Stability "generally leads to success," according to Michael Lynch of THE AGE. So "it should not perhaps be surprising, as the Australian soccer players' union points out in a newly released survey, that the least stable clubs in the A-League were the ones that struggled the most on the pitch." In the A-League, "there has historically been a high level of player turnover, explained, at least in the early years, by the fact that it is a developing league whose standard was yet to be fully evaluated." But after a decade, according to the PFA, "the lack of continuity is as great as ever." The union's statistics "show that three of the bottom four teams in the league last season -- Newcastle Jets, Western Sydney Wanderers and Central Coast Mariners -- were among the least stable in the competition." In fact, the union said that more than 50% of the league's players "were out of contract at the end of the last season (134), although it admits that was better than the previous campaign," when 63% of players were looking for new deals at the end of the '13-14 season. The lack of stability "is one of the key issues the PFA is pushing in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations" with Football Federation Australia. The existing CBA expires on June 30, "but there is still no meeting of minds over important clauses." The union argues that "unless the culture of short-termism ends there will be little incentive for good players to stay in the A-League while quality foreigners will think twice about uprooting for just one season" (THE AGE, 6/18).
