Should there be enough support, FA has not ruled out a move to a home-and-away season, and only after that can the thorny question of promotion and relegation be properly tackled. It seems to be a long way off – particularly given FA’s own ongoing challenges – but there appears to be some interest in this thing. There is more hype within the soccer community about the Championship than the A-League, which begins next weekend, and far more visible promotion.
FA has tried to avoid it through scheduling, but there will be times when the Championship and the A-League will be competing for the same eyeballs and bums on seats from the modest Australian soccer audience.
Nobody involved will say this, and in fact, officials stress the opposite. But the truth is, the Championship is a philosophical rival to the A-League in almost every way.
Football Australia chairman Anter Isaac has been a driving force behind the Championship.Credit: Getty Images
It is not branded in a way that makes it secondary to the A-League or positioned as a development platform like rugby’s NRC. The Championship is not a lesser thing, but another thing entirely.
The clubs involved are not franchises but member-based organisations, with strong histories, and they all want to compete at the highest possible level. The A-League is for people who want to support broad-based entities, and it’s not going anywhere; now is the time to test whether the nostalgia factor of ethnic clubs can be properly leveraged, too.
Loading
It will also be shown free on SBS, the game’s spiritual home on television. That, immediately, lends the Championship an air of gravitas and history; this is exactly the kind of Australian soccer people would expect to see on SBS.
And though the Championship is still technically only part-time football, the product on the pitch probably won’t be hugely indistinguishable from the A-League, since the gap between the top tier and the NPL is slowly closing, from both directions: partly because of increasing professionalism and rising standards from the best teams in the state leagues, as evidenced by Heidelberg United’s sensational run to the Australia Cup final.
There are, of course, plenty of unanswered questions. Will the crowds actually turn up? Is this thing even remotely viable? If not, for how long can FA carry the can? Is this really the best use of the federation’s increasingly limited funds right now? Or is this just rose-tinted madness? And what do the A-League clubs think? They’re probably a little uncomfortable, but that is not a bad thing.
Competition is healthy; if the Championship further exposes some of the areas where the A-League is lacking, and if that nudges everyone further in the right direction, that is a net positive. The challenge will be whether the game’s key decision-makers can bring together the best of both worlds and create a future that everyone can get behind.
Football has a new Home. Stream the Premier League, Emirates FA Cup, J.League, Women’s Super League and NWSL live & on demand, including Premier League with 4K, from August 2025 on Stan Sport.
