Does the A-League need a Big Bash style experiment?

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The fans roar as the fireworks explode – with music blasting a Mexican wave engulfs the stadium. Cricket Australia’s Big Bash League (BBL) has succeeded in attracting families to their sport, which is something that the A-League could look to replicate.

The A-League could learn from both the failures and successes of the Big Bash League to rejuvenate football in Australia, with a BBL style concept to attract consumers and fans to the A-League in a unique manner.

However, an approach into a BBL style experiment would have to be taken carefully as there is a fine line between creating a product that is viewed as a serious competition and creating a product that is looked down upon such as AFLX.

The BBL’s peak was on January 2, in 2016 when 80,883 fans packed into the MCG to watch a match between the Melbourne Stars and the Melbourne Renegades.

While the Big Bash has been in a supposed decline in popularity since, the league has still been able to produce some large attendances.

54,478 people attended a Melbourne Derby on January 4 earlier this year – the third highest crowd for a BBL game in the league’s history.

Meanwhile the A-League’s highest crowd before COVID-19 interrupted the 2019/20 season was 33,523 people at October’s draw between Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City.

Cricket Australia’s success with the BBL came from creating an experience geared towards families and children – with pump up music, fireworks and flamethrowers that were suited to T20 cricket with its high scoring, exciting and shorter format.

Former Liverpool star Craig Johnston has suggested an idea of what an A-League version of the BBL would look like.

“Four quarters, 15 minutes each, rotating substitutes, sin bins, all the things you’re not allowed to do in soccer,” he told The Daily Football Show in 2019.

“So effectively in midfield, you could take a touch, get past a player and you could shoot for goal. Then the goalkeeper’s either saving that shot or it’s a goal.”

“We’re utilising the same players but we’re taking out their midfield and we’re giving the players and the consumers four times more of what they want in the quarter of the time.”

Johnston believes that a Big Bash style format should be adapted by Australian football with A-League teams.

“The big idea is the Big Bash of soccer, but then the kids copy it at their training grounds,” he said.

“It is professional six-a-side with A-League teams. The A-League teams split in half, red versus blue, they play against each other.”

“The Big Bash and the One Day series is the best thing that ever happened to cricket in terms of engaging young minds and future minds.”

If the A-League was to try BBL style product it would need to make sure the best players are available – a weakness of the Big Bash has been that some of the biggest names in Australian cricket do not play regularly in the competition as the league clashes with international fixtures.

An A-League Big Bash competition would also be taken more seriously if the best players were playing regularly.

Perhaps the naming rights sponsor of the competition could provide a cash prize to the winning club, to entice clubs to field their best players.

One lesson that the A-League could learn from the Big Bash is that it has been made too long, something that even stars of the competition like Glen Maxwell have admitted.

“I think the length of the tournament when it was 10 games, I think we all really enjoyed that. I think it was the perfect amount,” Maxwell told SEN in early 2020.

“I just think 14 games is just a little bit much. It just makes for a very long tournament and probably goes for a touch too long.

“With school starting again it makes it a bit more difficult to keep the interest levels going until the end (of the season).”

The Big Bash was at its best when there was a limited number of games played predominantly in the school holidays.

If each A-League team played each other once in a new competition it could have an 11 game season plus a short finals series.

Ideally the A-League Big Bash concept would need to have as many games broadcast on free-to-air as possible – in order to easily accessible to fans.

There seems to be a lack of momentum coming into the 2020/21 A-League season, which is just under a week away. An Australian football version of the BBL could potentially be played as a lead in tournament to the A-League season, bringing attention and hype to the beginning of the competition.

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Football NSW supports Female Coaches CPD as Women’s Football Surges

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Football NSW has used the platform of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup to deliver a targeted professional development workshop for female coaches, bringing together scholarship recipients for an evening of structured learning and direct engagement with elite women’s football.

Held at ACPE last month, the session was open to female coaches who received C or B Diploma scholarships through Football NSW in 2025. Coaching accreditation carries a financial cost that disproportionately affects women, who are less likely to have their development subsidised by clubs or associations operating in underfunded community football environments. Scholarship access changes that equation at the point where many women exit the pathway.

Facilitated by Football NSW Coach Development Coordinator Bronwyn Kiceec, the workshop focused on goal scoring trends from the tournament’s group stage, with coaches analysing attacking patterns and exploring how those insights could translate into their own environments. The group then attended the quarter-final between South Korea and Uzbekistan at Stadium Australia.

