On Wednesday the 12^th of February, Football Australia officially announced the branding and format of the new National Second Tier.

The competition will be known as the ‘Australian Championship’ and will run between October and December. The Champions League style competition will see 16 teams compete in a group stage and then finals.

The 16 teams will be the eight NPL winners from each state, and the eight ‘foundation’ clubs who were chosen in Football Australia’s application process.

The eight ‘foundation’ clubs for those of you who don’t know, are South Melbourne, Preston Lions, Avondale, Sydney Olympic, APIA, Marconi, Wollongong and Sydney United.

This year’s edition is seen as a trial run while Football Australia seek to confirm additional applicants, with the supposed intent to run a full home and away style competition in the future.

Hume City, Melbourne Knights, Gold Coast United, Adelaide City, George Cross and South Hobart have been listed as potential applicants, so let’s hope they get over the line and we can see a full home and away style National Second Tier in the near future.

What can we expect from this year though? Well for starters it means that for some clubs like South, the season will now run from February to December. Secondly, ESPN reports that the broadcast deal has not been finalised and that the Australian Championship is not included in the current broadcast deal with Paramount/Network 10.

Football Australia has committed to paying for production (as well as travel), so we can trust that these games will be broadcast – but we don’t know where. This creates an opportunity for Optus Sport or SBS – but in a worst-case scenario the games might end up on YouTube.