Category: Football

With a new FFA chief executive in place, Australian football begins 2020 with real optimism. But with excitement comes a warning – that rapid overhaul won’t happen overnight. Football fans in Australia will hope for lots to cheer about in 2020. As the New Year ticks over – with fireworks or without – a “fresh chapter” begins for Australian football, with a replacement Football Federation Australia chief executive taking the reins from 1 January.

Six months ago it had been announced that David Gallop would end his tenure on 31 December – and despite eventually getting a one-month reprieve on his seven-year sentence, to the chorus of Auld Lang Syne Australian football ushers out the old and welcomes within the new.

After years of acrimony between the code’s administration and its A-League clubs, it’s a fresh broom that has swept through FFA’s senior management. Gone, too, are chief commercial officer Luke Bould and head of national performance Luke Casserly, who departed in November; head of community, football development and women’s football Emma Highwood (August); and long-term company secretary Jo Setright (April) – the ultimate vestiges of the Lowy era brushed away, with new chief executive James Johnson to go a lean, mean, senior management team.

As FFA chairman Chris Nikou laid call at his 2019 annual review address, the challenges for Australian football in 2020 remain numerous. In response to the constant clamour for league expansion and/or the introduction of promotion and relegation to the A-League, a national second division white book has flagged a possible 2021-22 beginning for any putative ‘B League’’. The financial, legal and political hurdles that substitute the way, and therein timeframe, remain sizeable, with all stakeholders within the football fraternity wanting to gather, despite some invariably losing out. https://www.agensbobet888.online/ agen sbobet international

The day-to-day financials of running Australian football’s chief revenue driver remain challenging. Broadcaster Fox Sports has made ominous noises about looking to steer back its $57.6m-a-year cash-or-contra exposure amid declining TV ratings and usually stagnating attendances, prompting an interesting (and largely underreported) confession earlier this month that for subsequent three-and-a-half years – the remaining duration of the present broadcast deal – the A-League are going to be nominally administrated by the FFA rather than the clubs.

It’s a warning that rapid overhaul, a moment golden era of professional club-run Australian football, won’t happen overnight as Gallop slinks out and Johnson strides in – and it’s another reminder that for all the talk about unlocking huge new capital investment, 2020 could yet be another year of consolidation and transition.

In Johnson, fans finally get the ‘‘football person” for whom sectors of the community have cried out.

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The former Premier League referee Bobby Madley has opened about the “dark-humoured joke” that cost him his job.

Madley ceased officiating at the very best level in England in August 2018, with the refereeing body Professional Game Match Officials Limited saying only that he was relocating thanks to a change in personal circumstances.

Madley did move to Norway, where his partner is from, but only after he was sacked for sending a video to someone he “trusted” which apparently mocked a disabled person.

In a long post on therefereesword.blogspot.com Madley explained that he took the video as a response to ribbing a few parents’ race at his daughter’s school and a news article written by former referee Mark Halsey claiming he was making mistakes because he was overweight.

Madley wrote: “The page and headline of ’Blobby Bobby’ could seem funny to some but, trust me, being fat shamed during a national newspaper isn’t a pleasant feeling.

“As I sat in my car with my phone in hand, an individual walked past my car ahead of me who had a walking impairment. subsequent part i’m ashamed of. I took a six-second film, I said nothing. I did this in Snapchat, which is where I take all of my films that I shall save to my phone.

“On the video I wrote, ‘F**k me I even have an opportunity of winning the oldsters race this year.’ Out of context I accept this reads shamefully. I accept that. However, my intention was that the joke was aimed toward myself.

“Had I even have sent this to anyone on Snapchat, then i might accept the choice that later came as a result. I didn’t do this, though. I saved it to my phone. I sent it as a personal text to somebody who I trusted. Somebody who understood the context of previous sports day comments and was conscious of the fat shaming I had received.

“I regret taking the video, I regret sending that video and, whilst it had been a dark-humoured joke, it had been just that. A joke. it had been not intended to shame anyone, it had been not intended to be seen by anyone aside from the person I sent it privately to during a text message on my very own personal phone.”

Madley claimed the recipient of the video sent it to his employers and a disciplinary hearing resulted in his immediate dismissal.

“At that time my world fell apart,” said Madley. “Whilst I absolutely understand the importance of an employer taking discrimination seriously, as they did, the choice to the present day still stuns me.

“I will never be ready to accept that the choice taken was either necessary nor was it proportionate to the act.”

Madley, who is 34, also detailed the threats and abuse he has received as a results of media stories surrounding his dismissal and therefore the effect the entire episode has had on his life.

“The last 18 months are mental torture on behalf of me and, except for those close friends and family around me, also as a robust partner, I dread to think what could became,” he said.

“I still struggle to sleep, I still suffer mentally day to day to undertake to seek out the person i’m now instead of clinging to the person I once was.” daftar agen sbobet di https://www.maxbetsbobet.org/

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