2009-10 A-league Kits Released

Last Week, 8 out of the 10 Hyundai A-league clubs new kit were released. Still no word on Brisbane or the Gold Coast’s kits – but here’s a lot at those that were revealed:

Adelaide:Adelaide’s home kit is fairly similar to previous years, although there does appear to be some sort of pinstripe pattern – hard to tell from the low res images though. Looks good though. The away kit is a little retro, but is a nice change.

Central Coast:

No surprise here, we have already seen this kit. They really should fix the back of the home kit – the player name looks silly going over the stripes. They should really just make the top half of the back of the kit plain yellow, with a blue name and number. (similar to Perth’s kit – see below)

Melbourne:

Melbourne goes with a fairly standard strip, the V looks a little thinner than it used to, which is good. The little v’s running down the side are somewhat odd, but shouldn’t look too bad on the final kit. The away kit is white, rather than silver – looks good though.

Newcastle:

Newcastle will not use their Champions League kit in next year’s A-league. Their kit will, in fact, be very similar to their kit from last year. They’ve gone with a blue away kit, which looks good although I would have liked to have seen a blue/red away kit.

North Queensland:

North Queensland kit was leaked last week. This design looks quite bright, but I think the actual kit will look better than this looks on paper.

Perth:

Perth have gone the vertical stripes for next season, while I would have preferred hoops (just because we already have a couple of other teams in vertical stripes), this kit looks great. Again, I expect the actual kit to look better than the kit does on paper, because this design is quite bright. I think this is more accurate to what it will actually look like:

 

Sydney FC:

Sydney’s kit is fairly standard, but it certainly looks good. You can’t have everyone wearing an ‘interesting’ kit.

Wellington:

Wellington’s striped kit looks excellent. Their away kit is very nice as well. They have done the same thing as Central Coast with their player names going over their stripes, which is the only problem I have with this kit.

Gold Coast, Brisbane:

These are the only two clubs yet to have their kits released, the delay for Brisbane might be related to their name-change from Queensland, while Gold Coast evidently are still working on theirs.

Here’s a couple of mock-ups I’ve done, I have a feeling that Brisbane will go with the maroon, while I think the Gold Coast might go with a predominantly yellow kit – although I prefer the teal.

Clashes:

One interesting thing to consider about the new kits is potential clashes. I imagine that most sides will wear their home shirt as much as possible, with their away kit ready as an alternative when required. Consider some examples though – what happens when:

Wellington hosts Central Coast?
Central Coast plays Newcastle?

Interestingly the only solution to these clashes might force the home team to wear their away strip. This is why, in Europe, a lot of sides (especially those with stripes) have to have 3 kits, to ensure that they can always provide an alternative strip to the home team. I wonder what the solution will be for the A-league?

Summary:

It’s great to see A-league clubs without the standard template kits this season. I also look forward to seeing an away team that isn’t wearing white.

These kits will likely be unveiled officially on Monday, when the A-league draw is released.

Matt

North Queensland Fury Kit Revealed

North Queensland’s inaugural A-league kit has been leaked – here’s my mock-up of it (from the low resolution pics that were leaked):

It looks a little odd, but I like the combination of light/dark green. The back of the kit is mainly light green.

Matt

Australian Football Broadcasting Update

It’s been about 8 months since I finished my (mammoth) series of blogs regarding TV Coverage of football in Australia. I looked at football on Free-to-Air Television, then wrote about football on Subscription Television, and finally looked at the future of football on Australian TV. This will just be an update on the situation, there have been a few interesting developments since my last blog.

Pay TV:

Let me talk about Pay-TV first. While there haven’t been a lot of improvements made to the amount of football coverage we get lately, there have been a few things worth noting.

Fox Sports:

Fox Sports have pushed ahead with their High Definition football coverage this season, many A-league games have been shown in HD, as well as all Socceroos games and heaps of games from England. I haven’t got access to Fox Sports HD myself, but from all reports the quality has been very good.

Recently Fox have shown a bit more Asian football, including every one of the final round of Asian World Cup qualifiers. Unfortunately though, many of these games have been shown on delay, and viewers choice hasn’t been utilized.

One of the problems for Fox, when it comes to Asian football, has been finding commentators and producing the coverage. Fox prefers to provide it’s own commentators for games, which is fine, but the problem with this is that they have been reluctant to broadcast games unless they feel that it is worth doing commentary and doing good coverage.

The Asian Champions league, which is going on currently, is a good example. Fox would gladly broadcast all games from the Champions league, if it was as simple as just putting them on TV. But it would be very hard for them to provide commentary and to produce every one of these games. As I’ve said previously, the solution to this is obvious – they need to share the load with other Asian Broadcasters. Perhaps the AFC should spearhead this, but if the recourses of Fox, Star Sports, and other English Language Asian networks were combined, you could have good quality coverage of all games – and viewers all over Asia (and the World) could benefit.

Still on the topic of Asian football, I received a bit of an exclusive yesterday when I had confirmation from Fox Sports that the J-league will be shown on Fox this year. At this stage it will likely just be a highlights show, but at least it’s something. Expect to see this starting up in the next couple of weeks.

It would be awesome to see live coverage of the J-league one day, especially as games are shown at a perfect time for Australian viewers, and it would be a perfect competition to fill the void left by the lack of A-league during Winter. Again, though, it’s hard for Fox to commit to broadcasting the J-league live, as they would likely have to produce and do commentary for the games themselves (unless they could use the coverage that Eurosport do in England).

 
(Incidentally, I’ve seen a few J-league games online this season – it really is a high quality league, and great to watch – I recommend checking it out if you have a good internet connection)

Setanta:

Setanta Sports still suffers from many of the problems that I talked about last year. They have heaps of rights, and plenty of good coverage, but no where near enough airtime to show live matches. One recent edition to Setanta’s coverage is the Russian Premier League. I quite like that they are showing this, as it’s one league that is well suited to Australian viewers, with games on a bit earlier than other European leagues. They desperately need more channels, or maybe some viewers choice system though.

Other:

I talked last year about the possibility of new channels coming to Foxtel, which could improve football coverage. While this has not happened yet, I have heard strong rumours that 3 new sports channels will be available on Foxtel before the end of the year, most likely from October 1st. I’m confident that Eurosport will be one of these channels, while Sky Sports News might be another. It also leaves the door open for that Fox Sports football channel, which is still a possibility.

(These channels will be just a few of the 20 channels that will be launched before the end of the year, also expect to see Foxtel convert all it’s subscribers to the Foxtel IQ. There should be a few other improvements as well)

FTA:

Unfortunately there isn’t a lot to report regarding football on Australian FTA TV at the moment. Most football coverage is limited to SBS, who continue their dedication to the World Game.

