12 February 2018

Canberra's A-league bid officially ends

| Holden Caulfield
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Ivan Slavich has just sent out a lengthy tome detailing the demise of Canberra’s official bid for an A-league team. It reads in part:

Dear foundation member,

It is with much sadness and regret that I write to inform you that our quest for an A League team for Canberra is over. I would like to thank the many people that helped us on our journey and I am still totally perplexed that despite our credentials, we have been repeatedly denied entry into the A League competition.

He then goes on to thank the many people involved before adding:

We were overlooked when the comp expanded from 8 to 12 a couple of years ago and those chosen have not fired up other than Melbourne Heart. Townsville is gone, Gold Coast is gone and West Sydney did not get up. The recent eviction of the Gold Coast created another opportunity and despite Ben Buckley the CEO of the FFA admitting to me that our bid was more advanced than West Sydney, the FFA have gone with West Sydney for strategic regions because of the larger population base, pouring in $4m of FFA money and supported by $8m of federal government money.

For the record, I had tried previously to obtain a grant from the federal government given that we are the Nation’s capital, but was advised that they do not support individual teams, so the West Sydney deal is somewhat surprising, although I note the support is for football in general.

Okay, so what about the $200 that over 2000 individuals have coughed up?

Given that the FFA has overlooked Canberra and in accordance with the terms of the trust deed, the trustees have determined to refund your money. It is my intention to run a couple of sessions at the Hellenic Club Woden on a Saturday between 10am and 1pm, whereby you will need to produce your certificate of membership and photo identification, either a licence or passport, where upon you will receive a cheque for your refund. I will provide further notice as to the exact days that we will be conducting these sessions and will endeavour to advertise on radio and in the press. Other arrangements will be made for people interstate or who cannot travel.

You will have two options;-

– Receive a full refund of the money you deposited; or
– Elect to have the money you invested in our bid to further promote elite men’s football in the ACT. Please reply to this email stating that you agree to this if you elect this option.

Hmm, I seem to recall it was quite a bit easier to send in the $200 than it appears it will be to get it back.

For what it’s worth I’m disappointed we couldn’t land an A-league team in Canberra. I’m not certain it would have been an outstanding success, but would have liked our city to have been given a fair go.

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Any idea when we might be getting our money back from Mr Slavich? When is this supposed Hellenic Club session? Does anyone know the details?

Battlecat said :

Duffbowl said :

Can I ask where you get your figures from?

The latest ABS ERASS has football at 843,000 total participants, not including indoor. Seeing as that doesn’t include the juniors I’m pretty confident with my claim. The FFA claims 1.7 million, but they’re admittedly hardly neutral.

As all footballers are required to register with the FFA, their stats should be good. Of course, what they publicly release may be selective

We can still nurture a good football culture in Canberra. Just because the A-League has passed us by does not mean we should give up! We have plenty of great players in Canberra, and we can make the football community even stronger here by supporting local matches.

Battlecat said :

The latest ABS ERASS has football at 843,000 total participants, not including indoor. Seeing as that doesn’t include the juniors I’m pretty confident with my claim. The FFA claims 1.7 million, but they’re admittedly hardly neutral.

The ERASS was conducted by Newspoll in 2010 on behalf of the Australian Sports Commission and their state / territory counterparts. The survey was conducted by aggregating results from four quarterly surveys, with 21603 persons aged 15 or older across Australia, with selection pools per state / territory set as per their share of the Australian population. However, Victoria and Queensland boosted their numbers by buying an increased share of the activity. Completed data represented 23.1% of those surveyed. Numbers are below, representing Organised (Physical activity for exercise, recreation or sport that was organised in full or in part by (1) a ?tness, leisure or indoor sports centre that required payment for participation, (2) a sport or recreation club or association that required payment of membership, fees or registration, (3) a workplace, (4) a school, or (5) any other type of organisation), Non-organised (Physical activity for exercise, recreation or sport that was non-organised in full or in part (that is, not fully organised by a club, association or other type of organisation)), and Total (Persons who participated in at least one physical activity for exercise, recreation or sport at least once in the last 12 months).

