We’re back where we started. Which is nowhere, really.
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After all the chest-thumping romanticism and metric-waving idealism, the Wollongong Wolves and Southern Expansion are to be frozen out of the A-League expansion process.
The new FFA board – the election of it a sideshow of its own in this whole prolonged melodrama – will meet on Wednesday afternoon, where it’s expected they’ll announce two preferred bids, likely to be South-West Sydney and Melbourne bid Team 11, who occupy the same territory as South-East Phoenix, already announced for the next NBL campaign.
What happens after that?
We don’t even know for sure, unless there’s a bold statement from the new board about when the A-League will be expanded to 12 teams, though it’s poised to be 2020-21 now, if a final decision is delayed until a January meeting.
For all of Southern’s financial muscle, large catchment areas and declarations of grandeur, the realisation it will not be included is an emphatic rejection of the concept for St George, Sutherland and South Coast to be one super club.
This is despite the endorsement of Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery and declaration of former Matildas star Amy Duggan as a board member.
Instead, the Wolves own the Illawarra heartland but not the corporate clout to be in the running.
Southern Expansion chief executive Chris Gardiner did not return the Mercury’s call on Tuesday.
The Wolves had launched a pathways agreement with Sydney FC, effectively doing whatever they could to stop their bitter rivals.
There is so much politics and so many variables, including the uncertain future of the Wellington Phoenix, that future prospects for either entity could change in two years, let alone five or 10.
But lessons must be learned if this region is to be back at the top table.
FFA chief David Gallop acknowledged the fast-moving feast, saying it was ‘‘literally a game of snakes and ladders with movements occurring on almost an hourly basis’’.
‘‘Expansion of the A-League is a critically important decision for the league but also the whole of the sport,’’ he told AAP.