Quote Originally Posted by plague View Post
OK firstly cheers for your responses. It def cleared things up as your answers in regards to the Fury dudes plan makes way more sense to me rather than a straight up promotion relegation.

I def disagree though in terms of stadiums. I can't see any way in Griffs green earth that the FFA let anyway play at a "suburban" looking ground.
My dream is for company owned, Bluetongue sized shared stadiums (with 4 sides.....and less gypos) especially in the big cities that multiple teams can share. Then piggyback onto the big stadium for your derby/finals etc etc.

Its def been a focus of MLS for teams to own their own homes and they are built to a league standard. It also means long term thinking and money. But as I've noted elsewhere, team owners aint gonna invest massive amounts of money in stadiums with limited guarantee of being in the comp.
The US is much bigger market with much more money.

I think its unrealistic to expect every club in our top 2 divisions to have a stadium like Bluetongue. I would have a slightly tweaked Knights Stadium as the minimum standard for HAL and a Broadmeadow standard for the 2nd division.

The money, nor population, simply isn't here in Australia to demand or require such stadia. 8,000 people at Hunter Stadium is a shit atmosphere, but 8,000 at Hindmarsh or Knights stadium and the place is rocking. Smaller grounds (and more profitable!!) make for better atmosphere and better TV. Sure you can move bigger games to bigger stadiums. But a capacity of 30,000 or 20,000 is pointless for a second division club, and most HAL clubs at the moment.