Melbourne City FC Thread

I'm enjoying following Melbourne City, and the A-League. Just a question for the Australia based fans; are they going to extend the League? Canberra doesn't have a team, and participation in football is now higher among the young then it is for Aussie Rules, Rugby and Cricket. 10 teams isn't much.
 
Pell said:
I'm enjoying following Melbourne City, and the A-League. Just a question for the Australia based fans; are they going to extend the League? Canberra doesn't have a team, and participation in football is now higher among the young then it is for Aussie Rules, Rugby and Cricket. 10 teams isn't much.
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As a Canberra based blue, I can shed some light on this.

I saw the bid that was presented to the A League for a team in Canberra, as at the time I was working for the firm that put it together. The bid was sponsored strongly by a local Canberra Business man, Ivan Slavich, who is a firm supporter of football. Former Socceroo Ned Zelich was also part of the bid. Ultimately it failed, and after the collapses of some of the other franchises I think the league is consolidating rather then expanding at the moment.

Even if they were considering expanding there's a few problems with Canberra. Put simply it's a fairly fair weather town when it comes to supporting teams. If the teams do well then they get glory hunters otherwise crowd numbers a fairly lackluster. I've been to a few Raiders games and they blatantly lie about crowd figures. Truthfully I reckon they would be averaging around 7-9k a game. The running joke is that they count all the players in the figures as well as staff and cheerleaders. Brumbies crowds are better but also down from when they would regularly come close to selling out most games at the turn of century. With winter seasons the cold weather (for Australia) would put people off, which wouldn't necessarily apply for an A League team.

The stadium infrastructure is not the best either. It's not located in a easily accessible area, with decent surrounding infrastructure. There are plans for a stadium in the city which would be built where the current civic swimming pool is which would be ideal and revitalise some of the CBD. However those plans and the rest of the City to the Lake ideas are being shelved for a light rail project, which if you ask most, would fail the pub test for common sense.

There have been some positives. I think some Canberra teams went far in the FFA cup and were drawing decent numbers to some of the games, however the FFA used the recent world cup qualifier as a test case to see whether there would be appropriate demand. Against the powerhouse of world football that is Kyrgyzstan and on a severely wet day they drew about 20k to the game. They didn't exactly help their cause by pricing the game appropriately - cheapest tickets were still $50 which many thought was quite steep. I'm not sure what conclusions they would draw from that...

I think that a Canberra based team makes sense as it could maybe involve some partnership with the Australian Institute of Sport and almost act as a bit of a feeder for some of the young talent. However I think that there are a number of factors that will not see a team be established there soon. The fair weather support, inability to attract decent players to Canberra (versus every other club which can either offer being near the coast or a large modern vibrant city), the league's appetite to consolidate rather than expand and a host of other infrastructure reasons will result in Canberra being without a team for some time I reckon.
 
I went to the Kingston pub in Canberra about 20 years ago before an Aussie Rules game, and while playing pool imagine my surprise when I saw an MCFC team pic (Bell, Lee, Summerbee era with the trophies) on the wall. Wonder if it's still there.
 
moomba said:
I went to the Kingston pub in Canberra about 20 years ago before an Aussie Rules game, and while playing pool imagine my surprise when I saw an MCFC team pic (Bell, Lee, Summerbee era with the trophies) on the wall. Wonder if it's still there.
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I'll have a look next time I'm there. The Kingo is a fairly rough establishment, probably moreso 20 years ago...

I've mentioned it in another thread but there's a blue who's flying a union jack flag with MCFC in each quadrant from their balcony on the busiest intersection in town!
 
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Looking like Koren is on the way out which should make for some interesting squad changes in the next few weeks. Get the right marquee player (or the right visa player with Fornaroli moving to marquee) and the squad is looking as good as any.
 
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