Granville & District Soccer Football Association announce brand-new X-League

GDSFA

The Granville & District Soccer Football Association (GDSFA) have announced the creation of a new top tier local Men’s Seniors competition, named the X-League.

Kicking off in March of 2022, the GDSFA will be looking to play 22 rounds of football competition each and every Friday evenings across the Granville Association. In addition, there are a number of exciting initiatives that the organisers have thrown into the mix to assure that this will be one of the most appealing local Senior Men’s competition across NSW.

Such incentives include:

  • Livestream Broadcast & Commentary of ‘Match of the Round’
  • Local officials and talent officiating matches
  • 2 Leagues (X-League 1 and X-League 2)
  • 12 Teams in each league
  • Single Team format of up to 20 players per team
  • Promotion and Relegation
  • Prize Money for Premiers and Champions
  • Season Launch Party with special guest
  • End of Season Player & Team Awards Evening
  • Entry into Australia’s oldest knockout competition “The Cottam Cup”
  • NPL Opportunities
  • ‘Match of the Round’ played at the legendary Melita Stadium home of the Parramatta Eagles FC

Granville & District Soccer FA’s General Manager Scott Sadler was looking forward to the new challenge of this concept, that was struck up with a few local and passionate Club administrators wanting to promote, collaborate and deliver new ways of getting more people interested with the world game.

“Back in May, myself and Joe Bacha (Rydalmere FC’s First Grade Coach) met at a café to catch up and chew the fat over the state of play of GDSFA football,” Sadler said.

“As many will know it’s not been an easy ride for them over the last few years, and Joe wanted to bring some of his observations and ideas on how we could improve our Men’s Premier League given we had gone from having 10 teams in the 2020 season and reduced to six in the 2021 season.

“Rydalmere FC have shown great character in rebuilding their club culture and in turn they have seen the fruits of their labour with a fantastic facility being constructed. We started to get some ideas down on paper and the ball was rolling, but Covid lockdown reared its ugly head for round 2 and so we got stuck into battening down the hatches.

“A working group was eventually formed, and the brainstorming sessions commenced every Wednesday, and are still ongoing looking at how we could make the Men’s Premiership Competition more viable and inclusive for all clubs to get involved.

“It has been great to watch the clubs coming together and collaborating on ideas, and between them they have come up with the concept of the X-League.”

Even though the league will be open to Men’s for the 2022 season, the Association has stated that plans are underway to offer this league concept towards the Women and Youth clubs in the football mad area.

“We are definitely looking at expanding in both the Women’s and Youth sectors once we get the Men’s off the ground in 2022 as that has always been our intention,” they said.

“GDSFA is the OG of football within Australia, we may not have done everything right along the way, but we have helped to shape football in some way shape or form.

“With the X-League, we are wanting to offer grassroots football a high standard of football for a very competitive membership fee, giving value for money for each player involved.”

FIFA+ delivering valuable exposure for Oceania football

The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) is partnering with FIFA’s football streaming platform, FIFA+, to broadcast its international and club competitions for two years.

The deal signifies a major win for the commercialisation and promotion of Oceanian football globally.

FIFA+ is a mobile and desktop application that provides subscribers with live streaming of various FIFA competitions, magazine shows, documentary films, and archived matches from previous tournaments.

The application will televise all major OFC competitions, such as the OFC Champions League (Men’s, women’s and youth), futsal and beach soccer competitions, and the men’s 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign.

The World Cup qualifying campaign takes on greater importance this year, as for the first time ever, OFC nations will battle for one automatic spot at the 2026 Men’s FIFA World Cup.

It represents an important moment for Oceanian football, and while there is global scepticism about FIFA’s move to a 48-team men’s World Cup, it is the smaller nations like those in Oceania who will benefit greatly.

Adding OFC’s collaboration with FIFA+ to the mix only incentivises players and coaches further, providing them a platform to build their careers and future pathways.

“This partnership with FIFA+ marks a new era for Oceania football. It’s a monumental step towards realising our dreams and showcasing the talents of our region to a global audience,” OFC General Secretary Franck Castillo said via press release.

“We are excited about the opportunities this collaboration unlocks and the new horizons it opens for our players, teams, and fans.”

