Canberra’s bid boss Ivan Slavich told au.fourfourtwo.com of his disappointment at not being chosen when the race for the 12th A-League franchise was won by Rovers a year ago.

But Slavich said he’d be willing to have meetings with the FFA about any potential openings in the league should Rovers not make it to the starting line due to lack of funds, as revealed today on this website. 

“What was disappointing is that we had $4.5m for our bid, 20,000 signatories, 2000 foundation members and financial support from the ACT government,” he told au.fourfourtwo.com today.

“And after that, they went with western Sydney and here they are, potentially now not going ahead.”

The Canberra bid raised $4.5m – $1.5m short of what the FFA wanted the capital club to raise.

“We’d obviously need to raise more money too," said Slavich. "But I’d be willing to talk to the FFA and certainly A-League for Canberra is interested in talking about entering the competition."

However, the chances of being ready for next season, should Canberra be given the go-ahead, are slim, added Slavich.

One reason is that the bid has stopped with no momentum going into next season.

“We’ve been pretty much in a holding pattern since then [September 2009]. We’d have to get things rolling and find out what they’d need from us in order to gain entry,” he added.

“Twelve months ago, I’d have said yeah, but now with us in a dormant capacity we’d have to really reinvigorate things with sponsors and the government.”

Canberra already has a successful W-League club and hosted a Socceroo game in 2009 – with close to 20,000 turning up to Canberra Stadium for the Asian Cup qualifier against Kuwait.