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A-League (American)
A-League Men (known as the Isuzu UTE A-League for sponsorship reasons) is the highest-level professional men's soccer league in Australia and New Zealand. At the top of the Australian league system, it is the country's premier men's competition for the sport. A-League Men was established in 2004 as the A-League by the Football Federation Australia (FFA) as a successor to the National Soccer League (NSL) and competition commenced in August 2005. The league is currently are administered by the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), contested by twelve teams; eleven based in Australia and one based in New Zealand. The men's, women's and youth leagues have now been brought together under a unified A-Leagues banner. Seasons run from October to May and include a 26-round regular season followed by a Finals Series playoff involving the six highest-placed teams, culminating in a grand final match. The winner of the regular season tournament is dubbed the 'Premier' while the winner ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asian Football Confederation
The Asian Football Confederation is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in some countries/territories in Asia and Oceania. It has 47 member countries most of which are located in Asia. Australia, formerly in OFC, joined AFC in 2006. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, both territories of the United States, are also AFC members that are geographically in Oceania. The Asian Ladies Football Confederation (ALFC) was the section of AFC who managed women's association football in Asia. The group was independently founded in April 1968 in a meeting involving Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. In 1986 ALFC merged with AFC. Executive Committee Sponsors Member associations It has 47 member associations split into 5 regions. Some nations proposed a South West Asian Federation that would not interfere with AFC zones. Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Republic of China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Phili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sky Sport (New Zealand)
Sky Sport is a group of sports-oriented television channels operated by New Zealand's satellite pay-TV company, Sky. History Sky Sport 1 is the original Sky Television sport channel in New Zealand. It was first introduced in 1990 as Sky Sport on the Sky UHF service. When Sky Sport began it operated between the hours of noon and around midnight, and occasionally screened live sports events outside these hours. By July 1991, Sky Sport commenced 24-hour transmission with a direct feed of ESPN at certain times during the week. A sister channel, Sky Sport 2 was launched in 1997 when Sky introduced a nationwide analogue direct broadcasting via satellite (DBS) service, followed by a third channel, Sky Sport 3 in 2003 and Sky Sport 4 in 2013. On 1 August 2019, Sky launched five more Sky Sport channels, numbered from 5 to 9. Additionally all the channels were re-aligned to be sport-specific, and a Sky Sport News channel was launched providing the latest news and updates from across ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Final
Primarily in Australian sports, a grand final (sometimes colloquially abbreviated to "grannie") is a game that decides a sports league's premiership (or championship) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. Synonymous with a championship game in North American sports, grand finals have become a significant part of Australian culture. The earliest leagues to feature a grand final were in Australian rules football, followed soon after by rugby league. Currently the largest grand finals are in the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL). Their popularity influenced other competitions such as soccer's A-League Men and A-League Women, the National Basketball League, Suncorp Super Netball and European rugby league's Super League to adopt grand finals as well. Most grand finals involve a prestigious award for the player voted best on field. History The Anglo-Norman term "grand" to describe a sporting event, documented in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playoffs
The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament. In team sports in the U.S. and Canada, the vast distances and consequent burdens on cross-country travel have led to regional divisions of teams. Generally, during the regular season, teams play more games in their division than outside it, but the league's best teams might not play against each other in the regular season. Therefore, in the postseason a playoff series is organized. Any group-winning team is eligible to participate, and as playoffs became more popular they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Season (sports)
In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of September. In other team sports, like association football or basketball, it is generally from August or September to May although in some countries - such as Northern Europe or East Asia - the season starts in the spring and finishes in autumn, mainly due to weather conditions encountered during the winter. A year can often be broken up into several distinct sections (sometimes themselves called seasons). These are: a preseason, a series of exhibition games played for training purposes; a regular season, the main period of the league's competition; the postseason, a playoff tournament played against the league's top teams to determine the league's champion; and the offseason, the time when there is no official competition. Preseason ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A-League Youth
A-League Youth, formerly known as the National Youth League and Y-League, is an Australian national soccer youth developmental and under-21s league, founded by Football Federation Australia and now run by the Australian Professional Leagues. The current league was established as a successor to the previous competition of the National Youth League (1984–2004) and commenced in August 2008. The league runs in conjunction with the A-League Men as a developmental or reserve league. The league, as well as the A-League Men and A-League Women are administered by the Australian Professional Leagues. In 2020 it was contested by ten teams, all of which competed in the A-League. From the 2020–21 season, the league was to expand to eleven teams with the introduction of Western United, however the season was cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. It is currently unknown when it will return, as the tournament is currently on hold with the Australian Professional ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A-League Women