SBS:

They did try something different recently, introducing an extra show on Tuesday nights. The concept of “Extra Time” was very solid – a recap of the weekend’s football, with all the goals from the EPL and the A-league. Unfortunately making the show only half and hour long, and putting it at 6pm meant it was doomed to failure. SBS has said that it will be back at some point, hopefully they put it on Monday nights – maybe at 9:30 – and let it go a bit longer, so that all the big European leagues can be looked at in detail.

One thing that was fairly significant late last year for SBS was the FIFA Club World Cup. Firstly, it was the first time SBS had ever shown games involving an A-league team. Their coverage was solid, and the ratings were good. It was also significant because, for the first time, SBS used their extra digital channel to show football. They had Adelaide’s 5th/6th placed playoff as well as the Gamba v Manchester Semi-final exclusively on their digital channel. Hopefully they use this channel again for their coverage of the Confederations Cup and FIFA Under 20 World Cup later this year.

The other regular football that we see on SBS is the UEFA Champions league. We still do not know, however, if SBS will have the rights to this competition beyond this year, but hopefully they will, as there really isn’t enough football on FTA TV at the moment.

ABC:

It was good to see a FTA channel other than SBS getting in on the football action this Summer. ABC did a good job covering the W-league, and followed it up with coverage of two Matildas games early this year. Considering the timeslot and the quality of the football, the ratings were very good. Hopefully the ABC might start broadcasting other womens/youth football in the future – this was something I mentioned as part of my ‘ideal scenario’ in a previous blog.

Other:

You can expect to see some of the other commercial broadcasters taking football more seriously when the A-league/Socceroos TV rights expire in a few years, but for now these channels seem very reluctant to broadcast any football whatsoever.

One thing that might change this is Channel 10’s introduction of a 24hr sports channel, One HD. Now the merits of this channel are a matter for another blog, but surely with a dedicated sports channel on FTA some football will be shown? You’d think that, wouldn’t you?

Ten has bought rights to various sports events from around the world, although mainly from North America. They have been promoting their channel as '”full of sports from all corners of the globe”. It seems a bit silly that they would say this, and then not broadcast any amount of the World’s most popular game. In fairness, they aren’t showing any rugby either, maybe it is not football that they are reluctant to broadcast, but anything that might be a serious threat to AFL.

For the immediate future, it looks like football fans will still have to rely on pay-TV if they want to watch any serious amount of football. I do hope that changes (at least to some degree) one day.

Matt

2009-10 A-league Kits

A couple of weeks ago we heard some good news about the kits for next season’s A-league. Firstly, each club will have new kits next season – both home and away. Not only that, but Reebok (who still have exclusive designing rights to the A-league strips for the next two years) will finally allow clubs more freedom when designing their strips.

The good news just keeps coming, as it has also been confirmed that the FFA’s policy of white away kits has been done away with. Finally, although I’m not sure of this one, clubs are likely to be allowed to wear their home strips for all games, except when avoiding a clash with the home team.

I called for many of these changes a year ago, in my blog: 'A-league kits could be improved'. After hearing this latest news, I thought I’d do some new mock-ups and do some speculation on what we might see next season:

Central Coast:

The first kits for the new season have already been revealed, with the Central Coast Mariners releasing their kits for the 2009 AFC Champions League, which they will also use in next season’s A-league. When the first images of this kit were released, Mariners fans were a little disappointed at the lack of yellow, however I think (with the back of the kit being yellow), the kits will look a lot more yellow at matches than they did when the initial press images were released. Here are there home and away kits:

Adelaide United:

Some details of Adelaide’s new kits have already surfaced. Apparently the home kit will have some sort of ‘knitted effect’. This sounds a little weird to me, but I think I’ve made a pretty good guess at what this will look like. Also, United will have a black away kit next year, which I’ve done as well:

For the rest of the clubs I’ve only done home kits, hopefully the FFA will no longer require teams to wear alternate kits for every away match next season, so we will mainly only see home kits anyway. (perhaps there will be a part 2 to this blog)

Gold Coast United:

The Gold Coast’s home uniform will be yellow and blue, while their away strip will be white. I’d like to see them use the ‘aqua’ blue as their main colour for their home strip – something like this would look good IMO:

Melbourne Victory:

You certainly won’t be seeing the ‘V’ disappearing from the Melbourne kit any time soon, I think this one looks a little better than their current uniform though:

Newcastle United Jets:

Newcastle’s AFC Champions League strip will be revealed fairly soon, this is what it will look like (apparently). Whether or not this strip will also be used in next seasons A-league is still unconfirmed.

North Queensland Fury:

North Queensland Fury (a name that may yet be changed before they begin their inaugural season – fingers crossed), will use green and white as their colours. I’m very happy to finally see a little green in the A-league, something like this would look good:

Perth Glory:

I used the idea of having white horizontal stripes on the Perth kit in my blog last year. The info I’ve seen says that this is quite likely to become reality next season. For my mock-up, I've tried to be a little more subtle with the horizontal stripes, making them only slightly lighter than the dark purple.

Queensland Roar:

Some fans have been calling for a maroon strip next season for Queensland. I still like the idea of Queensland in orange, so I decided to go half-and-half. I also brought back the blue shorts, which Queensland had in their first couple of seasons.

Sydney FC:

Sydney will apparently have a much plainer sky-blue kit next season. Will probably look something like this:

Wellington Phoenix:

Wellington will finally be in yellow and black stripes next year. Frankly, I think there’s very little chance this strip will look bad. My mock-up has more black than yellow, which I think keeps the kit looking a bit darker - like their current kit.

Well, there you go. I’m pretty confident that next year we’ll see a dramatic improvement in A-league kits. Even just the fact we’ll see games where neither team is wearing white will be a big step forward.

I can’t wait to see all the new designs.

Bye for now,
Matt

Australian Football Broadcasting - Part 3

Having talked about the current state of football broadcasting in Australia - on both free-to-air and subscription television - I'm now going to talk about the future. This blog will contain a lot of speculation, some rumors, but mainly suggestions as to how the current broadcast situation could be improved to benefit football fans.

Let me say first, that I don't believe the current state of football broadcasting is that bad - if you have read my previous blogs on the topic, you will have read a lot about this. The arrival of Setanta Sports onto the scene last year - coupled with coverage of the biggest football leagues on Fox Sports and ESPN, has meant even hardcore fans are now fairly well catered for.