Sport Organised Non-organised Total
Australian rules football 447300 182500 577700
Baseball 25400 9700 31800
Basketball 403500 267800 609600
Cricket (indoor) 80700 41300 118900
Cricket (outdoor) 372100 202600 563100
Hockey (indoor) 16900 11100 25800
Hockey (outdoor) 157300 8100 160800
Netball 537600 166600 649500
Rugby league 178700 80000 238100
Rugby union 118500 25700 135700
Football (indoor) 222900 133900 333100
Football (outdoor) 593800 324500 843900
Softball 50700 10300 53700
Touch Football 398800 124000 487800
Volleyball 146600 70100 202100
Water polo 13500 5600 18500

(Sorry, it looks ugly)

The ERASS does note that:

ERASS is not comparable with data collected through other surveys of participation in physical activity. In particular, the data cannot be directly compared with participation surveys conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (for example, Population Survey Monitor and Multi-Purpose Household Survey) and by Sweeney Sports (Sweeney Research). This is due to differences in the scope, methodology and questionnaire design of the various surveys.

Duffbowl said :

Can I ask where you get your figures from?

The latest ABS ERASS has football at 843,000 total participants, not including indoor. Seeing as that doesn’t include the juniors I’m pretty confident with my claim. The FFA claims 1.7 million, but they’re admittedly hardly neutral.

Battlecat said :

Why does every post about football end up with bogans complaining about it’s name?

-It’s called football, get over it.
-If nobody liked it then it wouldn’t be the biggest participation sport in the country (adults as well as children)
-What nobody cares about is whether you like it or not, go post on the Raiders thread.

+1 Yep it’s the rest of the world that is out of step with Australia. Surely they should know that football clearly means Aussie Rules, or maybe League, or maybe Union, or maybe Gaelic…

Battlecat said :

If nobody liked it then it wouldn’t be the biggest participation sport in the country (adults as well as children)

Can I ask where you get your figures from?
The ABS publishes a document, which is creatively called “4177.0 – Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation, Australia”, with the latest available version being from 2009-2010. Unfortunately, the ABS only considers Australians aged 15 or older when compiling their figures.

Reviewing their figures for team sports, and combining both male and female participants:
Netball 445800
Soccer (outdoor) 401000
Basketball 332600
Touch football 269200
Cricket (outdoor) 253600
Soccer (indoor) 242800
Australian Rules football 240500
Rugby league 114800
Hockey 98800
Rugby union 96900
Cricket (indoor) 87600
Volleyball 76900
Beach volleyball 44800
Softball/tee ball 39400
Baseball 31300

http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/FA6CA5B178E7C76BCA2577FF0011ED3F/$File/41770_2009-10.pdf

Battlecat said :

Why does every post about football end up with bogans complaining about it’s name?

-It’s called football, get over it.
-If nobody liked it then it wouldn’t be the biggest participation sport in the country (adults as well as children)
-What nobody cares about is whether you like it or not, go post on the Raiders thread.

Football is the largest participation sport? Well of course it is, there are three sports called football in this country (four, if you count soccer).

Why does every post about football end up with bogans complaining about it’s name?

-It’s called football, get over it.
-If nobody liked it then it wouldn’t be the biggest participation sport in the country (adults as well as children)
-What nobody cares about is whether you like it or not, go post on the Raiders thread.

Holden Caulfield11:33 am 27 May 12

frankie said :

Holden Caulfield said :

League.
Union.
Aussie Rules.
Football.

It’s not friggin rocket science, haha.

And if people are willing to pull their heads out of their collective arses they’ll see there’s a lot to like about all four codes.

I get more affronted by the use of AFL to refer to the broader game of Aussie Rules. You don’t say I’m gonna go and play a game of Super 15s, or go to the park for a game of NRL.

