A few weeks ago, after Dwight Yorke's messy exit as head coach of A-League Men club Macarthur FC, the Manchester United legend gave an interview that has reignited conversations around why professional football in Australia has stagnated over the last decade.
"I know I will probably upset a few people, but I have to call it for what I see it," Yorke said.
"There is so much talent in Australia, but it's being killed by the system.
"Football has a very successful model that is used everywhere else in the world, but Australia does things differently.
"Nearly everyone else has promotion and relegation. Australia doesn't have that. Everyone plays the game in the winter. Australia plays in the summer.
"Then you've got a salary cap and a safe haven where the owners of the 12 teams all come to agreement.
"Australia has just got it totally wrong. You've got to have incentives; you've got to have something to fight for. The A-League is just too much of a comfort zone because all the clubs are safe, and it's just crying out for change."
Finally, though, the winds of change appear to be blowing.
Earlier this week, Football Australia shared details of their planned National Second Division: a second-tier professional competition that sits beneath the A-Leagues, but above the state-based National Premier Leagues.
Thirty-two teams have submitted formal expressions of interest about joining the fledgling league, with many clubs having long histories in Australian football.
These include several who played in the top-flight National Soccer League in the past including APIA Leichhardt, Canberra Croatia, Marconi Stallions, Sydney Olympic, Brisbane City, Heidelberg United, Melbourne Knights, Adelaide City, South Melbourne, Preston Lions, and the Wollongong Wolves.
Only the Northern Territory is unrepresented in the long-list, with the next phase set to whittle the 32 bids down to anywhere between 10 and 16 clubs, which will make up the first season of the competition slated to kick off in March next year.
Why is a National Second Division needed?
Australian football is structured differently from most other nations that play the game around the world.
The most common structure in league football is a pyramid, where competitions are aligned so that community clubs which start out on the bottom of the pyramid can, in theory, climb all the way to the top-flight through a series of promotions.
All leagues in the pyramid are played mostly simultaneously, and during the cooler seasons, allowing those who participate in the game at grassroots level to engage with it at the professional level at the same time.
Further, financial and competitive incentives are built into the pyramid structure, with more money and exposure available the higher you climb. This gives clubs reasons to invest, to sign better players and coaches, to establish professional environments and support staff, and generate more money through sponsorships as they become more visible.
The flip side to that is there is a fundamental element of precarity built into the pyramid, too.
Under-performing clubs are at risk of being relegated to lower tiers where there is less money, less exposure, fewer competitive opportunities, and fewer resources.
But Australian football is structured differently.
First, the pyramid is not fully aligned; while most of the country plays their club seasons during the winter, the A-Leagues currently take place during summer, chopping off the pointy end of the pyramid from the rest that sits below it.
The A-Leagues are also "closed leagues," meaning there is no promotion or relegation built into its structure. As a result, there are fewer incentives (and, likewise, fewer disincentives) for clubs to make the kinds of strategic and financial decisions that those in "open" leagues would do. There is no risk in failing, because there is nowhere to fall once you do.
According to FA CEO James Johnson, Australian football's "unique" structure — which is unlike that of any other country in the global game — requires a fundamental rejig if it wants to fulfil its potential as one of the biggest and most popular sports in the country.
"This is an identity question," Johnson told media on Tuesday.
"We are not a local Australian sport; we're an Australian sport that plays in the global environment.
"I think we need to go back to who we are and our identity as a sport. In our code, it's quite normal, to have tiered football ... it's something that I'm convinced can not only work here, but I think it will resonate with people that love football.
"The reality is we've got to keep taking steps forward, and in terms of the evolution of club football in Australia, the next step after the A-League and the reorganisation of the NPLs is a second tier."
How will a National Second Division work?
The NSD will be a fully professional, home-and-away competition (plus a finals series) that sits in between the state-based National Premier Leagues and the national A-Leagues.
With 32 clubs across the country having expressed their interest, FA will now go through a second phase where prospective bids submit more detailed proposals that speak to a number of key criteria.
The first — and arguably most important — is financial sustainability.
While the A-Leagues have faced significant financial challenges over the past few years due to a combination of mismanagement, COVID-19, and restrictive economic structures, FA will prioritise bids that have a sound financial base, including a capability to create and honour professional player contracts, and maintain a professional administrative staff.
Overseas investment is welcomed, as are partnerships with other clubs and codes, citing the "exciting" interest from NRL club Cronulla Sharks, who have teamed up with Sutherland in a joint-bid to capitalise on the booming participation base in Sydney's south.
After several months of financial modelling, FA has established a clear threshold — "to the dollar" — clubs must meet if they are to be considered for the next stage of applications. It will be more expensive than the current NPL, but cheaper than the ALM.
One major factor to be considered is geography.
With clubs from Tasmania and Western Australia expressing interest, weekly travel and accommodation costs for players and staff could take up a large chunk of a club's finances, and potentially tip them over the edge of sustainability.
"We want to have a national competition, which means as much of the country can be represented as possible — that's a good thing," Johnson said.
"But at the same time, clubs need to be sustainable. We need to find clubs from as broad a geographical region that can sustain themselves, and then we need to look at the whole composition of the competition.
"Depending on how far teams are travelling will ultimately impact the sustainability of the competition."
Cost will also influence the format of the competition.
If the numbers don't stack up, and clubs can't afford the travel, Johnson confirmed an alternative interim format could be considered that is similar to the current UEFA Champions League model, where clubs would remain in their current NPL competitions but play each other in a best-of-the-best-style group format that they qualify for at the end of each season.