There are definately 'gaps' though - areas for improvement - important football matches being played, but not being shown. As well as this there is also the matter of Free-to-Air coverage. Pay-tv is always going to be the only place for the dedicated football fan, but it would be nice to see a little more football coverage on the FTA networks. These are the two topics this blog will be addressing - how hardcore fans can be catered for with more comprehensive coverage via pay-tv, and how some basic level of coverage can be provided for those without foxtel. Here it is, the 3rd, and final, part to my blog on Australian football broadcasting.

Part 3 - The Future

Free-to-Air Football:

Anyone with pay-tv will know how great it is for football fans. From watching 5 EPL games at once on Saturday nights, to guranteed live coverage of every A-league game. There are some, however, that truly cannot afford pay-tv. While for others, it's not a priority. There are plenty of 'casual' fans out there - who may only be interested in watching a game every now and then, it's completely understandable that you don't want to pay $50 a month, just for that.

Pay-tv also suffers from not being as accesible as FTA. You can pay to have Foxtel installed in your house, but if you happen to be on holidays, at a friends house etc - then there's no guarantee you will have access to foxtel. You can't just plug an antenna into a TV and start watching. Therefore, I believe that one way football broadcasting in this country really needs to be improved, is through more FTA coverage.

So what coverage of football would be best suited to FTA television? I've talked previously about all the advantages pay-tv has when showing football, and about the problems with FTA. This is why I would suggest that, rather than showing extensive live coverage of football, FTA networks should get hold of highlights packages.

This would be the best way for one of the big commercial networks to get a piece of the A-league. Coverage would suffer if games were shown live on FTA TV - you only need to look at Seven's recent coverage of the Olympic football to see this. If showing a highlights program, however, ad breaks are natural, and if the timeslot gets moved around a bit it's not a big deal.

Let me discuss a few points of interest regarding football on FTA:

- A-league/Socceroos

The A-league, along with Socceroos matches, are the showpiece for Australian football - and I think it would be good to see some coverage on FTA

Hypothetically, I think this would work well for the A-league:

- Fox Sports shows all A-league games live over the weekend
- Fox Sports produces a 40 minute highlights show, airing on Fox Sports on Monday Evening (around 6pm)
- Channel Nine (maybe 7 or 10) then shows this program at 10:30pm on Monday night

It would give the A-league some FTA exposure, while Fox Sports would still pay big money to keep exclusive live coverage, also fans wouldn't have to worry about coverage suffering as it would all still be produced by Fox Sports.

The reason I mention Channel Nine as a potential destination for the A-league, is that Nine have expressed interest in the past. Channel Nine have approached Fox Sports twice, first before the 2007-08 season, and again earlier this year - trying to convince Fox to give them rights to show 1 game each week. Channel 9 shows cricket during the Summer, but generally cricket matches are played on Friday and Sunday nights (apart from Test matches, which are finished by 6pm) so Nine sees a Saturday night A-league game as a perfect fit.

It was rumored that, on their second attempt to get some A-league rights from Fox, Nine were prepared to pay a few million dollars just for 1 game a week. Fox turned down the offer, which is not suprising because Foxtel is always very keen to keep exclusive content.

Although it led anywhere yet, this is a strong indication of the interest that is there from commercial networks. I would expect that we will not get any significant coverage of the A-league on FTA untill the TV rights are next negotiated by the FFA (even then, Fox may be prepared to pay through the nose for exclusive rights), but it is good to know that there is at least interest from the FTA networks. If nothing else, it will drive up the price for TV rights in a few years, which can only help Australian football.

Personally I would rather Nine make a move for rights to Socceroos matches - simply because I think the Socceroos are the perfect team to promote football in Australia - and it would be good if all Australians could watch them play. There has been talk that Nine wants to show the Socceroos' remaining World Cup qualifiers, but it doesn't seem likely that this will eventuate any time soon.

It is very likely that in 2014, when the current TV rights deal has finished, we will see at least some A-league coverage, and some Socceroos coverage on FTA TV. Whether or not it happens before then is entirely in the hands of Fox Sports and Foxtel. Fox has every right to try and hang onto one of it's top products, but it would be nice if they were to (at least) try and help out football in this country by giving FTA networks some amount of coverage. One could argue, that if there was an A-league highlights show on FTA, it would be a great advertisement for Fox Sports and Foxtel.

Ideally, I would encourage Fox Sports to make a deal with Channel 9 (if 9 are willing), and have Nine broadcast a weekly A-league highlights program, as well as delayed coverage of Socceroos matches. Fox would still be the only place to watch live football, but with a bit of football on FTA, it would surely grow the game.

- SBS... Where to from here?

SBS have long been the only FTA network to take football seriously, unfortunately the amount of football they show continues to dwindle. Their weekly Sunday afternoon football programming, known as "The World Game", is still the only weekly football programing on Australian FTA TV - long may it continue.

It does need some improvement though, the "Football Feature" part of the show is a great idea in theory, but the fact that the game played is usually from the middle of the previous week, or a week beforehand, is a little dissapointing. SBS should try and negotiate a deal with Setanta (who have proven a friend of SBS lately) so that they replay one of Setanta's matches from the night before.

Setanta has rights to the top leagues in France, Germany, Italy and Scotland and now has the rights to the FA Cup, as well as international football. Setanta would, in exchange for some free advertising and a bit of money, be happy for SBS to take one of these games each week, and replay it as their 'football feature'. SBS needs to make this happen.

Although it has dwindled lately, SBS has managed to keep some live coverage of football. Apart from tournaments like the FIFA World Cup and Euro 2008, SBS' only regular live coverage is from the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Cup. In a worrying sign for SBS, their rights to the Champions league expire at the end of the current season, and if rumors are to be believed - they are unlikey to extend these rights, as coverage will go to only one provider, and SBS can't compete with the likes of ESPN financially. I really hope this is not the case, and I hope SBS does whatever they can to maintain rights to at least 1 game a week from Europe's premier club competition.

It has been suggested that one way for SBS to get back some football coverage would be to show local state leagues and grassroots Australian competitions. Personally I disagree with this - SBS is a world broadcaster, and in my view should focus on overseas football. One way they could do this better would be to have a weekly wrap of all the big football leagues around the world. I'm not talking about what they already do on "The World Game", I'm talking about a more in-depth show, dedicated exclusively to world football. The best timeslot for a show like this would be on Monday nights. They could look back at all the weekend's action, show highlights from all the different leagues (thanks to the fairly open media rules in Australia, they would be allowed to quickly go through leagues like the EPL and show all the goals, without paying for any rights), give an update on league tables, and keep all fans up to date with how their club is going. I think this type of show that would be well suited to FTA and SBS.

