Re: MCFC buy Melbourne Heart FC (merged)
JoeMercer'sWay said:
what's Danny Allsopp up to these days? maybe he can be our Aussie ambassador.
Allsopp plays for Croydon City Arrows, which Wiki calls "an Australian soccer club based in Croydon, Victoria, currently playing in the 5th tier of the Victorian soccer structure and the sixth tier nationally". However, he apparently played for the rivals, Melbourne Victory, between 2005-9 and 2011-12.
On the other hand, Simon Colosimo - who made a handful of appearances for City in KK's promotion season in 2001-2 - made 63 appearances for Heart between 2010 and 2013. He recently left to play for a club in India, though. Anyway, maybe he would be our man if we're looking for a local guy with a City link to spread the word.
Another interesting thing is that Victory are the better supported of the two teams. They were in the A-League from the first season, 2005-6, and it was agreed that no other Melbourne club would be admitted for five years, giving Victory a free run at the Melbourne market for that period. Heart duly entered the league in 2010-11.
Both of them play home games at the AAMI Stadium, which is Melbourne's only rectangular stadium (i.e. purpose built for football). However, it seems that Victory play some games where they'll draw bigger crowds at the Etihad Stadium (which is an oval stadium primarily configured for Aussie Rules and thus considered a less attractive venue for football). I assume that the club will stay at AAMI for now but it seems to be leased out to all kinds of teams - I wonder if the plan will be to build its own facility eventually.
I also found out that the coach of Melbourne Victory is Kevin Muscat, the ex-Wolves full back who was known as a particularly nasty player when he played in England. Makes me dislike them already!
