ISPS Handa Premiership

In the session we had with NZF they were adamant this would not happen - IE the team that gets you qualified for the National League part of the season is what you stick with.  That question was asked several times.

So what do you as a SIer think about that prospect? I understand that a SI League is prohibitively expensive for Nelson and Dunners, but is this a bit mickey-mouse?

Why would that happen? AU (and its component/predecessor clubs) have been keen on National League status for a while. AUFC will be pretty much guaranteed an NL spot on current form; Onehunga Sports might be able to do it alone, 3Kings no chance, so what's the motivation for demerger?

My interpretation was that the $10,000 entry fee for ALL clubs effectively means the Auckland/Wellington clubs are subsidising the travel costs of the various regional clubs for the season.

Correct

I think, at present, it is a better method of establishing the 2 strongest SI sides rather than just selecting the respective MPL and SPL champions. Successive administrations in Football South have neglected the issue of the playing strength in their top competition for years, even granting their Milk Cup squad a slot one season. Last years SPL champions (Green Island) would not have finished in the top half of the MPL.

peter-chote-criticises-planned-changes-to-new-zealands-national-football-league

Interesting interview tonight , some points I had not thought of around sponsors for the current premiership. Get a sense this is far from over?

I wouldn't be surprised if after 3 years of poor quality, lack of exposure and irrelevance that we see ourselves going back to a summer league. Who know maybe the All Whites will qualify and grab that big pay day NZF so desperately needs to run its competitions

I am amazedballs that you are not intentionally describing the current NL, tbh.

Not like the lower quality football this new league entails is gonna help exposure or relevance though.

I don't know about you, but I think that Cashmere Tech v Bay Olympic is really going to capture the imagination of the nation. And the quality of football will be spectacular. 

Bruce also recently said that the contexts between then are now are completely different. 

The press release talks about them being in there to 'fulfill their a-league license requirement'. I guess also they during the next phase they will have some A-league players to draw on? Whereas in winter they don't.

Pretty safe to say 3 of them are ES, AC and TW. 4th is either WU or HW.. Which really highlights the issue at hand. You've got 3/4 clubs that have decent financial banking. But the rest are being propped up by federation which are bleeding money.

it really seems to be a tradeoff between sustainability and quality. Not an easy answer.

 

Guess the question is how much more sustainable the new system is. I suspect not very.

for all NZFs talk of sustainability they haven't actually said how it will be - basically they seem to be relying on 30 clubs paying $10k each (on top of their NZF \ Federation affiliation fees)

You see, I read this, and I read others saying with similar conviction: "The current HandyPrem teams are plastic franchises with no real support, everyone would much prefer supporting their winter club."

Do I also detect a bit of Welly-centrism here? You don't seem to sneer about the concept of Miramar Rangers v Wellington Olympic in the same way.

I'm still not sold on the new comp because of the quality dilution; and because, since everyone seems convinced that any model will be doomed to failure, I prefer continuity since 2004. But I try to change my opinions when I find new facts.

Don’t we already get this in the later stages of the Chatham cup?? Do those games get anymore attention from the media and fans of other clubs to watch these games?? I suspect not 

Feel free to swap Miramar and Olympic for Cashmere Tech and Bay Olympic if that makes you happier, won't change anything. 

The national league question  isn't one about crowds/support, because whatever model you have it simply won't draw in big numbers. But what you can try to do is make the league the best possible quality it can be, and this model doesn't do that.

Your optimisim/sarcasim on this is very refreshing el grap. 

Now its a done deal we'll all be sipping from the same bog soup to witnesses the new quality levels of regional amateur football at its best, might not be able to find any streams or coverage because they don't typically stream any Central or Northern League games.

Might be best to keep it that way, our product gets enough ribbing as it is and we wouldn't want to detract anyone from football. I'll just be watching for the lols, any regional teams out there that fit what I'm looking for?

What is the purpose of the NL ? Summer entertainment for the tragics? Current league is that I guess

I just don't see how splitting out players among more clubs strengthens it though.

I guess the sustainability problem is farmed out to the specific clubs and their members, rather than being spread out among the federations/NZF.  I guess that's a win, in that the clubs and their members get to decide how much they want to chance National League glory (I will believe a crackdown on player payments when I see it!).

