The Australian Championship has done a wonderful job revealing club cultures across Australia. Unlike Cup competitions and friendlies of years past, the competition allows for less urgent tactics and better off-field planning by clubs. Return legs have also allowed for a more balanced view on team’s relative strengths. To cut it short though Victorian teams seem to be outperforming their NSW counterparts on every level.

On-field all four Victorians teams find themselves in finals spots after four rounds, while only two out of seven NSW teams are in finals spots. Head-to-head, Victorian teams have have faced NSW teams nine times so far in the competition, collecting 21 points out of a possible 27. No NSW team has defeated a Victorian team yet.

There is however a lot of football to play, Marconi and APIA in particular have impressed for NSW, and come finals time they may knock off their Victorian counterparts.

Off-field a similar dynamic is playing out. Total crowds for the competition after four rounds are 57,134 with an average of 1,785 but four of the five largest crowds have been Victorian. Clubs like Sydney United have posted poor crowd figures, and even Sydney Olympic have failed to pull more than 2,000 to any of their games.

Are Victorians taking the competition more seriously? Maybe. A lot has been said of Victoria’s deeper promotion-relegation system that connects around 10 different levels of competition, in NSW their state pyramid only connects four. Whatever the reason, the early points on the board go to Victoria, let’s hope this continues and a Victorian team (South) will hold aloft the Trophy at the end of the Competition!