WHACKO

I thought the same but a $50 deposit was paid prior to the final payment which doesn't show up in the invoice.

Where's Wally back.

I rang the club this afternoon and shared my thoughts with them regarding the auto-renewal of memberships. First off I found out that you just can't delete your credit card from the system, even though there is a delete option there. My reasons for not renewing at this stage are as follows. * With the current dispute between the players and the clubs regarding the 30% cut to wages and the threatening of standing players down, will we even have a team. * Will the A-league even go ahead and if it does there is no set time when it will start. * What would the team look like if it did resume. Are foreign players an option, with the trouble of getting here and what happen with not paying them would they want to come. No word on player re-signings. Just that Duke has left (the bloke that scored our goals) and what about Lopar (the bloke that stopped has fair share of goals) I assume he won't be back. So who does that leave us with, the youth team. * Should Covid increase and the season could not be completed what would happed to the money that had been paid up front. He said the club would be addressing that issue. I said I wouldn't trust them after what has happened with players. I suggested to them that rather than take 10% off the cost of memberships it may have been better to pay a 10% holding fee for your seat until we know more about what's happening. I was told by the service person that your membership will not guarantee your current seat but only a seat in your designated area. As with the current situation only 7500 are able to attend anyway. Hoping this will be increased to 15000 at some stage.

Can anyone tell me why the club's want the A-league to be an independent entity. When at the first sign of trouble they want to slash wages. How are they going run the competition when Foxtel drop all their coverage and that source of revenue is no longer available. If they are crying poor now and are struggling with 30 odd million how are they going to run it with ZERO million of Foxtel dollars.

Another article form the roar.com.au (worth a read) A-League enters death spiral Does the title sound dramatic? Or not dramatic enough? Let’s cut to the chase. The A-League (and Australian football in general) is in dire straights. Where does the blame lie? Again, let’s not beat around the bush. The game’s administrators, in the main. It stems from their lack of appreciation of football and its unique value proposition, their refusal to recognise football’s heritage, their dismantling of our youth system and the bewildering desire to destroy active support – one of the game’s huge draw cards. And of course there is the blatant disrespect for football fans, treating them like dollar signs (clubs here have to take some blame also). The suits at head office are paying the price of making TV money the centre of their strategy, and making what’s in the best interest of football a secondary consideration. A third team in both Sydney and Melbourne? Doesn’t make sense, does it? A Canberra or Wollongong team does. But not in the world of TV money. The administrators looked desperately for any positives. What’s that, I hear you say? Streaming numbers are up? Well in the real world that has little to no impact. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Major sponsors have walked, the Charles Perkins Academy for Indigenous footballers has shut its doors, and Foxtel (after seeing a 70 per cent decline in viewers over three seasons) has pulled the plug early. So desperate were the administration for any sort of good news, that Fox’s new revised and reduced TV deal was painted as some sort of victory. It wasn’t. It was a disaster. The ramifications are being felt now. Players are being asked to accept a 30 per cent pay cut, $20 million worth of talent is already gone and a potential mass exodus is to follow. The game is in such disarray that the transition of leadership at the top has been an ongoing saga. At the beginning of the season I wrote the A-League needed to turn its fortunes around now because the window of opportunity was fast closing. If you remember the head honchos at the time couldn’t even agree on a radio promotion campaign. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Then they had three seasons to desperately get it together. Now (with the revised TV deal) they have a single season. The window is almost closed. And so the A-League has entered its death spiral. I say this as someone with experience in dealing with companies who have entered this death spiral and trying to pull them out of it. It is not impossible. But it is damn difficult. The A-League will either collapse, a victim of poor administration and subsequent flagging interest, or it will survive as a cut-price B-League, getting by hand to mouth off any scraps that fall off the table in a broader economy already under stress. The latter is the best-case scenario, surviving the next three to four years while trying to get some fresh roots to sprout and take hold. It’s a big ask. The league is in a tail spin. The momentum is only going one way. So what can be done? Well, in a crisis, some see opportunity. It is no coincidence that the Canberra bid has re-emerged. They reason that a league desperate for money will now be more amenable to their cause. The cash injection from licences will be desperately needed. Also, dust off the old cobwebs and re-examine the findings of the old proposed APL by the players’ union. The A-League went with a “build it and they will come” mentality, playing out of large stadiums with exorbitant rents. Play out of smaller, football-specific venues and engage clubs in a long-term plan to build their own stadiums. This process should have started 15 years ago. Get rid of the metric bozos running the game. Get people who understand football in, and people with the right connections. Also – and this may be difficult because people love power – give CEO James Johnson more power to ram through desperately needed change. We seem to now have a man who understands football. I wish we had him three seasons ago. Sadly though his powers are curtailed with the new organisational structure that will come into play. He is pivotal to the game’s revival. The club owners – who for years were screaming for reform in order to invest – have their chance to put their money where their mouth is. And finally, engage the fans, not as dollar signs fulfilling metrics but as human beings, with emotion and passion. The A-League may not make it through this, but we need to give it every fighting chance to do so.

