It’s not often recognised by those outside its flock, but the round ball game was the first of Australia’s various footballing codes to field a truly national league – the NSL, which launched in 1977 with representation from four states and the ACT. And while the nearly 50 years since have given ample demonstration that going first doesn’t necessarily correlate with success, Australian football will once again step into the unknown in 2025, launching a national second-tier competition known as the Australian Championship in October. This being Australian football, though, there are plenty of questions, chief amongst them what this new competition is supposed to be and, more pressingly, how it’s going to get there.
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The initial plan to launch a standalone, home-and-away league in November 2023was the preferred option of the eight foundation clubs unveiled. But challenges in finding at least four more clubs from a further two states that met its necessary sporting, financial, and geographic criteria forced Football Australia to alter its plans in the 15 months since. Instead, the 2025 Australian Championship will commence with 16 teams competing in four groups of four before moving into a knockout finals series – a Champions League-style model.
The eight foundation clubs announced in 2023 – APIA Leichhardt, Marconi Stallions, Sydney Olympic, Sydney United 58 and Wollongong Wolves from New South Wales, and Avondale, Preston Lions and South Melbourne from Victoria – will retain protected status in the league, joined by the premiers of the eight state-based National Premier League competitions around Australia. With two foundation sides and two premiers per group, sides will play a home-and-away round-robin in group stages commencing on 10 October – travel costs will be subsidised by Football Australia – before the two highest-ranked sides in each advance to single-leg elimination games, with the final to be played on 6 or 7 December.
It does bear acknowledging that a Champions League format was hardly the preferred format following the long-running process to get to this point. Given that Football Australia previously ran an NPL finals series that garnered little respect from the clubs that qualified for it, let alone the broader public, it will need to ensure it can differentiate its new property amongst local stakeholders. It must also ensure it is perceived as a genuine second-tier competition worthy of attention and investment – be it emotional or actual – by the broader public, sponsors, and media.
But as Football Australia executive James Johnson said on Wednesday, “we have to start somewhere.” And given that efforts to introduce any kind of second division in Australia have been so long-running, that some form of competition will actually launch in 2025 – alongside a commitment from the federation to continue to support and grow the competition – feels like a minor miracle. Importantly, even in its current limited format, it will still offer a greater and much-needed platform for everyone involved in the game below the A-League to demonstrate their abilities and aspirations. Ostensibly, that’s the point of all this.
Yet even before a ball has been kicked, questions and concerns linger. Beyond the general challenges associated with setting up a sustainable second tier in a country as large and with as crowded a sporting market as Australia, football has norms and expectations that present administrators with unique challenges. Chief among these is promotion and relegation, a path to which has to be introduced for a second tier to maintain long-term viability. Before that, however, there almost certainly will also need to be a transition to a standalone, home-and-away league with demonstrated durability and connection to the tiers below.
And what exactly the medium- to long-term plan for the Australian Championship is will remain a question lingers as, for now, the format is just for 2025. Both Johnson and Nathan Godfrey, Football Australia’s general manager for the national second tier, flagged that its operations and logistics would be the subject of frequent reviews and that a new “request for proposal” phase will begin in the coming months, wherein clubs would be able to seek enshrined status as the eight foundation sides if they’re able to hit certain thresholds. Should enough clubs be found, this could mean a home-and-away season may arrive as soon as 2026. Either way, if clubs are expected to reach this level, they’ll need some degree of clarity about what they’re aspiring to at some point.
Forty-eight years on from the birth of the NSL, the Australian Championship represents another step into the unknown for Australian football. It’s an exciting one, one long advocated and with exciting possibilities. But it’s also a perilous one.
