+ registered soccer players. Then you have the Canadian teams and Canada is a lot bigger GDP and population wise then NZ (no offense). What the A-League achieves on the smell of an oily rag is often forgotten.

@FrankieBlueEyes 4 месяца назад

@biot_travel Having the US market is definitely an advantage, but people forget that in 2004/2005, MLS almost went out of business. All the teams were owned by just 3 owners, and the league office had even drafted the press release announcing the closing of the league. The three owners decided to give it one more year, and things started turning around. Also, MLS is competing for space with the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, College Football, College Basketball and Nascar. So despite having a bigger market than Australia, it also has way more sports to compete against.

@biot_travel 4 месяца назад

@@FrankieBlueEyes true but $$$ rule - there sports dont rely on bums on seat and membership like our sports do in Australia and some of those owners have media interests etc. MLS has 4 broadcast partners ... we have Paramount and 10 (enough said). Even the club sponsors, the best one is probably Melbourne City with Etihad, MLS has Red Bull, Target, Royal Caribbean etc. If the A-League could get some good Tier-1 sponsors they would be right. Looks whats happening to Rugby Union when they lost Qantas and a few others. Twiggy could basically run Union out of his own wallet but he keeps Western Force afloat.

@FrankieBlueEyes 4 месяца назад

@biot_travel I'm not saying it's exactly the same, but you're talking about MLS now. As I pointed out, this wasn't always the case. The commissioners office had at one point actually drafted the press release that the league was folding and only pulled it at the last second. They had no money, no stadiums, no sponsors, no TV deals, etc... A few years ago, the A-League brought in the head of the Premier League for some advice. I didn't think it made any sense. The landscape of football in Australia and England are night and day. The landscape of football in Australia and the US have more similarities. I don't think picking the brain of some of the MLS executives could hurt, that's all I'm saying.

@Lupi33z 4 месяца назад

Marketing isn't the issue, the structure of the game is all wrong here. Part of the problem was the A-league took too many notes from the MLS and that isn't suited to the dynamics in Australia. Different culture, different demographics.

@leighreganarblaster9852 3 месяца назад

Today South Melbourne Football club (SMFC) still in National Premier League of Victoria still getting talent stouts to sevSMFC players to play so any SMFC for thier clubs also die football player who can’t break in the top tame comes to DMFC to play so try to improve thier game in hope get sing up a top club in the world.

@SamScholfield-nc7sr 4 месяца назад

I think conferences are the answer! Maybe 4 conferences - true to geography, with corresponding lower tiers and road games and things like convergences where lots of teams congregate. Throw in promotion relegation in a few years and play off series with multiple leg fixtures (maybe with away goals or a sudden death 3rd round.) Badly needed. More cups, more games, more coverage, smaller grounds - smaller caps, more teams, more jeopardy. A draft combine wouldn't hurt either.