A League

[brown fox]

Starting Fri. night.If this year starts the same as most years expect low numbers of goals till they get their eye in.2-3 weeks

[PWJ]

On 11/17/2021 at 4:45 PM, brown fox said:

Starting Fri. night.If this year starts the same as most years expect low numbers of goals till they get their eye in.2-3 weeks

Graeme, the A-League has been a disaster this season from a fans point-of-view. Firstly live coverage of each game was dropped from the major cable network Foxsports. Who was to blame for this is not clear. Some say the A-League management left. Others say they were pushed.

The A-League management signed up with a little-known company called Paramount which has had minimal market impact previously. The screening of the first few matches - only watchable if you signed up for a season contract - was riddled with technical errors (constant reloading, lagging signal, poor visual definition and a piss-poor commentary on top of all this. Thousands went online to register their disgust and it would seem the league has lost a huge part of it's fanbase due to this massive mistake. I was going to sign up but at the last minute decided to wait a week or two and see how the new live streaming went. Needless to say I have saved my money. I understand it has improved precious little since.

On top of all this the A-League handed over their online website, marketing, information & data to an outfit called "Keep-up" which appears to be crewed by people who have no idea about football. You can tell this from the story content - that is when they actually run some content when they are not copying and pasting endless stories from the EPL and other world leagues. You know guys, most of us already have excellent sources of news and info on EPL from elsewhere. The match previews, lineups, squads and post-match summaries with data are all missing. Way to go Keep-up !

Lastly, the site is now giving equal coverage to the Women's A-League. And I mean 100% equal. Now while I have no beef with women playing football or it being televised or written about, the fact remains that women's football has a tiny following compared to men's football. This is just a fact. The reason most people will give for preferring to watch men's football is a higher level of skill (mine also) and nothing to do with misogyny or outdated cultural beliefs. But the very "woke" Keep-up present the women's A-league on a level footing and seem to make a point out of purposely blurring the lines in story headings, links, previews so as to ensure the women's content gets more clicks so they can virtue signal. The fact that the mens and womens teams have identical names makes this faux deception easier for the content makers.

The same is being done to Womens AFL and Womens NRL and I hear the same complaints. None of these content creators - online or TV/video want to be accused of marginalization of women. Their viewing stats will tell a different story.

I have tried with the best will in the world to watch Womens EPL or A-League EPL but just end up laughing at the skill level of most, although there are a few females that could hold their own at a high level of men's sport. There is more skill in reserve grade competition in any of the sports I have mentioned.

Now I am sure someone will have a go at me over this. It's just my opinion remember. I should also volunteer that I spent some years coaching womens & childrens teams at football and basketball. Football in NZ and Oz is on a downward slippery slope unless something is done to fix the presentation of the sport in this part of the world.