As far as other content goes, SBS needs to try and hang on to their FIFA rights for as long as possible (currently they have the rights to all FIFA tournaments untill 2014), or at least share these rights with a bigger commercial network - it will be difficult for SBS to keep exclusive rights to the World Cup after the ratings they enjoyed in 2006. Euro 2008 was also a nice coup for SBS, and I hope they do everything they can to have some coverage of all European Championships in the future - it's the type of tournament that belongs on FTA (at least in part).

I have enjoyed SBS's occasional broadcasts of Olyroos/Matildas matches over the past couple of years, and I hope they continue with those sorts of games, but I really do think it's time for SBS to focus a little more on international football, rather than Australian football. Of course the problem with this is that they are the only ones on FTA who talk about football at all, which is why I really hope another channel invests in some football programming - as I talked about above with the A-league and Socceroos.

- W-league

The Women's A-league (or W-league) is set to kick off this October, and it will have a broadcaster. I am 95% sure that it will be broadcast on FTA TV. The quality might not be up there with the A-league, but it will be very refreshing to see some regular coverage of Australian football on FTA. The broadcaster will either be SBS or the ABC, and I'm hoping that it ends up being ABC (as seems likely). ABC has broadcast netball and women's basketball in the past, and I think the W-league would be a good fit for the ABC.

It is likely we will see a Friday night game shown live on ABC2, with a replay over the weekend on ABC1. If we are really lucky, the ABC might show two games a week, maybe a live Sunday afternoon game - but that remains to be seen. You can expect an announcment to be made regarding the W-league broadcast rights within a week or two - probably next week.

- Is football big enough for FTA?

Many accuse the FTA networks of treating football like junk, there is no doubt that some networks have tried to prevent the sport from growing, but nonetheless, the FTA networks won't ignore football forever. The executives of Seven, Nine and Ten are just starting to see that football is indeed a product that can make them money.

In the past it has been NRL and AFL that have been the most sought after sports for the FTA networks, but they each have their problems - namely that neither is popular nationwide. Seven/Ten payed a huge amount for the AFL TV rights last year, but although the AFL makes them a lot of money, it doesn't really help their ratings in New South Wales or Queensland. This is causing FTA networks to look at football as a potentially superior product to both the NRL and AFL.

During the past year or so, football has had the occasional chance to prove how well it can rate - in 2005/2006 the Socceroos smashed ratings records for SBS and late-night viewing, more recently the LA Galaxy v Sydney FC match last year rated well for Ten, and Seven and SBS both had good viewing figures for football during the recent Beijing Olympics (as terrible as Seven's coverage may have been). I'm sure that FTA networks will be keen to continue to experiment with football coverage, and if they continue to get good figures, the FFA could be looking at a very big pay-day when the rights are next negotiated in 2013-2014.

I'll talk a little more about FTA TV when I look at an 'ideal scenario' later on, but now I'm going to look at pay-tv, and how it could (or will) be improved in the coming years:

Expansion of Pay-TV Coverage:

If you read my last blog you'll know all about how important I think pay-tv is in the football broadcasting 'picture'. I discussed in that blog a little about the future, and what could be done to provide an even better level of coverage - now I'm going to talk about some specific improvements that need to, or that could be made.

- More Channels?

Foxtel is planning to add as many as 20 new channels next year, so the chances of more sports channels for pay-tv subscribers are fairly good. Here's some of the channels we could potentially see:

- Eurosport Asia Pacific

Eurosport Asia Pacific, a channel already avaliable to Australian viewers through Selectv, is one possibility (discussed in my previous blog). The channel is likely to feature extensive coverage of all FIFA youth and womens tournaments. Eurosport and FIFA have an agreement, which allows Eurosport to broadcast the Beach Soccer World Cup, Futsal World Cup, Womens World Cup and the Men's and Womens Under 20 and Under 17 World Cups.

I am still not 100% certain if this also applies to Eurosport Asia Pacific - we will see later this year when the Futsal World Cup and the Womens Under 20 and Under 17 World Cups are played. Hopefully Eurosport extends this deal beyond 2010, so that we can always have good coverage of these tournaments.

Apart from FIFA tournaments, we could also see coverage of UEFA tournaments (like the Under 19 European Championships), the African Nations Cup and other international matches. Potentially we could even see coverage of the UEFA Cup or some European domestic football.

- Sky Sports News

Another potential new channel, with a lot of football content, is Sky Sports News. For a brief period last year, Fox Sports News used to take a feed from Sky Sports News between midnight and 6am, so Australian viewers have see the channel before. It appears likely that it may become a full time channel on Foxtel next year. If this happens, we will be completely set as far as results and live updates go, although Sky Sports News only has limited access to footage.

- Fox Sports Football Channel

There have been some rumors during the past year or so regarding a dedicated football channel from Fox Sports. It would make a lot of sense, given the amount of football that Fox Sports has access to now now - and the rumors about other content they might be interested in.

Whether or not the rumors have any basis is another matter, but here's some of the content the channel could potentially have:

- A-league
- EPL (With additional coverage/analysis from Sky Sports UK)
- Coca-Cola Championship
- Asian Champions League (more games shown with interactive coverage)
- Socceroos Matches
- International Asian Football
- Asian World Cup Qualifiers
- Youth/Womens Asian Tournaments
- Olyroos/Matildas/Young Socceroos games
- Asian Club Football
- J-league (which Fox Sports already has the rights to)
- K-league
- Chinese Super League
- Major League Soccer (Coverage from Fox Soccer channel in the US)
- South American Football (Argentine or Brazilian Leagues)
- A nightly wrap of all things football

There's no denying that the potential for a channel is there. Unfortunately the rumors I have heard regarding this channel are that, although it was being considered by Fox Sports, they have decided not to go ahead with the plan. However the recent launch of a new show from Fox Sports (Fox Sports FC) did fuel a bit more speculation. If you look at the show's logo, it does look suspiciously similar to the logo of the american, "Fox Soccer Channel".

Fox Sports Football Channel, prehaps?

- More channels from Setanta

Despite not being an 'official' Foxtel channel, Setanta Sports has made quite an impact, and has already gained some popularity since it's move onto foxtel a little under a year ago. The major problem with Setanta (as discussed on my previous blog), is that there is just not enough air time for the vast amount of football that they could be showing. It has, therefore, been suggested that Setanta will be looking at an additional channel in Australia before too long. My feeling is, however, that we won't see this for at least 12 months. Hopefully it will happen one day though.

- Other Potential New Channels

There are a number of channels that you can recieve in several countries, such as Gol TV (an American channel) and Goal TV (an Asian Channel), if Foxtel is looking to expand it's channel lineup, it wouldn't be too hard to rebroadcast one of these channels for Foxtel viewers. I have heard no specific rumors, but we will see.

