KEY POINTS:
The Oceania Football Confederation are ramping up plans to have a Pacific Island team in the A-League and will use the game against David Beckham's LA Galaxy as a test run.
Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy proposed the idea at June's Oceania congress in Noumea.
The FFA
have made no secret of their plan to increase the size of the A-League to 12 or even 14 teams and recently invited sides from Townsville and the Gold Coast to contest the league from next season.
They are expected to increase it to 12 in 2010/11, with second teams in Sydney and Melbourne. But Oceania, with a population of 11 million and one million registered players, have been told an application would be seriously considered.
Oceania will discuss the proposal at their executive meeting in Auckland on Saturday and are expected to investigate viability and where a team should be based. Auckland or Fiji are the most realistic venues.
"We think it can work," Oceania general secretary Tai Nicholas said. "We just have to test the waters to see if we can be competitive. There are still a lot of hurdles to jump.
"The key is the cost of running a team and whether it would be commercially viable and attractive to sponsors. We would need about $6 million a year to run a club... but it would provide a pathway for island players that doesn't presently exist."
At present Pacific Island players are largely blocked from playing in the A-League because they count as overseas imports. Queensland coach Frank Farina was keen on signing one last season but plumped in favour of a Brazilian because of the limit of four overseas players and the need for them to be top-class.
Auckland City and Waitakere United have a number of Pacific players and Manawatu has a tradition of signing Solomon Islanders but Oceania are keen to have players in a professional environment.
"When we say an Oceania team, it would include New Zealanders because you can't have purely a Pacific Island team and New Zealand is a major part of Oceania," Nicholas said. "It would probably be half New Zealanders and half Pacific Islanders.
"We will use the Oceania XI's game [against the LA Galaxy] to look at that because that side will be made up of some All Whites and the best players from places like Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Fiji and Vanuatu."
One thing that could count against an Oceania franchise in Auckland is the existence and performance of the Wellington Phoenix.
The FFA would more than likely be reluctant to have two teams based in New Zealand, particularly after the Auckland venture failed. They would also want to ensure the team was successful because both the New Zealand Knights and Phoenix have performed poorly in finishing last in all three seasons to date.
Oceania's feasibility study should be completed by February.