FFA: Yes Canberra can bid!

FFA Ben Buckley, pictured alongside Frank Lowy, invites Canberra to bid.

Pawl Cubbin from Zoo to invest! Well done Pawl, leading the way. Who will be next?

Merryn Sherwood from the Canberra Times has the story many football fans in this town hae been waiting for: Canberra to bid and read more about the Ivan Slavich team below.

We are on a roll. Time to push harder, and louder. See you at that game on Saturday. Bring everyone! It feels good!

From The Times:
Football Federation Australia chief executive Ben Buckley has officially invited Canberra's Ivan Slavich to submit a bid for an A-League team.......

Football Federation Australia chief executive Ben Buckley has officially invited Canberra's Ivan Slavich to submit a bid for an A-League team.
And it's just one of the latest developments since Slavich announced last month that he would lead the ACT's A-League bid.

They include:

Pawl Cubbin, chief executive officer of Canberra advertising, design, interactive and marketing agency ZOO, signing on his support as a investor.

Slavich being officially endorsed by soccer's ACT administrator, Capital Football, to lead the bid.

Accounting firm Pricewaterhouse-Coopers signing on to provide support.

Canberra legal firm RSK legal also providing support.

More than 900 people signing up their support for an A-League team on the AteamforCanberra website.

Slavich confirmed yesterday that he had official word from Buckley on the submission. He said he had managed to convince the FFA to extend its original deadline of June 2 to mid-August, so that the Canberra submission could be reviewed along with the other 10 bids that the FFA would be considering.

Last month the FFA announced it had received 10 bids, which would all be considered for the 2009-10 season and then 2010-11. One of those, Gold Coast United, has already been accepted for next year.

But Slavich said he would still be aiming for acceptance into the 2010-11 season.

The chief executive of TransACT and general manager of ActewAGL's retail division has only been in the official role for about two weeks, but is aiming to have a bid to the FFA by mid-August.

The bid will be put together by a committee that includes Slavich, Canberra Stadium manager Neale Guthrie, RSK partner Andrew Satsia and Cubbin among others.

Slavich urged soccer fans in the ACT to support this weekend's A-League grand final rematch at Canberra Stadium between Newcastle and the Central Coast.

''We can see there is a lot of support out there already, now it's important that Canberra comes out to support it this Saturday, and that they all come to Canberra Stadium,'' he said.

Slavich also encouraged any other potential investors to contact him.