A-League Women (known as the Liberty A-League for sponsorship reasons), formerly the W-League, is the top-division women's soccer league in Australia. The W-League was established in 2008 by Football Australia (then known as Football Federation Australia) and was originally composed of eight teams of which seven had an affiliation with an existing A-League Men club. As of the 2021–22 season, the league is contested by ten teams. The league, as well as the A-League Men and A-League Youth are administered by the Australian Professional Leagues. Seasons now run from November to April and include a 22-round regular season and an end-of-season finals series playoff tournament involving the highest-placed teams, culminating in a Grand Final match. The winners of the regular season tournament is dubbed 'premiers' and the winner of the grand final is dubbed 'champions'. Since the league's inaugural season, a total of five clubs have been crowned premiers and five clubs have been cro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Professional Leagues
The Australian Professional Leagues, commonly abbreviated to the APL, and sometimes referred to as the A-Leagues, are the governing body for the A-League Men, A-League Women, A-League Youth and E-League. Since their formation, they have been mostly independent of Football Australia, but remain under their umbrella. History On 31 December 2020, Football Australia announced the Australian Professional Leagues would be unbundled from the rest of the governing body, taking over the operational, commercial and marketing responsibilities, although Football Australia would still maintain disciplinary and integrity matters, club, player and official registration, transfers and match scheduling. Ahead of the 2021–22 season, the APL rebranded various aspects of the professional leagues: * A-League became A-League Men * FFA Cup became Australia Cup, due to the FFA no longer controlling the competition. * W-League became A-League Women * Y-League became A-League Youth In addition to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sports League
A sports league is a group of sports teams or individual athletes that compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete on weekends; at its most complex, it can be an international professional league making large amounts of money and involving dozens of teams and thousands of players. Terminology Synonyms In many cases, organizations that function as leagues are described using a different term, such as association, conference, division, leaderboard, or series. This is especially common in individual sports, although the term "league" is sometimes used in amateur individual sports such as golf. The term "league" is also sometimes applicable to competitions that would more traditionally be called tournaments, such as the UEFA Champions League, which is organized with multiple small round-robin competitions followed by a single elimination tournament to ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Soccer League
The National Soccer League (NSL) was the top-level soccer league in Australia, run by Soccer Australia and later the Australian Soccer Association. The NSL, the A-League's predecessor, spanned 28 seasons from its inception in 1977 until its demise in 2004, when it was succeeded by the A-League competition run by Football Federation Australia, the successor to the Australian Soccer Association. During the history of the NSL the league was contested by a total of 42 teams; 41 based in Australia and one based in New Zealand. Seasons initially ran during the winter seasons, until 1989 when this was changed to the summer season. In 1984, the league was split into two conferences (Northern and Southern) to introduce more teams into the competition; the league returned to a single division in 1987. The competition was known by various names through sponsorships; these names included the Philips Soccer League, the Quit National Soccer League, Olympic Airways Soccer League, Coca-Cola ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Football Australia
Football Australia is the governing body of soccer, futsal, and beach soccer within Australia, headquartered in Sydney. Although the first governing body of the sport was founded in 1911, Football Australia in its current form was only established in 1961 as the Australian Soccer Federation. It was later reconstituted in 2003 as the Australian Soccer Association before adopting the name of Football Federation Australia in 2005. In contemporary identification, a corporate decision was undertaken to institute that name to deliver a "more united football" in a deliberation from the current CEO, James Johnson. The name was changed to Football Australia in December 2020. Football Australia oversees the men's, women's, youth, Paralympic, beach and futsal national teams in Australia, the national coaching programs and the state governing bodies for the sport. It sanctions professional, semi-professional and amateur soccer in Australia. Football Australia made the decision to leav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Association Football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposition by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular framed goal defended by the opposing side. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45 minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries, it is considered the world's most popular sport. The game of association football is played in accordance with the Laws of the Game, a set of rules that has been in effect since 1863 with the International Football Association Board (IFAB) maintaining them since 1886. The game is played with a football that is in circumference. The two teams compete to get the ball into the other team's goal (between the posts and under t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