It would also be fairly easy for Foxtel to include specific club channels in it's lineup. Real Madrid TV is already avaliable on Selectv, it's definately possible that other channels like this could one day end up on Foxtel.

One more thing to mention is foreign language channels. While probably not of interest to most, there are several channels on Selectv and UBI World TV (two small satellite operators) that offer football coverage from smaller countries, in that countries local language. Foxtel already has a couple of channels like this -RAI International and Antenna Pacific, which show coverage from the Italian (granted, that's a big league) and Greek leagues - expect more of this on Foxtel in the next few years.

There are a few other channels that would make sense, maybe ESPN2, Fox Sports 4 would be nice, but this is just pure speculation.

- Expanded Coverage

Football coverage on Foxtel is fairly comprehensive, but I'm now going to discuss it's shortcomings, and where coverage will (and could) be improved over the next few years.

- Asian Football

This is one big area where I think coverage needs to improve. It would be great to see some coverage of the J-league and K-league in Australia - and it would be great to see more coverage of the Asian Champions leauge as well as other AFC tournaments. Coverage of Asian football is probably going to have to come from Fox Sports, or maybe SBS. ESPN and Setanta are both focused pretty heavily on European football, and that's probably appropriate. Fox Sports, however, have rightly developed a bit of a focus on Asian football lately.

Starting next month, Fox Sports will have coverage of every single Asian World Cup qualifier as the road to 2010 reaches it's climax. This is exactly the sort of coverage that I would like to see more of. Much of it will be at a good time of day for Australian viewers, and I think Asian football is great to watch - of course the Asian region is now very relevant to Australia since we joined the AFC.

Hopefully Fox continues to expand it's coverage of Asian club and international football, but with their limited resources they are never going to be able to really cover Asian football comprehensively. This is why Fox needs to make use of the resources of other networks like Star Sports. Better yet, Foxtel could see if they can get ESPN Star to start an Australian version of Star Sports (that would focus on Asian football, as well as cricket and other Asian Sport from ESPN Asia/Star Sports Asia). Virtually every country in Asia has access to Star Sports, and it would be awsome if Australia did as well. The amount of quality sports content from ESPN Asia and Star Sports is huge, and it's a great potential source of content for Foxtel.

- European Football

Most big European leagues are now covered in some form, hopefully with more channels this coverage will continue to improve. There are, however, a couple of leagues that aren't being covered, that prehaps should be.

The Russian league is fast becoming the 6th biggest league in Europe, and games are played at a fairly decent timeslot for Australian viewers, so it would be nice to see some coverage from Russia. I'm not sure which channel would be most likely to pick up the rights, prehaps Fox Sports would consider covering it, but I would rather see coverage on Setanta - or maybe even Eurosport.

The UEFA Champions League is something I've always loved to watch, and I'm a little dissapointed that we still don't get great coverage of it here. ESPN shows most champions league games, but a lot of their coverage is delayed, and neither SBS or ESPN even has widescreen coverage or European commentators. If Fox Sports were to buy the rights to the champions league, they could take coverage from Sky Sports UK, use viewers choice, and provide coverage worthy of such a great competition. In 2009 the rights to the champions league are up for grabs, chances are that only one broadcaster will win the rights - so I really hope Fox Sports spends the money and picks up this competition.

If it stays on ESPN, as expected, I hope that they will start a second channel and show at least 2 games at once - that would at least be an improvement. If Setanta manages to get the rights, at least we should see widescreen coverage, but the chances of multiple games being on at once is fairly low.

- South/North American Football

With Setanta, we now get decent coverage of the two big South American club competitions, and ESPN have coverage of the MLS, but it would be good to see coverage from the Argentine or Brazilian leagues. I don't know who is most likely to show these leagues, but hopefully someone picks them up.

It would also be good if Fox Sports could start showing some of the MLS. ESPN only ever shows games that they also show in the US, and Fox could pick up the rights to games that are shown on Fox Soccer channel in the US. Fox Soccer channel is another potential source of programming for Fox Sports - especially for North/South American football - Fox Sports should definately look to make use of their resources.

An Ideal Scenario:

Now that I've said all I wanted too about broadcasting of football in Australia, I'm going to wrap everything up by presenting my 'ideal scenario' for which channels should have which riawqzxghts, which new channels should be launched etc. Here's what I would like to see:

- FTA:

- ABC/ABC2

- Coverage of the W-League. (1-2 Live games a week, maybe a highlights show)
- Coverage of State Leagues/Local Competitions (probably only to local markets)
- Coverage of Womens/Youth National Teams. (Although I'd be happy for these to be shown on Pay-TV)

- SBS

- FIFA World Cups (Possibly with a commercial network), Confederations Cups, Other FIFA Tournaments
- European Championships
- UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup
- FA Cup (Personally I'd like them to show this more extensively)
- Highlights from big European Leagues

- Commercial Network(s)

- Socceroos Matches (Delayed coverage of Friendlies and Asian Cup Qualifiers, Live World Cup qualifiers)
- Asian Cup (With Fox Sports)
- Highlights of the A-league (maybe some live coverage)
- Asian Champions League (either highlights or 1 game per matchday)

- Pay-tv:

- Fox Sports (1,2, 3 and 4)

- A-league (all games live, plus highlights, extensive coverage)
- A-league Youth League (maybe a game a week live, plus highlights)
- Asian Champions League (all games live with viewers choice)
- Asian Cup (all matches live, as well as coverage of qualifiers)
- Socceroos Matches (all games live)
- Other Asian Football (World Cup qualifiers, Youth Asian Cups, Womens Asian Cups etc.)
- English Premier League (most games live, highlights of all games, extended analysis etc. with content from Sky Sports)
- English Lower-Leagues and League Cup
- UEFA Champions League (Most games live)
- Major League Soccer

- ESPN (ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN HD)

- Spanish La Liga
- Italian Serie A (Premium Coverage)
- UEFA Cup
- Major League Soccer
- International football from Europe/North America

- Setanta Sports (1 and 2)

- Scottish Premier League
- French Ligue 1
- Italian Serie A (Lower quality games)
- German Bundesliga
- Dutch Eredivisie
- Portuguese Liga
- English Conference
- FA Cup
- International Football from Europe and South America
- Copa Libertadores, Copa Sudamericana
- Copa America (South American Nations Cup)
- Brazilian and Argentine Leagues

- Eurosport Asia Pacific

- FIFA Tournaments (Womens, Youth, smaller tournaments)
- UEFA Tournaments (Womens, Youth tournaments)
- African Nations Cup
- Russian League
- Coverage from smaller European leagues
- Club football from Africa
- International football from Europe and Africa

- Star Sports Australia (I don't think it's really likely we will get this channel, but it would be nice)

- J-league
- K-league
- Chinese Super League
- West-Asian leagues
- AFC Cup
- Gulf Cup
- East Asia Cup
- Other International football from Asia

Wrap-Up, Final Remarks

Well, that's it. I have said all I wanted to about football broadcasting in Australia. I will definately do more blogs on the subject at some point, when new deals are made, more broadcast rights come up for negotiation etc, but for now - that is the end.