Yes but mention the word “footy” in Australia and 9 times out of 10 people will think you are talking about rugby league. To “kick the footy around” is not popularly known to mean passing the round ball around with your feet… more like drop-kicking the oval-shaped pig bladder to your mates. Hopefully people can eventually adjust their brain cells to this new concept.

9 out of 10. “To kick the footy around.” League? Haha, we clearly walk in parallel universes.

I think you’ll find “footy” is Aussie Rules.

End of discussion. 😛

frankie said :

Yes but mention the word “footy” in Australia and 9 times out of 10 people will think you are talking about rugby league.

And 8 out of 10 people know statistics are made up on the spot.

9 out of 10? Seriously? Maybe if you define your statistical group…
If I mention “footy” to 10 of my family members, 9 would think I was talking Aussie Rules.
If I mention “footy” to 10 of the guys I socialise with, 7 would think I was talking League.
If I mention “footy” to 10 of the blokes I served with in the navy, 6 would think I was talking Union.
If I mention “footy” to 10 of any people I know, I don’t think a single one would think of PomBall (an affection Mrs Duffbowl has for the game).
NOTE: Numbers are generalisation only. I have not surveyed anyone for my results. Error margin: ±10

While not claiming the following is statistically correct, let’s have a look at the states/territories.
7,238,819 NSW
5,547,527 VIC
4,516,361 QLD
2,296,411 WA
1,644,642 SA
507,626 TAS
358,894 ACT
229,675 NT

Let’s presume 100% of each state knows a particular type of football as “footy” to keep it simple.
NSW / QLD – League
VIC / WA / SA / TAS – Aussie Rules
The territories are a little different, so we’ll split them.
ACT – 50% League / 50% Aussie Rules
NT – 20% League / 80% Aussie Rules

Based on those figures, I’d suggest it’s close to a 55/45 split between League and Aussie Rules.

No, I will not be sponsoring a 100% survey of the Australian population.

Holden Caulfield said :

League.
Union.
Aussie Rules.
Football.

It’s not friggin rocket science, haha.

And if people are willing to pull their heads out of their collective arses they’ll see there’s a lot to like about all four codes.

I get more affronted by the use of AFL to refer to the broader game of Aussie Rules. You don’t say I’m gonna go and play a game of Super 15s, or go to the park for a game of NRL.

Yes but mention the word “footy” in Australia and 9 times out of 10 people will think you are talking about rugby league. To “kick the footy around” is not popularly known to mean passing the round ball around with your feet… more like drop-kicking the oval-shaped pig bladder to your mates. Hopefully people can eventually adjust their brain cells to this new concept.

Holden Caulfield11:42 pm 26 May 12

League.
Union.
Aussie Rules.
Football.

It’s not friggin rocket science, haha.

And if people are willing to pull their heads out of their collective arses they’ll see there’s a lot to like about all four codes.

I get more affronted by the use of AFL to refer to the broader game of Aussie Rules. You don’t say I’m gonna go and play a game of Super 15s, or go to the park for a game of NRL.

In my opinion, the insistant use of the term “football” by the various soccer interests, when communicating with the wider public, is as much trolling as anything else.

“Football” is as much slang, or at best an abbreviation, when we are talking about Association Football as it is when talking of Australian Rules Football.

It shits me when SBS and ABC refer in a news broadcast to the Football (meaning soccer) and Rugby and AFL. If they weren’t trying to activity change the language used by the majority of Australians, they wouldn’t insist on doing this.

If they don’t like “soccer” as an abrev. for Association Football, I am willing to use AssBall instead.

It’s very confusing over here…..a Foxtel sales rep was telling me they have to have a little reminder card to tell them which of the ball sports the locals are talking about when they ask about “football”, depending where they’re ringing from in Australia.
If they do manage to expand franchises all across the nation, you can’t all be calling them the same thing, or have different names in different states, it’s crazy.
It’s even more confusing when none of them are “football” and all played mainly with the hands !
I can understand it more with AFL which has some great kicking, but rugby? That’s why it’s called rugby…because it’s not football.

dvaey said :

Also, why dont they call it soccer?