Clubs will also need to show strong governance, and those clubs who have an established history of developing young players and creating strong pipelines into the A-Leagues and national teams will be favoured.
One of the primary functions of the NSD is to create more opportunities for emerging Australian footballers who, multiple studies have found, do not play enough competitive match minutes across various age ranges.
"Player development is important for us because we want to ensure that our Socceroos and Matildas are competing regularly at the international level, and the way we achieve that is by ensuring that clubs are thinking about that too," Johnson said.
"So if there's a history of some of these clubs in producing talent, that's something that's interesting for us in the second tier."
The NSD, then, not only creates hundreds more full-time spots for players emerging from the lower tiers of the pyramid, but it also gives current players who are sitting on the benches of A-League clubs a place to drop down to in the winter to keep developing.
FA will also take into consideration the history and culture of clubs themselves, and the impact they have had and will continue to have in their communities.
Given the difficulty some new ALM expansion franchises such as Macarthur and Western United have had in bedding in to their local communities, FA is instead looking to cultivate what is already there by embracing the decades-long histories some interested clubs already have.
However, inclusion of these storied clubs comes with its own raft of questions and potential problems, as witnessed during last year's Australia Cup final where fans from NPL club Sydney United 58 were found to have participated in fascist gestures and chants that harked back to the cultural and political history of Yugoslavia and the formation of modern-day Croatia.
Johnson, though, was adamant that culture and community were central pillars to the NSD, and that while these problematic aspects would be taken into consideration when deciding on the final 10-16 teams for the 2024 season, it would not exclude clubs entirely from entry into the competition.
"We want to have confidence that this competition means something to the community," he said.
"If a club has history, it will be connected to the community, which means the community care about the club. That's what we think will be the DNA of this competition; it has to be community-centred and rooted in community.
"Some of the behaviours that we saw in the Australia Cup final would not be welcomed in the second tier. Does that exclude them from this competition? No, it doesn't, but it is a relevant factor."
What about promotion and relegation?
While a National Second Division is a start, the real mechanism that gives life to traditional football pyramids is that all tiers are accessible to one another via promotion and relegation.
While the inaugural NSD season will not include this mechanism, it is something FA plans to introduce once the second tier is "matured" and financially stable.
FA intends that if an A-League club were to be relegated, the financial losses would not be so significant that they were no longer able to operate.
Another delay on the promotion and relegation front is to do with calendar alignment, with the A-Leagues (summer) and the NSD (winter) both occupying different playing windows throughout the year. Re-aligning the calendar in order to make promotion and relegation smoother is something that FA and the Australian Professional Leagues will be discussing.
"Clearly there is a gap on the pitch. We know it's not easy to go from an NPL team to an A-League team, and we know there's a gap financially because the financial [gap] between the NPL and the A-League is too big," Johnson said.
"So the way to solve that is to put a layer of competition in between. And once you do that, the other conversations will happen automatically. What is the connection then of the second tier to the NPL? That's the natural next conversation because of the alignment of the calendar, with it being a winter competition.
"And then after that, what is the relationship between the second tier and the A-League? That's a more complex discussion: one, you've got a closed-league model where clubs have paid licence fees, and their expectation is that they're able to continue to compete in top-tier football until 2034.
"On top of that, you've got the calendar issue with the league as well. That's an issue that we have as a sport that's very unique. I don't know any other countries in world football that have a different top-tier season to the rest of football. So that's something that, at one point, we're gonna have to iron out, one way or the other."
There are several other bits and pieces that also need to be put into place around the NSD including major sponsors, a naming-rights partner, a potential new broadcaster (Football Australia's broadcast deal with Paramount+ and Network Ten runs out next year), and a layer of administration at FA to run and regulate the competition.
But if it works, which Johnson has "a lot of confidence" that it will, the NSD could be the first and biggest step Australian football has taken in the past decade to catch up to the rest of the world and fulfil the potential that it has always had.
"If football has to progress in this country, I just think that they've got to take a leap of faith and trust the system and play the game when it's supposed to be played," Yorke said in his final interview before departing Australia.
"That's the football model in Europe. I'm not saying it has to be like the Premier League, but it has to be a version somewhere along those lines.
"I've seen the A-League as a player and now as a manager, and trust me, the model needs to be changed because it's not going anywhere."
FINAL 32 CLUBS TO EXPRESS INTEREST
ACT: Canberra Croatia FC, Gungahlin United FC
NSW: APIA Leichhardt FC, Blacktown City FC, Fraser Park FC, Marconi Stallions FC, Rockdale Ilinden FC, Sutherland Sharks FC/Cronulla Sharks, Sydney Olympic FC, Sydney United 58 FC, Wollongong Wolves FC, Valentine FC
Queensland: Brisbane City FC, Brisbane United FC (Wynnum Wolves FC, Brisbane Strikers FC, Virginia United FC), Gold Coast Knights FC, Gold Coast United FC, Olympic FC, Peninsula Power FC, Sunshine Coast FC Fire
South Australia: Adelaide City FC, Football SA (Campbelltown City SC, North Eastern MetroStars, West Torrens Birkalla SC), Playford City Soccer and Community Club
Tasmania: South Hobart FC
Victoria: Avondale FC, Bentleigh Greens SC, Brunswick Juventus FC, Green Gully SC, Heidelberg United FC, Melbourne Knights FC, Preston Lions FC, South Melbourne FC
Western Australia: Spearwood Dalmatinac/Cockburn City SC