Some would ask why I would spend so much time on such a series of blogs. The answer is that they aren't really intended to be blogs that I will read right through. I intended them more as a record of where we are at at the moment - it will be very interesting to read this again in a few years, and see how far we have come - to see if we still have the same sort of problems, or if my ideal scenario has been achieved. I would hope that within 10 years or so we will be able to take it for granted that any significant game of football will be shown live - I can't wait for the day when I can just turn on the TV and always be able to watch live football from somewhere in the world.

But for now, the situation really isn't that bad - as I have outlined there are many areas which need to be improved, but even since I started thinking about and writing this blog there have been significant improvements. Let's hope the situation continues to improve untill that ideal scenario can be reached. Let's also hope that the FFA can continue to get more money from TV rights, so that Australian football and the A-league can benefit.

Bye for now,
Matt

Australian Football Broadcasting - Part 1

It's great to make the effort and attend a game of football, the experience of live football is like nothing else - and if you are a football fan that would rather watch football on TV than make the effort to attend games, then I would strongly recommend you try to get along to as many games as possible. Of course most of us live busy lives, we can't always make it to the stadium, let alone stadiums all over the world. This is why football broadcasting is very important.

It wasn't that long ago, that it was very rare for a match in Australia's national football league (the NSL) to be broadcast on television. Suddenly we have excelent coverage of every game of the A-league, as many as 10 games a weekend from the English Premier League and a heap of other coverage - all live. That's not to say that I am completely satisfied with the football broadcasting situation here in Australia - if you don't have cable tv, you would certainly agree with this - the only football broadcast on free to air television in Australia is a weekly show on SBS, as well as live coverage of the UEFA Champions league.

In this blog I'm going to be looking closely at the amount of football that is currently shown on Australian FTA television. Throughout some of my next blogs I will be exploring the coverage that fooball gets on pay-television, and looking at the future of football broadcasting in Australia, (and I have some juicy rumors about what we can expect in the next year or so), for now though - the focus is on Free-To-Air television, and Australia's five major FTA networks.

Part 1 - Football on FTA

Unlike many other countries, in Australia pay-television is not the norm. Currently only 30% of people subscribe to cable or satellite television, and although this number is climbing, it is difficult for sporting events to attract major public attention without being broadcast on one of Australia's super-powerful commercial networks. Thus, when the FFA sold the television rights to the A-league and all Socceroos matches, exclusively to pay-tv network Fox Sports, many were unhappy. I think most would now agree that it was the right move, part of the reason that football broadcasting in Australia was so poor only a few years ago, was because channel 7 (one of the big 3 commercial networks) held the rights to the National Soccer league - and treated it it like junk, barely showing any of it.

The move to pay-television has brought comprehensive live coverage, as well as a lot of money to Australian football, but where has that left Free to Air? - and more importantly those football fans who can't afford pay-tv...

SBS:

Currently the only FTA network that really shows any football is SBS - the smallest FTA network has always supported 'soccer', but it has a lot of problems. SBS is the 'ethnic network' - it has a lot of shows in languages other than English, and generally appeals to the many Australians with an European heritage. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but as far as football goes, many see SBS as 'the way of the past'. Over the years Australian football has struggled because of it's image as the 'ethinc game' - you can see why many would prefer football to be broadcast on other networks, in order to bring the game to the attention of mainstream Australia. Don't get me wrong, I think SBS is a great network, and I apologise if my comments seem even remotely racist, but unfortunately history has shown that Australian's are reluctant to have an interest in a game, that to them does not seem Australian.

So what is currently broadcast on SBS? Well SBS's Sunday afternoon lineup is the heart of it's broadcasts - it's weekly show, "The World Game", is the only weekly dedicated football show on Australian FTA television. It generally has the following format:

2pm - Various football magazine shows, often the UEFA Champions League magazine show, Football Asia or Fifa Football Mundial.

3pm - A game of football, often from a slightly smaller European league or a replay of a midweek Champions league game - for example a game from the French Ligue 1.

4pm - The World Game: an hour of analysis, interviews and reports relating to Australian or World Football.

SBS Also has occasional live coverage - central to this is SBS's coverage of the UEFA Champions league, they broadcast live games every matchday, as well as a review show. Other live coverage includes the UEFA Cup (which SBS broadcasts from the Quarter finals onwards), the FA Cup final and occasionally some international football. Unfortunately this is really all the regular football coverage that FTA viewers in Australia now get.

Of Course there are also major tournaments, SBS has the rights to FIFA tournaments and is Australia's broadcaster of the FIFA World Cup, they will also be showing a small selection of games from Euro 2008 this year. With the FIFA World Cup rights comes the rights to other smaller fifa tournaments, but unfortunately SBS's coverage of these is very limited.

One thing you may notice here, is that although SBS does have a bit of football coverage, they really have no coverage of any Australian football - this must be especially frustrating for those without cable television. One could argue, that if Australian football wants to grow, Australian football needs free-to-air coverage.

However, I personally would rather not see coverage of Australian football on SBS. SBS is not a mainstream station. They have been great supporters of football in Australia for over 20 years, but as football attempts to 'go mainstream', it will not be able to bring SBS with it. SBS would be much better off sticking to it's roots and focusing on European football, while Australian football would benifit more from coverage on one of the big commercial networks.

One final thing I will say about SBS is regarding the attitude of SBS's on-air personallities. I'll be frank, I'm talking about Craig Foster and Les Murray. Now I respect both of them, and I'm certain they only want what's best for Australian football - in fact I admire their passion, however both Les and Craig have a serious problem when it comes to getting their agenda's across. You see both of them have some strong views about Australian football, they see the public's interest in English football and they believe that Australia should instead be looking at the more technical European leagues for inspiration. They believe that the A-league has a long way to go when it comes to quality and the technical ability of the players.

These may all be fair criticisms, but the problem with SBS is that they are constantly on about these points. Okay, it's fair enough that occasionally you might want to talk about Australian football, where it's headed and raise these points, but SBS finds a way to inject these agendas into any football broadcasting it does. They need to learn how to analyse football without constantly looking at the bigger picture - they could also learn a bit about being positive - sometimes I get the impression they hate the A-league when they criticise it so much. I'm not saying Les and Craig don't have a point, but give it a rest - especially when you are the only FTA network showing football, you need to have some balance.

