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Friday 20 June 2008

The Weekender: Should the AIS stay in the VPL?

The Weekender: Where else can the players from the AIS play?

Paul Mavroudis is a passionate South Melbourne fan and football blogger. and Paul is making the journey to Canberra this weekend for his sides Sunday VPL clash with the AIS.

Paul writes the Weekender this week:On Saturday, I and 30 odd other South Melbourne fans will be making the trip up to Canberra by bus.....

On Saturday, I and 30 odd other South Melbourne fans will be making the trip up to Canberra by bus, to watch our team play the AIS in a Victorian Premier League clash. If you predicted this scenario a few years back, you'd have been locked in the crazy house, and rightly so. But it's true, and here we are now, two sides with very different goals and cultures, yet aiming for the moment at least for the same prize.


The inclusion of the AIS in the VPL has not been one universally welcomed by the league's regular clubs. They bring no crowds, exacerbating a problem which already hurts the VPL enormously.

The regular clubs require expensive trips up north for which the expenses allocated for it come up short. The AIS pays no transfers and no wages. It does not need to maintain the costly standards that other clubs are required to do, of press boxes, lighting and everything else that comes with running a club.


Worse still, there was the feeling that last year at least, the AIS mixed and matched its squads too frequently, as part of its quest to develop players rather than win championships.

Of course, this ended up producing quite varied results and performances, where teams would be blown off the park one day, and then come up with an easy win. And further adding to the uncertainty they create is the possibility of them leaving the competition, or even perhaps getting relegated.


The former scenario means that especially if they leave their decision to leave until late, a relegated club who may receive a stay of execution for a year due to that decision may have already lost several players to other clubs.

If as in the latter scenario the AIS do get relegated - which is highly unlikely this year, but was a possibility last season – no one in their right mind would have them playing amongst the clubs in Victoria's State League 1 competition, therefore meaning that a club that finished higher on the table may get relegated. Not an ideal situation.


There are good and bad rationales for them being in the VPL in the first place. The good is that they get to play regularly against sides looking for wins, in what is probably Australia's best 2nd tier competition, against bigger and more experienced bodies, and indeed against players with NSL or A-League experience.

One complaint that comes up about junior players is that because they spend too much time playing against each other, they are then unable to make the step up to senior competition.


The bad is that for perhaps similar reasons to those mentioned earlier, Football NSW doesn't want them, where their inclusion would make more economic sense, and many people down here in Victoria believe that their inclusion in the VPL is not only detrimental to the league and its clubs, but was made as part of a solution to the messy problem of who would get relegated in 2006, a situation many see the FFV as largely responsible for.


And yet, where else can the players from the AIS play? Participating in the National Youth League, as they used to do in the NSL days seems like the obvious solution, and it'd give Canberra some default if not ideal national representation.

But if the costs are near prohibitive for travelling to Victoria every 2nd week, how would they cope with travelling to Perth and Adelaide on multiple occasions? In the NSL days, the AIS played against predominantly NSW based opposition, but that is not an option in these times.

With the deal with the Wellington Phoenix seemingly falling through, the kids need to play somewhere - and even in the NYL, 18 games a year would probably not cut it - but it appears until there's a sudden injection of funding to make that possibility a reality, the AIS are here to stay in the VPL, bringing with them all their anomalies.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for the interesting read, and the explanation of the pros and cons of the AIS in the VPL.

NSW not accepting them, and FFAs acquience in all this is disappointing. shows we still have a long way to go with "new soccer".

some questions.

generally, is the football community happy with the development work the AIS does?

second, why does the AIS squad have to play from canberra? they play in the VPL, could the AIS consider basing the side in Victoria?

thanks,

clayton

Eamonn said...

Clayton certainly the FFA aren't happy with the AIS, they got rid of O'Connor who with Ron Smith produced most of the side that got us to a World Cup...the ultimate measure of the program..surely, not the Olyroos or Under 20 Perf, we're talking Aussie to the World Cup.

