Marquee players are important. But they don’t necessarily need to be big name players unless they contribute (and are not here for one last payday). They need to be players that drive the standard. There have been some pretty good examples of this in the past (Broich, Ninkovic, Berisha, Castro). We also need to embrace Asia more. we have talked about this before, but I am a massive fan of a 4+1 rule.
What would I do to change and improve the AL? to me, its very simple. We need the NSD, then promotion and relegation. I would also dump the cap (or increase it significantly, to around the $6-$7 million mark). And we need to embrace active support more. And support the fans if/when the media go hard at us.
We need to be better at lobbying government for a fairer share of funding. The AFL has always been brilliant in this area. I’m not criticising Remo Nogarotto, but I sometimes wonder if Football Australia missed an opportunity by not appointing Stephen Conroy as chairman a few years ago.
The whole community feel thing... I’m not familiar with your club, but you will find you get a lot of that at the old ethnic NPL clubs. Ange still talks about his days growing up and his dad taking him to South Melbourne games. I do agree with your point, but it’s something that can only grow organically. You can’t force it. Most AL clubs only have 18 years of history.
Every world class goalie we've had hails from back there 