Channel 7:

Channel 7, as mentioned previously, held rights to the National Soccer league, as well as Socceroos matches. Throughout the late 90s and early 00s Seven showed quite a fair amount of football. Unfortunately their coverage of the NSL was very poor, generally the only coverage of games would be delayed untill very late night - with maybe the Grand Final shown live. Their coverage of Socceroos games was decent, big home matches would generally be shown in primetime, this included a World Cup qualifying playoff against Uruguay in 2001, where the home leg drew 2,221,000 viewers - Seven's 3rd highest rating program for the year.

What was good about Seven's arangement was that Seven also had a pay-tv channel, C7 Sport. Some Socceroos and NSL were broadcast on this channel, however the major problem here was that C7 was never available to most Australians, this, along with Seven loosing the rights to the AFL (Australian Rules football), forced C7 to close down, and that also meant Seven gave up the rights to any football. The last time Seven showed NSL was the 2002 grand final. They have shown a handful of other matches since, in 2003 they picked up the rights to two Socceroos friendlies - against Ireland and Jamaica, and they also showed a couple of the Olyroos and Matildas matches at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Since then there has been no football on Seven, although they will again be showing the Olyroos games at Beijing this year.

Incidently, Channel 7 was prepared to pay $2.5 million dollars a year for the rights to the NSL and Socceroos matches - compare that to today when Fox Sports pay $17 million a year and you can see how far we've come, mind you when Seven signed the deal in 1998 many were very excited about it - the exposure of a commercial network and the security of $2.5 million a year was enough to give football fans hope for the future - things didn't turn out well back then, but I'm fairly confident that won't be the case now, mainly because the A-league doesn't suffer from the same problems of the old NSL. One thing to note though, if a commercial network is ever again going to take a punt and get involved with football, they are going to need to be more commited than Seven was with it's $2.5 million a year - otherwise the FFA are just going to keep taking Fox Sports' money.

Other Networks:

Channel 9 is generally regarded as Australia's biggest network, though they have little history of showing football. In 2002, however, they jumped on the rights to the FIFA World Cup. This was mainly because the world cup, for the first time, was to be in an ideal timezone for Australian viewers - although 9 didn't show a huge number of games (allowing SBS to show the less significant games), they did get very good ratings - in fact the World Cup final drew 2,702,000 viewers, an all time record for football in Australia - it was also the highest rating sports event of the year (and second highest overall).

When you compare these ratings to the World Cup in 2006, when SBS drew 2.3 million viewers for a Socceroos game at 1am (the World Cup final in 2002 was at around 9pm on a Sunday night - absolute prime time), you just have to wonder how many people may have tuned in had the 2006 world cup been in a timezone more suitable for Australians - surely it would have set all kinds of records. Despite this success, channel 9 hasn't shown any football since 2002 - this shows that football can be suitable for commercial tv, but the conditions have to be just right - if games take place outside primetime, it's hardly going to be worth it for the commercial networks.

Channel 10 and the ABC (like channel 7) have also, at times, experimented with football, 10 even broadcast some of the New South Wales Premier League years before the NSL had even begun, more recently they have shown Sydney FC's game against the LA Galaxy. The game rated well, and with Ten's demographic being similar to that of the A-league (they both aim at a younger audience), the A-league may be a good fit for them in the future. The ABC has at times shown NSL games, as well as the occasional Socceroos or Olyroos game, but it has been a long time since they have shown any football at all.

Issues affecting FTA Coverage:

There are a couple of last things I want to mention about FTA coverage of football. Firstly, there is an interesting school of thought that says that football does not work that well on commercial television. The reason? Well football does not have natural breaks in play. In Australia, the sports that are on FTA TV the most are Australian rules football and cricket. In Aussie Rules, goals are frequent, and there is time after a goal for broadcasters to show a commercial, in Cricket there is a break at the end of every over - broadcasters can make heaps of money from advertising while showing these sports - this is more difficult while showing football.

In the past commercial networks have tried to squeeze ads into live football broadcasts, before free kicks, before goal kicks etc. Unfortunately this doesn't work well, and games are often disrupted. Some networks have done commercial free broadcasts, with maybe ads appearing every now and then at the bottom of the screen - this works well, however broadcasters don't make that much money from this sort of broadcasting. It is a problem that any potential FTA broadcaster of football will need to look at, this is why I would suggest it might be better for commercial networks to take delayed coverage of games (and allow pay-tv to show the game live), so that they can just pause the game, and not miss any action.

Finally I want to talk about the Anti-Siphoning list, and the Australian Government's role in all this. The anti-siphoning list is a list, designed by the government, preventing certain sporting events "of national interest" from being sold exclusively to pay-tv. Various sporting events are included, such as the Olympics, Australian Rules football league, National Rugby League and Wallabies (Australian national rugby union team) games. As far as football goes, there are only two things on the list: The FIFA World Cup, and the FA Cup final. Now the world cup is an obvious choice for the list, and I'm happy that the FA Cup is on the list as well (this is why SBS is allowed to show the FA Cup final every year), but to say that the FA Cup final is of greater "national interest" than Socceroos matches, or the A-league grand final is ridiculus (although you may note that the NSL grand final was on the list, but was remove when the NSL folded - and was never replaced with the A-league grand final). The FFA has publically said that they would not like any of these events on the list, they want the freedom to choose whether or not they want these games on FTA TV, and that's fair enough, but I would like to see the government step in - for the sake of the fans.

Interestingly, the Rudd Government did say during their election campaign that they would put the Socceroos back on the anti-siphoning list, but so far they have not lived up to their word. If you agree that you would like the Rudd government to get the Socceroos on FTA, you may like to take the time to contact someone like Kate Ellis (the Labour minister for sport) - it can't hurt!

I know that one of the biggest reasons I am a football fan (I grew up in a house that never took any interest in football) is that I was able to watch the Socceroos play in the early part of this decade, specifically games against Uruguay and England. I was only a young teenager then, and it's not up to people of that age to decide whether or not they subscribe to pay television, there are now many Australian kids, and potential football fans, who can't see their national team play. This is why I would love to see at least Socceroos games back on Free to Air television.

Bye for Now,

Matt

A-league Kits Update

I've had a couple of comments and requests regarding my previous blog (A-league Kits Could be Improved), so I'm going to do an update.

An anonymous Newcastle fan alerted me to the fact that Blue and Red are not really the traditional colours of Newcastle (although these colours are used by the Newcaslte Knights rugby team and were used by the old Newcastle Breakers NSL side), and that the different colours the Jets used were partly to highlight the difference between the Jets and the Knights - and for the Jets to form a seperate identity to the Knights. Thus I have a couple of other possible strips that Newcastle could use as an away kit.