It could be that, as one of the nations that has a form of football other than Association Football as it’s primary version, by moving to the term “Football”, we’re actually catching up with the rest of the world.

SnapperJack said :

“Elite men’s football in the ACT”? You mean the Raiders or the Brumbies? Oh, no it’s just another attempt by the soccer brigade to hijack the word football to refer specifically to their little fringe indulgence. When will they ever learn?

I call troll…

“Elite men’s football in the ACT”? You mean the Raiders or the Brumbies? Oh, no it’s just another attempt by the soccer brigade to hijack the word football to refer specifically to their little fringe indulgence. When will they ever learn?

Holden Caulfield said :

From Slavich’s letter:

“With regard to the second point, I have held a discussion with Heather Reid CEO of Capital Football, any surplus funds per point 2, together with interest earned in the trust, minus payment of any statutory liabilities, will be provided to Capital Football, to further elite men’s football in the ACT and surrounding region.”

So, I guess there *is* interest being paid on this ‘trust’ account? Also, why dont they call it soccer? Also, looking at their website, it seems that womens soccer is doing significantly better than mens soccer, maybe the money should be given to them, they might actually be able to get a return on it unlike the A-league teams seem to be doing.

Holden Caulfield1:44 pm 26 May 12

dvaey said :

The money isnt going ‘towards local football development’, it is going towards ‘promoting elite mens football’… the brumbies and raiders come to mind. Why isnt it being put into promoting non-elite mens football? The ‘elite’ sports are already making more than enough money.

From Slavich’s letter:

“With regard to the second point, I have held a discussion with Heather Reid CEO of Capital Football, any surplus funds per point 2, together with interest earned in the trust, minus payment of any statutory liabilities, will be provided to Capital Football, to further elite men’s football in the ACT and surrounding region.”

I don’t think Capital Football has any influence or input into the Brumbies or Raiders. 😉

Battlecat said :

It’s sad that it’s come to this, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Thanks to Ivan and the team for their huge effort. I suspect most of the members will donate their money towards local football development, Mrs Battlecat and I will be.
The Riotact got a mention in the letter I see, nice!

The money isnt going ‘towards local football development’, it is going towards ‘promoting elite mens football’… the brumbies and raiders come to mind. Why isnt it being put into promoting non-elite mens football? The ‘elite’ sports are already making more than enough money.

Holden Caulfield1:19 pm 26 May 12

johnboy said :

Battlecat said :

The Riotact got a mention in the letter I see, nice!

We did? What did they say?

“We also had tremendous support from our media partners, namely Ken Nicolls from the Canberra Times, Nick & Julie Samaris from Canberra Weekly, Ian Miekle from City News, Eoghan O’Byrne from Canberra FM ( FM 104.7 & MIX 106.3), Leon Buchanan from WIN News and reporters Erin Molan and Greg Thomson, Tim Gavel from ABC Grandstand, Mark Parton from 2CC, SBS – the World Game, the Riotact, ABC news, 2XX, Roar – Sports opinion, fourfourtwo, Sydney Morning Herald, Herald Sun, sportbizinsider, the Age and a host of other local and national media.”

Battlecat said :

The Riotact got a mention in the letter I see, nice!

We did? What did they say?

It’s sad that it’s come to this, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Thanks to Ivan and the team for their huge effort. I suspect most of the members will donate their money towards local football development, Mrs Battlecat and I will be.
The Riotact got a mention in the letter I see, nice!

Jungle Jim said :

Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought there was no interest paid to a trust account.

There was certainly “no interest” paid to Canberra’s A-League bid.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought there was no interest paid to a trust account.

Holden Caulfield1:39 pm 25 May 12

Well said dvaey.

If they have a list of members, that they can match against photo ID, why dont they just send a $200 cheque to every member? The interest theyve made on that 400k should be a good start to “further promote elite men’s football in the ACT”, since I guarantee none of the ‘investors’ will get a penny more than they first put up, at least none of the individual 2000 investors anyway.. maybe the businesses and CEOs will.

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