It is "hard not to talk about expansion of the A-League," according to Michael Cockerill of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. Three weeks ago, "Tasmania came to town" to state its case, and it has "been a stampede ever since." Football Federation Australia "is frantically trying to control the process." Tasmania was the "first cab off the rank," and its bid "was so good -- and has got even better since they showed their wares to a mixed reception at Whitlam Square -- that they've clearly spooked the horses." Suddenly, "in the space of a few weeks, a conga line of would-be A-League teams -- some real, some imagined -- have emerged in Tasmania's wake." They include former National Soccer League clubs West Adelaide, Brisbane Strikers and South Melbourne, New Zealand's leading semi-pro club, Auckland City, (which still likes to pretend it is "amateur"), a group from Casey-Dandenong in southeast Melbourne and another from Geelong. Others include a so-called "Super" club to represent southern Sydney and "maybe Wollongong," a returning North Queensland Fury, "maybe." It is "a wide spectrum -- geographically, culturally, economically." Tasmania has "done the game a great service." It has shown that "smaller, regional, areas can create a standard of excellence every bit as good as their big city rivals providing the right building blocks are in place." Central to this, "as always, is the ownership model and in Harry Stamoulis and Robert Belteky, Tasmania has the right backers in the right place at the right time." FFA might hope it "can encourage them to take their money elsewhere, but they're not budging" (SMH, 11/27).