The Brown/Green and White colour combination was used by Newcastle KB United many years ago, and it was suggested that I create an away kit based on these colours. I've had a couple of goes at it, The first kit is very similar to KB United's old strip (although it had a darker brown), the other two kits are variations - I'm undecided on which one I like best, there's no doubt they are attractive looking kits though. I'm not sure how likely it is that Newcastle would use one of these kits - green is not part of their logo, and is not one of the clubs colours - one of these would be a great third kit though.

Another request I had was to update Perth's away stip - personally I like the current Perth away kit, but here's a couple of variations - the look quite nice in my opinion, especially the orange one.

Over recent days, it has been a great dissapointment to hear that North Queensland's A-league bid appears to be unlikely to succeed - at least for season 4 of the A-league. The team lineup for next season's competition is now unknown - although the Gold Coast will still be pushing hard to be allowed in, even if it means we only have 9 A-league teams. Here are a couple of variations on my Gold Coast and North Queensland kits from my first blog. I would love to see the blue/green strip become North Queensland's home kit. The club seems commited to the red/black and white colours - of course the problems they have been having and the reported split means that could very well change. The yellow and blue Gold Coast kit might make a good away kit for them, part of the reason I previously gave them a yellow/green strip was because no other kits included any green, but as this blog update contains a few strips with green I thought that may no longer be necessary.

One of the rumors circulating with the possible failure of the North Queensland bid is that Wollongong may step in, here's my attempt at a Wollongong kit - the colours are a common combination in world football, and I believe they go together very well.

Since I was experimenting with kits for potential new teams, I thought I'd quickly whip up a Canberra kit (green and orange) and a kit for a potential Western Sydney kit (black and red). I don't know if either of these teams will ever enter the A-league, but I think both these kits look great. The Canberra kit is in the style of Werder Bremen of Germany, while the West Sydney kit is similar to that of Paris Saint-Germain.

I'm very much hoping that the Gold Coast (and their very impressive new stadium - checkout the picture below) and North Queensland will be a part of the A-league next year, but if one of the teams can not meet the FFA's requirements (and no replacement can be found), I certainly hope that the other is included - even the one extra team would mean a longer season - something desperately needed.

Matt

PS. Nice picture (click to enlarge) of the stadium where the Gold Coast Galaxy will play it's home games:

A-league Kits Could be Improved

Another season of the Hyundai A-league has concluded, and what a season it's been. Big crowds, classic matches, lots of spectacular goals. Next season promises to be another year of improvement for the league - two new teams are set to enter the competition (the Gold Coast Galaxy and North Queensland Thunder), which will mean an extra game will take place each week and the season will last a bit longer.

One thing I would like to see improved in the A-league (it may not be the biggest issue the A-leauge faces, but I think it's something the fans are quite interested in) is the quality and variety of the kits that the teams wear. The home kits are generally quite good, although plain, however 7 out of the 8 teams have a predominantly white away kits. For those of us who go often attend our local A-league team's matches, this means we always see the same colour teams.

For the next season of the A-league, Reebok will be redesigning the away shirts for many of the A-league teams, they will also be creating new kits for the two new sides. As a result I have decided to have a go myself - and see if I can create a bit more variety and a few more interesting kits for the (soon to be) 10 A-league sides. I have kept most of the current home kits the same, apart from a couple of teams which I have decided could do with a new home kit as well.

For the record, I would like the league to continue with it's policy of forcing teams to wear away kits whenever they are playing away from home (in the regular A-league season), however as some of my new away kits would create clashes there will have to be exceptions to that rule.

Adelaide United

The home kit is the same as it is now, while the away kit is predominantly yellow. I think the away kit has a nice look to it, although it does clash with the Central Coast's home strip, meaning Adelaide would always need to wear their home strip against the Mariners.

Central Coast Mariners

I've kept these kits exactly the same. The current Mariners kits are some of the more interesting ones in the league and they look great.

Melbourne Victory

Again I've kept these kits the same. Melbourne are really the only club to have a distinctive style to their shirt (with the V), and this should not be changed (although a slight change might be a good idea).

Newcastle United Jets

Newcastle's gold home kit looks very nice so I have kept it the same, however I would like to see the 'traditional' colours of Newcastle (the red and blue) used in the away kit - stripes would look great. Potentially you could use the red and blue for the home colours.

Perth Glory

Perth is largely unchanged, although I've added hoops, which I think looks great and gives them a slightly new image - something they desperately need.

Queensland Roar

I'm sure most would agree that the current Queensland kit looks terrible. The colours of Orange and Marooan can go together and look great, but Queensland have done a shocking job of it with their current strip. I believe my attempt is a lot better, mainly because it is simple. I've used the blue as an away kit.

Sydney FC

I've kept Sydney's kit's the same - the relatively plain, sky-blue home strip is perfect for them and their away kit has always been one of my favourite A-league strips.

Wellington Phoenix

Wellington fans were hoping for black and yellow stripes for their first season in the A-league, hopefully after Wellington proved that they could pull a decent crowd reebok might oblige - it can't be that hard to take a kit and add stripes to it. Their current away kit is fine.

Now it's a little harder to attempt to design kits for the new A-league sides, the Gold Coast Galaxy and North Queensland Thunder - it is not even 100% confirmed that both sides will enter the A-leauge next season. Both sides have, however, tentitavely announced their colours - the Thunder will use red, black and white while the Galaxy will be yellow and blue.

Gold Coast Galaxy

Blue and Yellow go together very well, and I've given them a sash in the style of one of Boca Juniors' classic strips. I decided to add green trimming to their home kit, and then use it, along with yellow, for the away strip - I did this mainly becuase no other A-league side has green in any of their kits.

North Queensland Thunder

North Queensland said their colours of red, black and white were inspired by Manchester United - so I expect their kit will look a little like that of the red devils, I've given them a black away strip.

As I said earlier, this is not a massive issue for the A-leauge, but I'm sure that most A-leauge fans would like to see a little more variety when it comes to A-leauge kits. The various different colours of away strips and shorts would mean that sides will have to be a little more flexible when it comes to the uniform they wear. For example, North Queensland would have to wear their home kit when they travel to Melbourne - and when Perth travels to Queensland they should wear their away shirt, with their home purple shorts - otherwise both sides would have the same colour shorts, which would be annoying for TV viewers.

Now obviously these aren't going to be the exact kits that we see next year, but I certainly hope that Reebok and the A-league sides are a little more creative than in the past - and I also hope they take a look at a couple of home kits and decide to update those as well as doing a comprehensive update of away kits.

Here's an image of all my kits together (click to enlarge):

Bye for now,

Matt