Gold Coast United Chairman Danny Maher: “We are chomping at the bit to get back into the A-League”

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Danny Maher is the current Chairman of Gold Coast United FC and is leading the charge to bring a Gold Coast team back into the A-League.

In a wide-ranging chat with Soccerscene, Maher speaks openly about his involvement in the game, provides an update on Gold Coast’s bid for the A-League, the current on and off the field progress of Gold Coast United and his future ambitions for football in the city.

First of all, I’ll ask about your role in Gold Coast United – how did your involvement come about and what is your background in the game?

Danny Maher: There was a group of business people who got together to return A-League to the Gold Coast basically, but with a strong focus on reforming the elite pathways at the Gold Coast. We wanted to start by ensuring there was at least two top NPL clubs on the Gold Coast and provide some local interest in the game.

So, we reformed Gold Coast United, entering it into the National Premier Leagues (NPL). I am the Chairman of the club and I was obviously heading that reformation process. I’m also chairing the A-League bid for the city.

I’ve got kids that play the game, I played representative football and was one of those people who left the game as a teenager. I was president of Magic United prior to this, which has basically now turned into the Gold Coast Knights (the other NPL club in the city).

I’m very much using my background of being a tech entrepreneur and investor, looking at it as a long-term play, with a group of business people that are very interested in football.

Is there an update on Gold Coast’s A-League bid, are there any details you can reveal?

Danny Maher: I can. The A-League bid is separate from Gold Coast United and it’s an all of city bid supported by both NPL entities and the city itself. I chair an investment firm and that’s the lead entity for the bid. It’s backed majorly by a group of US business people including Jordan Gardner and Brett Johnson. They lead a US consortium that own football clubs around the world and would like to add the Gold Coast in to their portfolio of clubs.

If a Gold Coast bid were to be accepted in the A-League again, how would the team excel this time around?

Danny Maher: First of all, we need to determine the brand it would fall under and whether we would return to the Gold Coast United moniker. That will be up to the city, all the football clubs and participants, but ultimately the decision will be made by the owners and the APL.

One of the previous myths about the A-League and the Gold Coast is that United went under, but it actually didn’t. The license was removed by the FFA when Clive Palmer was butting heads with Frank Lowy, but the club didn’t fold.

We’ve got a situation at the Gold Coast where we have two excellent NPL clubs, the fastest growing population in Australia, the largest population without an A-League team, an empty $200 million stadium and an international football group that is backing the bid.

The AFL and NRL both have a professional team here and they are investing heavily in those sports in this area, but we are not asking for a dollar. We are just asking for permission to invest.

Would the consortium look to enter a national second division, or would it only consider an A-League expansion spot?

Danny Maher: The consortium for the A-League bid isn’t interested in joining a National Second Division at the moment, but the NPL clubs individually will look at that. For example, Gold Coast United, the NPL entity, may be interested in the second division and we are currently part of that group investigating the viability of a second division.

How is the Gold Coast United NPL club currently progressing on and off the pitch?

Danny Maher: It’s a really happy place. It’s the highest rated academy in Queensland, I believe. It’s the only academy in this region that has females and our senior women were the league champions last year. The men are going well, we don’t spend the amount of money some of the other clubs do as we are pursuing a long-term strategy with a youth policy. We’ve got a great facility that council has provided us down at Tallebudgera. It’s a really peaceful, scenic setting with six football fields and three of them operated by Gold Coast United. We have a really low turnover of players and its quite difficult to get in the academy.

We have good levels of sponsorship so we don’t use any junior fees to fund senior programs, so that’s great, and we focus strongly on the junior setup having to be self-sustaining.

One last one Danny, where do you want to see Gold Coast football with the NPL entities and the A-League bid moving forward in the next 5-10 years?

Danny Maher: We definitely would like to see sustainable NPL clubs that have good local competition and we want to see the football ecosystem connected. So, for example, clubs working together and not being sensitive about talented players moving to the correct pathway for them. We want to see committees, from the Gold Coast Knights and ourselves, collaborating together for the greater good of the game and leaving the competition to the fans, players and coaches.

Then ultimately, the A-League is an all of city entity so it doesn’t belong to any one club. It belongs to the city and all football fans in the region. We want to see the A-League team connected to all the NPL clubs and the NPL clubs connected to other clubs below them in their geography (which we are very close to reaching).

We are chomping at the bit to get back into the A-League for the city; we don’t talk about it a lot in public because we don’t need anything, everything is in place.

 

 

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Why the A-League’s collective bargaining negotiations matter

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Image Credit: A-Leagues

The Australian Professional Leagues (APL) and Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) remain at odds over a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), with players recently rejecting the league’s latest proposal ahead of the new A-League season.

The APL has made financial sustainability its priority in CBA negotiations. After several challenging years, the league is looking to keep club costs under control while still offering a slight increase to salary caps and minimum wages. It’s a cautious approach designed to give clubs greater financial certainty.

The PFA believes caution alone won’t grow the game.

The PFA has rejected the proposal, arguing it does not go far enough to support the long-term growth of the game. The players’ union says greater investment is needed if the A-Leagues are to remain competitive, retain talent and increase their commercial value.

These negotiations are taking place at an important time for Australian football.

