Hearsay! New A-League Owners Look to Liven Up Dying Series

Craccum summaries the changes we can expect to see in the A-League next season:

• Melbourne City will sign ‘Christion Ralondo’, a Serbian third-division centre-back, in an effort to boost flagging numbers. They are currently in the process of contract negotiation, but the player is demanding minimum wage – a salary too high for the A-League club to afford.
• The league will provide a more diverse viewing experiences for fans watching the live broadcast in attempt to increase entertainment during games. This includes a large Wheel of Fortune on the sidelines, conundrum puzzles on the big screen, and governess Anne Hegerty as the fourth official.
• League owners say they plan to create more rivalries between clubs by visiting each city in turn and kicking random passers-by in the shins while wearing the shirts of opposing city’s teams. Preliminary data suggests this tactic might not work though – pretty much no-one knows of the A-League, let alone the kits of the teams that play in it.
• A-League have signed a deal to become the official scouting division for Spanish club Real Betis.
• The league are in the process of reducing the minimum playing age from 16 to 12, in attempt to increase the quality of players on the field.
• League owners say they will be replacing the traditional soccer ball with an oval, patterned rugby ball, in an attempt to help viewers acclimate themselves with this new, novel sport. Club owners say they are hopeful this will help players actually spot the ball instead of kicking thin air.
• The league will introduce a new ‘Australia Games’ bi-annual tournament. The tournament will invite players from different cities in New Zealand and Australia to compete. It will feature multiple stages:

1.  All players from each city between the ages of 12 and 24 are entered into the “reaping,” a lottery system that chooses the competitors. On the day of the reaping, spokespersons for the league, known to the players as “escorts,” visit their respective cities and choose one male and one female player at random, selecting the two who are to compete. However, any other player of the same sex aged 12 to 24 can volunteer to become a tribute, taking the place of the player originally reaped.
2. Following the reaping, the players are taken immediately to Melbourne, where they are given a makeover by a team of stylists in order to look appealing for a TV audience. One of the stylists on the team focuses on designing a costume for them to wear in the tribute parade, which reflects the resource their city provides for the league. Each city’s tributes are then put in horse-drawn chariots and attempt to impress Melbourne’s citizens while they ride down the Avenue of the Tributes. Afterwards, they learn strategy with mentors drawn from their city’s pool of past victors and are provided basic SERE-training in combat and survival skills with the other players.
3. On the morning of the Australia Games, the tributes have a tracker chip inserted into their skin so the league owners can track them. The players are then flown to a dedicated outdoor location, called the Arena. A new Arena is built every year, while past arenas become popular tourist attractions for Melbourne citizens. Each player is given special clothing to wear, depending on the environment, and then confined to an underground room until game time. The players are lifted into the arena by glass tubes, emerging via tubes surrounding a giant, supply-filled horn made of solid gold, called the Cornucopia. A sixty-second countdown to the start of the Games begins, during which any player who steps off his or her plate will be killed immediately by landmines planted in the ground around the plates.
4. TO. THE. DEATH.

• League owners say if all else fails, they’ll just chuck a ‘Football’ in between ‘Australian’ and ‘League’, and watch the money fly in.