New bloke coming in plus A-League youth is going to be a massive challenge

Consider Frank Farina..2 years at AIS..then started at Marconi at 18..three nights a week, that is a very poor dev pathway...he's a lucky man he made it....

and now AIS will be, possibly a camp based program like the Olyroos..with the guys training at night with Sydney yoof or whoever.

Big problems ahead..methinks.

Of course they could be based anywhere, but with AIS facilities it makes sense to stay in Canberra. Don't think location is the issue, it's finding somewhere for them to play, to train together.

There is an argument for a 15-17 year old programme..and a doubling of the intake from 25 o 50 players.

But where would the 17 year olds go...to a unprofessional A-League youth team set-up, their standards would backwards..

so the coach has some problems, but if it's not a full-time programme..ie camp based why the hell is he getting $250,000 and do the fFA even know what the program will look like?

I think not.

Paul said...

They flew in and out of Victoria last season, playing their 'home' games at the venue of their opponents. A costly exercise. This is also related to the reason why South's game was shifted to Canberra as from its original Morwell venue. The AIS couldn't get back to Melbourne in time to catch a flight back to Canberra!

Not being familiar with the ins and outs of junior systems, I can't tell you for certain what local clubs think of the AIS/VIS success rate. Generally from a VPL perspective, clubs tend to think they themselves doa reasonable job; after all, they produced and still produce the bulk of the players that represent us at international level.

There's a lot of related grievances about how the FFV/FFA do not value the (ethnic) clubs contribution to the game, and that rather than attempting to find ways of making the current system work or at least work better, they go about creating new systems to bypass what's there. Some of it's based on conspiracy theories of course, but things like building the new Socceroos base at ES Marks doesn't help. Kinda got off topic there :)

Anonymous said...

Ethnic clubs around Australia have to re brand themselves or face extinction. Clubs like Sydney United and Melbourne Knights are farming young Australian players to the Croatian team while the crowds are so low and the pitches and stadiums are so bad the only option is to start again.
Isn't the FFV setting up a new league with a geographical base rather than a ethnic base? I braved the NSL for years hoping one day that football could reach some sort of level which didn't reflect a dying horse. Welcome to reality and reality is you have to move with the times or count down the days till the sad end.

Paul said...

Knights and United are farming players out to Croatian club sides because of the pittance they'll receive from an equivalent A-League transfer. Natural selection sorts out most clubs one way or another, not just ethnic clubs (or what are perceived to not be ethnic clubs). The FFV's new geographically based summer league has not been finalised yet, and various rumours are circulating about the concessions they'll have to make if it's to have any chance of going ahead.

What all this has to do with the AIS dilemma i'm not quite sure. What role should they AIS be playing and how should they be doing it? Is the VPL (ir any league state league system) the right place for it?

Anonymous said...

The essential question is what kind of set up do we need in Australia to produce players and system(s) of play that will *win* the World Cup.

Doing a "reasonable job" is not good enough.

If agents of local agendas keep putting up barriers and self-interests ahead of national development, then if Australia ever wins the World Cup then it would be hypocritical for such agents to celebrate.

Anonymous said...

thanks paul, thanks eamonn,

seems the short term future is pretty unclear. and it is going to take time to clear up. state / national relationships are gonna be a part of that too.

the one change that i think we really need to see in oz football is our one footedness. if carney and hyphen get injured/lose form, who slots into that left back position?

i think pim commented once about how he was seeing a lot of two footed players coming through out of korea and japan, but he hasn`t seen that here.

are there any current oz players who are 2 footed?

clayton

Paul said...

rumours coming out of the weekend claiming ais will not be part of next season's vpl.

Eamonn said...

Paul..so where will they be?

and hoped you enjoyed the game and drive home!!

Paul said...

No idea where they'll end up. VPL was going to downsize to 12 teams anyway.

As for the drive home, I never want to hear the 'acropolis now' ever theme ever again.