Australian football has become increasingly successful at producing players for Europe and Asia, but that success comes with a trade-off. Clubs often lose their best talent, with the A-Leagues providing an ideal platform for players to showcase their ability. However, rather than being the final destination, it has increasingly become a stepping stone to bigger opportunities abroad.

While this pathway has produced a large share of the next generation of Socceroos and Matildas, it has also left A-League clubs in a constant cycle of rebuilding, with success on the pitch often followed by the departure of their brightest stars. As a result, player recruitment and retention have become central issues in discussions about the long-term growth of the domestic game.

The issue of player retention was also highlighted this week by Matildas captain Sam Kerr.

Kerr said many Australian players would consider returning to the A-League Women if the league offered stronger professional conditions and salaries. While her comments weren’t directly about the CBA, they highlighted the same issue confronting the men’s and women’s competitions alike.

With negotiations stalling, the outcome of the CBA is likely to shape not only player conditions, but also the financial framework and competitive direction of the A-Leagues for years to come.

Mizuno’s Australian gamble: can a 120-year-old brand break through?

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Image Credit: Mizuno

When Mizuno unveiled a mural of Socceroos captain Harry Souttar on a Richmond wall during the 2026 World Cup, the company’s name did not appear on the artwork. The artist, Rory Ledge, painted Souttar as the “Minister of Defence” behind a brick wall. Channel 7 and Channel 9 turned up. The Herald Sun ran it in their Saturday edition. Mizuno’s brand director called it “mainstream awareness” without paid media.

The mural sat within a broader push by the Osaka-based company to expand in Oceania. For the fiscal year ending March 2026, Mizuno reported sales of ¥259 billion, up 7.8 per cent year-on-year, with net income of ¥18.4 billion representing 20.5 per cent growth . Operating profit rose to ¥22.6 billion. The Asia and Oceania segment is central to the company’s medium-term plan, which targets net sales of ¥290 billion by fiscal 2027.

The growth imperative

Australian football has not historically been kind to specialist boot brands. Nike, Adidas and Puma dominate retail shelves. A-Leagues collective bargaining agreements and club deals have locked in incumbents. For a brand without the marketing budgets of its competitors, the path to relevance runs through the players.

Mizuno has grown its Australian ambassador base from one athlete to around 20 across the A-Leagues in recent seasons. Melbourne City’s Tolgay Arslan, who played in the Bundesliga and Serie A before arriving in Australia, told Front Page Football: “If I discovered these boots ten years ago, I would wear these boots overseas in my career.” Western United midfielder Angus Thurgate called them “the comfiest boots I’ve ever worn”.

The mural moment

Richmond was chosen for the mural because of its location. The suburb sits at the centre of Melbourne’s sporting precinct, five minutes’ walk from the MCG and AAMI Park. It is already home to murals of AFL players. Rowena Corner Store owner Con, who agreed to host the artwork, had previously welcomed murals of Dusty Martin and an AFLW player.

“We didn’t have access to Harry because he was in the US competing,” brand director Rishi said. “We couldn’t do a photoshoot. So we had to be clever. The best ideas come from real time, aligned with what the public discourse looks like. Once we saw his Wikipedia page updated to refer to him as the Minister of Defence, we knew we could play into this.”

Ledge incorporated an existing window into the design to create a net behind Souttar’s figure. The mural appeared the morning of the Paraguay match, when Australia’s clean sheet sent them into the knockout phase.

The World Cup provided a massive backdrop. The Socceroos’ run captivated the nation: 4.84 million Australians tuned in to the Paraguay match, making it the most-watched World Cup match in SBS history at the time, with an average audience of 3.086 million . The final reached 5.26 million viewers, and cumulative tournament reach hit 18.04 million— 64 per cent of Australia’s population. SBS director of sport Ken Shipp said: “We’ve never seen engagement at this level.” Mizuno spent comparatively little and had Channel 7 and Channel 9 on site.

The commercial question

For a brand with limited marketing firepower, organic PR coverage is the prize. The question for the company’s Oceania division, still in growth mode, is whether a mural and a handful of player endorsements can convert into sustained commercial traction. Retail partnerships with Ultra Football, which has created a dedicated Mizuno space at its Melbourne store, suggest the company is thinking beyond campaigns.

Mizuno’s European expansion has taken a different path. The company signed a five-year deal to become AS Monaco’s technical equipment partner from the 2025-26 season, its first entry into Ligue 1. It already has a presence in Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A. In Australia, institutional partnerships are harder to secure. The approach has been slower: build through athletes, then through community, then through culture.

The Queensland government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mizuno in March 2026 to explore the Japan-Australia Sports & Health Innovation Exchange (JASHIE), a two-year partnership focused on sport and health innovation . The agreement supports Queensland’s preparations for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The mural campaign reflected a broader trend in sporting brand marketing, where IP restrictions and athlete availability increasingly demand creative solutions. “I love what Levi’s did because they were able to lean into their brand codes and tell what I believe to be the most memorable advertising story from the World Cup,” Rishi said. “This is a different page out of fundamentally the same playbook.”

Mizuno’s boots are not cheap. The Made-in-Japan models retail well above competitors’ offerings. The brand’s pitch rests on quality and heritage, not price or volume. That is a harder sell in a country where discounting dominates and cost-of-living pressures are squeezing households.

The Souttar mural will eventually fade or be painted over. Mizuno is betting that by the time it does, enough Australian football fans will have noticed the three stripes’ quieter rival.

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