Agreed, even in the youth development area, which they say is one of their reasons for the shift. If the best youth player in Hawkes Bay is playing for Havelock North, it doesn't help youth development much if NCR qualify, regardless of the youth quota (Even worse if they don't!).

What is the purpose of the NL? i don't believe we will have a pro league in NZ in my lifetime. Or probably my kids lifetime. If the strategic goal for NZ Football is game participation, and national team achievement, then don't we just want a NL that gets NZ eligible players into Pro Leagues?

Amateur league that encourages the playing of young 'uns seems like a good step. The tragics (I do include myself in this) will go anyway. Non-tragics aren't attracted by the current format.

But plenty of young ones are playing in the current format - Waitak had something like 7 or 8 players under 20 playing on Saturday. And the current format has been a stepping stone to professional football for number of guys over the last few seasons. So the plan is to run a worse competition to achieve the results the current one does?

You don't build the best players in a 3 month comp, you do that over many many years. Is merely a window.

Yeah, this is the bit I don't get. We've been steadily improving, year on year, with more recent European exports than I can remember in my lifetime, and we want to scrap everything? Premiership format can be improved, sure, but the way I see it - we may or may not bump youth development up a peg with the new system, we dunno yet, but every other aspect is clearly going to trend way down

Isn't 9 weeks of 'Championship' round less than 3 months?

I was approximating a pre-season etc but yes. The comp is not the player development. It's the process for many years prior.

The best young player development will be through the 2 academies Weenix and Ole. Any young player who stays in ChCh training 3 nights a week at Cashmere Tech, and playing only on Saturdays is at a big disadvantage to his peers in an Academy who virtually already training semi pro. 9 weeks of Championship football with Cash Tech won’t change that.

NZF had to come out with cheaper NL financial model so I guess they have that, but don’t think it will help player development and the number of Kiwis getting signed for overseas pro clubs, at all.

Still a focus on winter football should better aline with the Nix, as the A League moves to the colder months as well. But by the time the Weenix/Lower Hutt move into the Championship NL phase of the season the A League will be over??  And it is going to be a big jump from CL football for those senior Nix players, seeking some game time with Weenix/LH through the A League season. A negative for the Nix with their youth/feeder team playing mostly at a lower level.

I’ll miss summer football over both comps.

There is no ideal system. Each system has its own pros and cons, but there is no clear best system. We are a shark football nation in a shark confederation, our sole professional team plays in another country. There's fudge all money in the game and zero public interest. Let the clubs have at it until the next flavour of the month comes along.

I don't disagree with the aim necessarily, I just don't see why that couldn't be acheived in the current format.  I don't see how incentivising clubs to have to make the top X spots in their regional league to qualify for the National League encourages clubs to play youth. And you still want the best youth playing surely, and missing however many for playing for the wrong club that doesn't qualify doesn't seem to achieve that.

Gives the winter clubs running ‘academies’ a bit of context for their existence, and a bit more impetus to go hard on development. Regional clubs and NRFL 1-2 clubs have a legitimate path to the highest level of domestic football in NZ now, and rustling up some decent kids is quite possibly the easiest way to get there.

The same zero public interest applies to every sport. Look at the NPC Rugby. I attended a game Wellington v Bay of Plenty there were maybe 250 in attendance.

i think the missing piece here, not being discussed is that the current NL format is not financially viable - that's what NZF is saying as a primary drive of the change - the need for a sustainable model.

But it was financially viable before COVID, right?

I am unclear if this is the case or not.

I don't think that it hasn't been discussed - it's more the case whether sustainability could be achieved through modifying the existing model (in a way that was being discussed last year) rather than completely abandoning it. As I said earlier in the thread, I have my doubts about how much more sustainable the new model will be, but guess there's only one way to find out.

I'm on the fence about the model - I think probably there is no "right" model (I think Buffy said that earlier).

But the sustainable thing is a bit of a cop out - NZF are putting more money into the new concept that they are putting into the current format - they get funding of $1m US from FIFA each year if they are running a national league and there is the fallacy that by spreading the burden between more clubs that it will be more sustainable - where as it might just be spreading it to teams who can't afford to enter year on year.  This format might bleed clubs for longer before we get pullouts but the reality is NZF need to find good commercial partners and stop doing a piss poor job with their grant funding (got Trillian and then ignored them and low and behold the funding dropped).

Our sport needs to find a model where the funding is not bottom up but top down.