2024/2025 A-League Men Round 5

[Paul01]

Unite Round

Perth v Western Fraudsters
Newcastle v Mariners
Brisbane v Adelaide
Smurfs v Wanderers
Phoenix v Melb Victory
Bullsh1tters v Auckland
Bye: Heartle$$

Suspended: Matthews

[sonar]

The Unite round is working.

People are united in not showing up if Perth v WU is anything to by.

Stadium almost empty.

 

[pseudonym]

Perth and WU shirts 

[BoyFromTheWest]

It's 5:30 on Friday afternoon with two out of Sydney teams in Moore Park, what do you expect? There was a trail strike until last night and the girls are free.

[mack]

Mariners with a star for beating MacArthur and a bunch of d tier farmers teams that would be lucky to beat Granville Rage. Cringe.

[StringerBellend]

11 minutes ago, mack said:

Mariners with a star for beating MacArthur and a bunch of d tier farmers teams that would be lucky to beat Granville Rage. Cringe.

I loved some of the grounds in the ACL cup. Especially the ones with cars parked behind the goals

[mack]

Just now, StringerBellend said:

I loved some of the grounds in the ACL cup. Especially the ones with cars parked behind the goals

You get a great view from the Wests Leagues Club parking structure.

[StringerBellend]

3 minutes ago, mack said:

You get a great view from the Wests Leagues Club parking structure.

Never thought about it before but yes Leumeah is a perfect ACL Cup ground 

[StringerBellend]

Reminds me back in about 1999 going to watch Southend Utd away at Barnett the ground was so ****, it made Marconi look state of the art.

Southend fans were singing "Does the council, does the council, does the council know you're here? Does the council know you're here?.." 

[Davo]

That Susnjar own goal was a thing of beauty.

[BoyFromTheWest]

It was a lovely finish. He was unmarked and just daftly netted it.

Edited November 22 by BoyFromTheWest

[Davo]

Nick Garcia put out a statement about Unite Round.

Quote

“It was a turbulent build up with a ticketing outage, a change in venue for our six Ninja A-League Women matches and a planned train strike – but we’re really proud to have welcomed 50% more fans from across Australia and New Zealand to Sydney compared to our first-ever Unite Round.

“We worked with fans, clubs and our event partners to evolve and elevate the fan experience, and across the weekend, Kogarah and Moore Park were a buzz with grassroots activities and fans celebrating the world game.

“We had more than 600 fans, representing 40 countries, take part in our multicultural march on Friday night to honour the cultural diversity of our game. While current stars from the Ninja A-League Women led the next generation of stars in our Girls Unite Gala Days, and almost 100 grassroots teams battled it out across Moore Park to be crowned the first Unite Cup champions.

“We really believe in the long term potential of this partnership with the NSW Government and Destination NSW, establishing a new tradition and welcoming football fans from across Australia and New Zealand to electrify this incredible city. This event really resonates with our young and diverse fanbase, and aligns with our drive to unite communities through a shared love of football. It’s the pinnacle weekend of professional football, and we hope this is a tradition that we can continue to build on and grow in the coming years.”

So they're spinning it as a success (crowds up 50%!) but it's a bit misleading.

Last season the women's Unite Round had a total attendance of 11,222 and this season it was 9,394, so down 16%. The men had 36,203 last season and 61,911 this time which sounds great, but last season they didn't have a derby. Of that 61,911 the derby made up 30,777 which had nothing to do with Unite Round (the last two Allianz derbies were 26,155 and 28,152). Also the Roar v Adelaide game before the derby had a suspiciously high 15,249 suggesting that a lot of people going to the derby just arrived early.

If you account for that it doesn't look like it's really grown at all, and you've used up two events (Unite Round and a derby) at the same time.