A-League crowds up - FFA marketing ploy pays off

FFA came under a lot of fire over the last couple of years as they put all their attention and resources into the World Cup Bid, at the expense of a still fragile national league sitting in an over-subscribed professional sporting arena.

Now it seems things are improving.

We had the season changes, and like the AFL and NRL, some key planning has gone into making noise at the right times.

You can't just rely on the game to be the thing. Provide it and they will come etc.

So starting the first three rounds with some big games, big clashes has resulted in a heap of big(ger) crowds and more noise than the A-League often gets.

Only a fool knows that 16,000 at a defeated Sydney stadium or 4,000 at the Gold Coast, etc etc means the crowds are back - no what the 40,000 in Melbourne or sell-out in Adelaide means, once again, there is clearly a market for football - and we may still have to go through the hard weeks with low crowds - but we can see once again, if we make a noise, plan correctly and bring in the odd player of note, the game in Australia will flourish.

It will never be easy - but it could get easier, much easier in years to come. Hey the Grassroots may actually want to come in ten year - they may even know about the games thru FTA but that's another story.

Over 10,000 members at Newcastle Jets - maybe other teams could look at the Tinkler membership model.

I tried a similar model with the A-League4Canberra bid - impressive as the $200 x 2000 people currrently held is - I reckon the whole family for $10 or so could have produced a massive amount of support.

Imagine a bid that had 15,000 paid-up initial members before a bid was approved. I lost that one btw!!!

Great to see the FFA getting something right - we're on the up it feelsA-League crowds continue to trend upwards with a record total of 135,438 passing through the gates in the first two rounds of the season.

Boosted by a ground record 15,789 to watch Harry Kewell's Melbourne Victory go down 1-0 to Adelaide United at Hindmarsh Stadium last Friday night, 55,588 fans watched the five A-League round-two matches.

A-League officials expect numbers to climb with a crowd close to 40,000 expected for the derby between Melbourne Victory and Melbourne Heart at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night.