Football's second-tier Australian Championship launched

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Football's new national second-tier competition has been given a name - the Australian Championship - but a clear pathway for promotion and relegation with the A-League Men is still yet to be mapped out.

Launched by Football Australia on Wednesday, the competition kicks off on October 10 and will "complement" and sit between the A-League Men's competition and the National Premier Leagues.

As we've mentioned before, the competition will now be held in a different format, moving away from the traditional home-and-away series, and will instead feature four groups of four teams.

Former top-notch Victorian clubs South Melbourne and Preston, along with fellow Victorian clubs Avondale, link up with New South Wales teams Marconi, Sydney United 58, Sydney Olympic, APIA Leichhardt and Wollongong as eight founding clubs.

The other eight clubs are made up of premiers from the respective National Premier Leagues competitions around the country, with each group to have two foundation clubs and two premiers.

The teams will compete in a home-and-away format, with the top two teams from each group making the finals, and the grand final scheduled for the weekend of December 6-7.

All 16 teams will have access to travel funding assistance from Football Australia for their away games.

The Australian Championship is clearly linked to the NPL competition, with the possibility of expanding to a full home-and-away format subject to its success.

But there's no set timeline for completing the football pyramid through promotion and relegation to the Australian League of Mariners, with Football Australia prioritising the delivery of the first season.

The Chief Executive, James Johnson, stated that the Australian Professional Leagues, who are in charge of the ALM, had backed a start date of October.

He pointed out that the competition's future development would also rely heavily on how successful the first season was.

At the moment, our focus is on getting the second part of the system up and running and turning conversations into something that's more concrete.

We've intentionally linked it to the National Physical Laboratory standards, which is the first step.

We don't want to be too specific about how the connection works with the APL at this stage, mainly because we want the second tier to function properly.

We don't want that hassle - because that's a hassle to deal with. We want to get the next level up and going. We want it to be a success.

We're keen to link up with the NPLs and the community. That's our priority at the moment. We're concentrating on what's within our power, what we can achieve, and how we can make this competition engaging for everyone.