Firstly, Heidelberg United, Champions, there you go! Over 8,000 people at Lakeside for the final and it was glorious! Atmosphere abundant. A lot of people came to Lakeside for the first time, some for the first time in a long time, and confirmed two things. Firstly, the Grand Final needs to be at Lakeside each season, end of discussion. Secondly, how good is the venue when fully opened with a crowd!? Wow!

As soon as the NPL Victoria season finished though we turned immediately to the Australian Championship. There have been two big developments in recent weeks.

Firstly South has been very active in the transfer market, announcing a number of signings and rumoured to have closed many others. It looks like most of the starting 11 will be reshaped, which I’m not sure will go down well with the existing squad, however will the Australian Championship, OPL and NPL coming up, perhaps this is the new normal and we will need to manage a larger squad! Perhaps some of these Australian Championship signings will only stick around for the short term competition?

Without getting into the details, here’s the movement we’ve seen:

• Sebastian Pasquali (Rumour)
• Manny Aguek (Rumour)
• Yuki Uchida (Announced)
• Thomas Giannakopoulos (Rumour)
• Khoder Kaddour (Rumour)
• Bilal Habibi (Announced)
• Oliver Lavale (Announced)

Second big news as of this morning is that the Australian Championship will be broadcast on SBS! All games will be available for free either on TV (SBS main channel) or via SBS on Demand. It’s a good result that prioritises access and expands the existing media pool. Unlike if this went to 10, the SBS deal means we will likely see new commentators, and a different audience being reached, while still being accessible to most!

Also, the decision to broadcast the Saturday arvo games on TV is great! This time has little other competition, but also little opportunity cost to the network who don’t need to maximise ad revenue here. This is to say there is a lot of upside in this decision.

I also like how most of the games will be played during the day, there’s something about football in the sun that we’ve lost in recent decades as more teams play at night and broadcasting under artificial light has become standard.