Gallop replaces Buckley!

[ChillyPhilly]

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/football/da ... 24jxg.html

Ben Buckley stepped down as CEO today. But Gallop cannot officially take over his office until the broadcast deal is sorted, so expect that to happen real soon.

[double07]

Wow sevengoals will be happy

Buckley Out!

Re: Broadcast deal, NRL deal has been finalised so looks like it will be a deal between foxtel and either SBS and 10.

[lufcmike]

Good get for the FFA.
David Gallop is probably the 2nd best administrator in the country after Andrew Demitriou and getting a billion in TV rights for the NRL is a mighty effort.

Lets hope he can do for football what he's done for rugby. There loss will be our gain.

Good to see the back of Buckley I always suspected he was a white ant rather thana white knight

[sevengoals]

Oh Happy Day!

[ChillyPhilly]

Good get for the FFA.
David Gallop is probably the 2nd best administrator in the country after Andrew Demitriou and getting a billion in TV rights for the NRL is a mighty effort.

Lets hope he can do for football what he's done for rugby. There loss will be our gain.

Good to see the back of Buckley I always suspected he was a white ant rather thana white knight

Can I add that those billion dollars are for what is predominantly a two-state code. Pretty impressive.

[terry tibbs]

Wow sevengoals will be happy

Buckley Out!

Re: Broadcast deal, NRL deal has been finalised so looks like it will be a deal between foxtel and either SBS and 10.

Hell yeah - Everybody Soccer Now! How could that possibly go wrong..?

Seriously, from what I've seen of Gallop he seems impressive and under control. Hopefully good times ahead for football. A FTA element is absolutely required, let's hope they stich it up.

[Stuckey]

Personally would have rathered O'Neill back but Gallop does appear to know his stuff. Very happy Bucks is gone.

[sevengoals]

Hallelujah!

Rejoice!

Sing songs of praise!

[Stuckey]

Hallelujah!

Rejoice!

Sing songs of praise!

I think everyone was waiting for your response!

[sevengoals]

Hallelujah!

Rejoice!

Sing songs of praise!

I think everyone was waiting for your response!

Yes but is it out of the "frying pan and into the fire"?
This guy has a lot to learn and a hell of a mess to organise.

[Stuckey]

Well at least he doesn't have a deal with a player sexual assult rumour every second week!

[sevengoals]

What really happened...

Hefty bans have been handed out following the A-League pre-season melee between the Jets and the Phoenix, despite the Wellington Phoenix players presenting a highly plausible defence.

During the hearing to decide the fate of those involved, the player that sparked the brawl, Manny Muscat, revealed that it was an elaborate welcome to the new FFA chief executive, David Gallop.

more
http://www.theroar.com.au/2012/08/22/we ... to-gallop/

[Old Gregg]

Alright, I'm not going to link it because it doesn't deserve the page hit, but this is Rebecca Wilson's latest column.

More soccer baiting and thinly-veiled wog bashing. With all the 'endemic ethnic violence' in the game I should by rights have a few scars from knife fights, burns from petrol bombs, broken bones etc, yet miraculously after a decade going to national league matches in Australia I have emerged completely unscathed..

Also, fucking LOL that she writes for the Murdoch press and complains about soccer being ruled by an autocratic billionaire...

Ending the ethnic turf wars played out on Australia's soccer pitches is David Gallop's first task

LOVE him or not, the entire rugby league world acknowledges that its former chief, David Gallop, was a master of the tightrope.

His ability to manage a crisis, and there were plenty, was second to none.

Gallop's capacity to sell his tough decisions to a disparate group of stakeholders proved he was a diplomat who always remained steadfastly fearless in the face of extensive criticism.

This week, while he braved the huge surf off the Indonesian coast, he must have been reminiscing fondly about chief rats, salary cap crises and poorly behaved players. The four-metre surf would have looked pretty good, too, as word filtered through about the ongoing issues confronting Australian soccer.

Gallop's acceptance of billionaire Frank Lowy's offer to take over as chief executive of Football Federation Australia is one of the bravest decisions he will ever make. It has been made all the more courageous by this week's recurrence of the crowd problems that continue to dog the sport.

It is one thing to manage badly behaved players. They have contracts and deals in place which mean their bosses can discipline them as they see fit. It is entirely another matter to confront soccer's blight - hooliganism.

I have been highly critical of the code for many years. Regular readers would be aware that I find the A-League to be a rabble, the FFA a mess and the overall structure of the sport shambolic. Gallop can, if he has a big dose of Epsom salts handy, fix all of these.

With a few decent appointments, Gallop can start to whack the code into better shape. The A-League will be a challenge, but nothing that the former league boss can't handle. If he can convince Lowy to put an independent commission in place, to replace the autocratic billionaire, things will really start to take shape.

It is the giant elephant in the room that will be Gallop's major obstacle to success.

For as long as anyone cares to remember, soccer in Australia has been dogged by off-field violence. This week, it was all laid bare again within minutes of the new western Sydney team, the Wanderers, taking to the field. Ugly scenes erupted and arrests were made. Administrators love using phrases like a "small minority of trouble makers", and go into absolute self denial if anyone dares to mention the violence is endemic or ethnic-based. It is, of course, all of the above. Soccer here is on the brink of ruin because the power bases of the sport around Australia remain with those who think soccer is as good a place as any to continue wars.

Gallop's challenge will go way beyond posting photographs of the perpetrators at the turnstiles and refusing them entry to a game. He must scratch the surface that nobody has dared to touch for decades.

It all proved too much for the outgoing boss, Ben Buckley, who was more accustomed to the good-natured banter of a Carlton/Collingwood rivalry in his former AFL gig. Gallop will have to call on all of his experience as a lawyer and league peacemaker to dissect the politics which has seen the sport lurch from one crisis to another.

At the heart of it is how he can identify those who engage in subterfuge to undermine progress. They are crawling all through soccer, at every level, and they are the reason the game has stalled to the extent that the hundreds of thousands of juniors who play the sport more often than not do not move through to the senior ranks.

Many of the really good juniors move away to other nations to play and not just because they see higher standards elsewhere.

What they experience in Australian soccer are petty selection wars, inter-club warfare and systems rooted in ethnic feuds.

When you have two other codes being run like businesses in AFL and league, it is little wonder boys are opting out.

Gallop will soon be wishing his only problem was a wipe out in the Indonesian surf.

If he can find his way through the wreck we witnessed this week in western Sydney, he is indeed a better master of the tightrope than anyone who has ever gone before him.

[EdDog]

She's paid good money to write these articles to get the exact response that has occurred over the past few days. People have been going crazy over twitter about this, calling for her head but it does nothing more than promote her article - just like every other piece of anti-football, mindless dribble she's produced over the years.

The only way to limit this kind of exposure is to ignore it. Stop the demand and you'll stop the supply. If she stops getting a reaction out of these articles, then they'll die.

[bpowell454]

Agree with you there Ed, she is looking for the controversy. Poorly written OPINION piece with no factual evidence whatsoever.