All the actions since Covid has arrived shows me we are the big club they keep telling us we are. WHAT B.ULLSHIT

What happened with Celtic?

I think this is their jersey. MADCOWTHUR FC

https://www.theroar.com.au/2020/09/08/is-three-popovics-a-few-too-many/

Interesting Article (from the Roar.com.au) I'm not sure how much more of the A-League I can take One of my favourite memories of Sydney is of a hot and sweaty November show at the city’s legendary home of alternative music, the Annandale Hotel. It was the first Aussie tour of Californian punk middleweights Ignite and despite it being a Thursday night, the venue was packed and the punters were spilling out into the streets and milling around at Stanmore Maccas as they often did whenever an international band came to town. Early on in their set Ignite launched into ‘Embrace’ off their 1996 EP Past Our Means, at which point a popular scene kid named Dan Bombings leapt from the front row and with split-second timing, grabbed the mic off singer Zoli Teglas. “I try and try… to stay positive!” screamed Bombings, as a less-than-impressed Teglas – singing a song about scene unity – attempted to wrestle back control of the microphone. I look back on the memories of that show – the sticky floor, the surging crowd, the fans lining up to sing songs of protest with a ticket from Resist Records in one hand and a Big Mac in the other – and I can’t help but smile. But that was 16 years ago. I have no idea if the Sydney punk scene still exists because I left the city more than a decade ago. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the A-League Along with a ticket to see Ignite, one of the other things I no doubt bought in late 2004 was a season ticket to what was then my local A-League club. And with the exception of a year or two when I lived in Japan, my household has been home to multiple A-League club memberships ever since. This year we had three. But this season, more than any other, has tested my resolve. It’s made me question my commitment to a league that plenty of others were happy to wipe their hands of long ago. It’s not just one thing, it’s lots of things. It’s Simon Hill leaving Fox Sports. It’s the Central Coast Mariners potentially leaving Gosford. It’s the Queensland state government rolling out the red carpet and allowing AFL executives to quarantine-as-they-please, while Brisbane Roar players and staff suffer in locked-away 14-day silence. It’s Fox Sports overpaying for the Big Bash League and exclusive cricket content, panicking after adding almost no new subscribers, then making the A-League the scapegoat for it. It’s expansion club Macarthur FC charging active supporters $440 for a season ticket. It’s the VAR. And increasingly it’s the rational discourse, or lack thereof, on social media. What’s the old proverb? Repeat a lie often enough and people start to believe it’s true? It’s hard enough to convince anyone else the A-League is decent quality without another “peak A-League” meme every time someone skies the ball into Row Q. Just like it’s hard to convince some of the fans who revel in this side of internet culture that their determination to pay as little as possible to consume their football content is one reason the A-League is haemorrhaging cash. But writing as much doesn’t win over any new fans. Sometimes being the football lover who tries to take a different look at things brings nothing but brickbats and lawsuits. Just ask Bonita Mersiades. The A-League was once fresh and exciting and new. But that was 16 years ago. And so a week out from Sydney FC’s latest grand final win, I can’t pretend I’m not relieved the season is finally over. There’s a tattoo on the back of my calf, which most people think is sports-related, but which is actually the album cover of Swiss punk band The Vanilla Muffins’ 2003 classic The Drug Is Football. For me, the drug will always be football. But as the A-League faces an uncertain future, it’s time for me to take some time off. I hope it will be back – next December or February or whenever. And I hope I will too.

There's only two choices, Duke or Lopar.

I was thinking more to the point, does he want to come back after what happened.

Will Lopar be back?