The increased coverage will be crucial to OFC’s commercial endeavours and future sustainability as an organisation. General Secretary Castillo paid tribute to the efforts of OFC members to secure this deal.

“In the last five years, OFC has gone to great lengths to grow football coverage across the Pacific and provide quality broadcast production standards to all fans,” he added via media release.

“As a testament to these efforts, our social media following has increased by 110% and live streaming views by 200% since 2019. We have rallied media rights in the broadcast space and expanded our distribution from four regional TV broadcasters to 26.”

“We have also expanded commercially through selling our live streaming, media and data rights for the next two years – 2024 and 2025; this is a major step forward for us in the commercial space.”

Below is the full list of competitions to be shown live and free on FIFA+ in 2024:

OFC Women’s Champions League – Solomon Islands | 10-23 March

OFC Men’s Nations Cup – Qualifying – Tonga | 20-26 March

OFC U-19 Men’s Championship – Qualifying – Vanuatu | 9-15 April

OFC U-16 Men’s Championship – Qualifying – Tonga | 13-19 April

OFC Futsal Men’s Champions League – New Caledonia | 23-28 April

OFC Men’s Champions League – Tahiti | 11-24 May

OFC U-16 Women’s Championship – Qualifying – New Zealand | 14-20 June

OFC Men’s Nations Cup – Vanuatu | 15-30 June

OFC U-19 Men’s Championship – Samoa | 7-20 July

OFC U-16 Men’s Championship – Tahiti | 28 July-10 August

OFC Futsal Women’s Nations Cup – Solomon Islands | 18-24 August

FIFA World Cup 2026™ – Oceania Qualifiers MD 1 & 2 – Samoa | 2-10 September

OFC U-16 Women’s Championship – Fiji | 8-21 September

FIFA World Cup 2026™ – Oceania Qualifiers MD 3 – New Zealand & Vanuatu | 7-15 October

OFC Beach Soccer Men’s Nations Cup – Solomon Islands | 20-26 October

FIFA World Cup 2026™ – Oceania Qualifiers MD 4 & 5 – New Zealand & Papua New Guinea | 11-19 November

Premier League clubs vote to tighten sponsorship rules

The Premier League has implemented stricter regulations aimed at preventing clubs from inflating sponsorship and transfer deals with entities linked to their owners.

These revised rules were approved by a ‘very narrow’ majority in a club vote last month and aim to address concerns about Profit and Sustainability Rules and maintaining a level playing field within the league.

The process will now work where the clubs must demonstrate the legitimacy of these transactions. They must provide a declaration from an associated party director confirming their belief in the deal’s fair market value.

Then an independent commission will review each of these deals, make a decision and impose a range of sanctions for any breaches they find. The severity of the offence will determine the penalty.

It is understood that the vote was not unanimous, with the league scraping through their ‘two-thirds majority’ rule with 14 of the 20 clubs agreeing to this policy.

Manchester City and Newcastle were reportedly part of the few clubs that staunchly opposed this policy and both clubs are in the spotlight having entered multiple commercial deals with brands from the same countries as their owners over recent years.

This has become an obvious integrity issue with the way clubs have inflated deals with affiliated entities in order to meet the stricter FFP thresholds that have seen clubs like Everton and Nottingham Forest punished, the former with a six-point deduction.

It became an interesting discussion after big clubs like Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham voted in favour of these new strict rules after recently being passed by Newcastle and Manchester City in commercial revenue.

Out of the 115 FFP charges that Manchester City face, the ones that could impose the biggest sanction are directly related to this topic, with the club earning over 13 times more in 2022/23 than they did in 2008 when the takeover first occurred, indicating a potential exaggeration of revenue from their Middle Eastern sponsors.

The Premier League claims that these revisions will ensure long-term financial sustainability while promoting fairness amongst clubs as they try to prevent other clubs from gaining an unfair advantage through non-market practices.

With Leicester City, Everton and Nottingham Forest charged in the last month, there is a clear crackdown on clubs breaking the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).

It is certainly a step in the right direction for the Premier League who are seeing more clubs spend seemingly above their means without any harsh regulatory or legal checks that could potentially damage the integrity of the competition.

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