The structure of the evening mattered as much as its content. Female coaches in community football rarely have access to elite competition environments as a professional resource. The gap between the level at which most women coach and the level at which the game is analysed and discussed tends to reinforce itself. Placing scholarship recipients inside a major tournament, as participants rather than spectators, closes that gap in a way that a classroom session cannot.

Female coaches remain significantly underrepresented across all levels of the game in Australia. The pipeline that will change that depends not only on accreditation access but on the professional networks, peer relationships and exposure to elite environments that male coaches have historically taken for granted.

The workshop forms part of Football NSW’s ongoing commitment to developing female coaches through scholarships and structured learning opportunities.

Record Pathway Breakthrough: Football NSW Report Highlights Power of Access and Equity

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Football NSW has released its 2025 Player Development Report, documenting a year of significant growth across its Talented Player Pathway programs for girls, boys and regional players, and offering the clearest picture yet of how the state’s talent identification infrastructure is reshaping who gets access to elite football development in Australia.

The report distinguishes between three streams: girls, boys and regional, where each operate under the umbrella of the Talented Player Pathway, which encompasses Football NSW’s Youth Leagues, Talent Support Program and state teams. Across all three, the numbers point to a system that is identifying more players, reaching further into the community, and producing more national team representatives than at any previous point in the program’s history.

A Girls Pathway Coming of Age

The girls program recorded some of its most significant outcomes to date in 2025, headlined by the inaugural Future Sapphires Program, a dedicated development environment for 2009, 2010 and 2011-born players that ran 140 training sessions, 16 high-level matches against boys teams, and identified 20 players for national team involvement across its first year alone.

The Talent Support Program conducted 494 player assessments across 119 club visits, with 117 additional games provided for TSP players throughout the season. At the Emerging Matildas Championships, Football NSW fielded three state teams, with the Under-15s Sky team claiming the championship, the Under-16s finishing as runners-up, and the Under-15s Navy placing third.

The pathway-to-national-team conversion rate was striking. Of the 23-player squad selected to represent the Junior Matildas at the AFC Under-17 Women’s Asian Cup Qualifiers, 13 were from Football NSW, a 56.5 percent representation rate from a single state federation.

“This report does not simply provide data and numbers,” said Girls Player Development Manager Nadine Shiels. “It highlights our progress and validates the standards we set.”

The equity implications of that pipeline are significant. Elite female footballers in Australia, have historically faced a narrower and less resourced development corridor than their male counterparts. Programs like the Future Sapphires and the TSP are structural interventions in that imbalance, reshaping access mechanisms that determine which players get seen and which do not.

Boys Program Deepens its Reach

The boys Talent Support Program underwent deliberate restructuring in 2025, reducing squad sizes from approximately 90 players and five teams to 54 players and three teams per age group, while extending match duration from 50 to 70 minutes. The intent was to raise the standard of the best-versus-best environment rather than simply widen it.

The results support that confidence. To date, 155 players who have participated in the boys TSP have transitioned to A-League academies, with approximately 35 progressing to A-League Men’s competition and a further 30 representing Australia at junior national level across the Under-17, Under-20 and Under-23 squads.

The 2025 season added four Talent Development Scheme matches for players born between 2007 and 2009, delivered in collaboration with Football Australia and targeting potential Junior Socceroos and Young Socceroos selection. The program also hosted the inaugural A-Leagues/TSP Tournament at Valentine Sports Park in December, featuring Melbourne City, Melbourne Victory, Western Sydney Wanderers, Sydney FC, Macarthur Bulls Academy and a TSP Select team.

“Our purpose is clear- not only to identify talent, but to prepare it,” said Boys Player Development Manager Philip Myall.

The Regional Question

Perhaps the most structurally significant section of the report concerns regional development- the stream that most directly addresses the geographic equity gap in Australian football’s talent pipeline.

Talent identification in Australia has historically concentrated in metropolitan areas, where NPL clubs, A-League academies and state federation programs are most densely located. Players in regional and rural NSW face a structural disadvantage that has nothing to do with ability and everything to do with geography. Fewer club visits, reduced access to high-performance environments, and reduced visibility to the coaches and scouts who determine national team selection saliently reflect a systemic barrier.

The 2025 regional TSP involved 241 players across 57 training sessions, 18 hub matches and 58 additional tournament games, with Football NSW coaches present at local association fixtures and regional tournaments including the Bathurst Cup and Country Cup. Regional players were also integrated into Elite Game Days at Valentine Sports Park, directly competing against metropolitan TSP cohorts and A-League academy players.

“The program has continued to enable identified players to progress and be part of the greater football elite player pathway,” said Regional Development Manager Andrew Fearnley, “with opportunity to progress and be identified into national youth teams.”

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