While much of Tuesday's A-League launch was dedicated to celebrating the competition's journey to season 10, Football Federation Australia Chair Frank Lowy looked to the future and said that "the league would skyrocket in popularity in the next decade," according to Sebastian Hassett of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. The competition "has experienced plenty of growing pains over the journey -- with multiple clubs either dying, stillborn, renamed or relocating -- yet it appears to have emerged from a difficult teething period in the best shape of its short life." Lowy said that "the toil had proved worth it, laying the foundation for a huge decade ahead." Lowy said, "We are not at the end of the road. We are not even at the halfway point on the road. We are just starting to get into a stride and I'm confident -- more than confident -- that we will be doubling, if not tripling, our viewers, spectators and [quality of] football in ten years' time. We've got to grow. There is no more beautiful game than our game. I don't want to put down our competitors, but when I get the chance, I do. That's why we'll double or triple in popularity in that time. No other game can do for Australia what we do." Lowy "recalled how fearful he was the A-League would be a flop when it was first announced." Lowy: "Some suggested we should avoid a national league ... and leave it to the states. But to me, without the A-League, there is no football in Australia. ... When the league started, the viewing public was about 800,000. Now we're reaching 2.5 million households." FFA CEO David Gallop "might have spent half of that time guiding the fortunes" of the National Rugby League but said it was clearly now a "golden period" for football, for which the A-League remained the centerpiece. Gallop: "There's so much going on right now, even as we look forward to Friday night's first game. I like to think of Australian football as the 'hamburger with the lot' in Australian sport" (SMH, 10/7).
