The AAFC is an organisation of 97 NPL clubs and is seeking representation at the FFA Congress, the formation of a second division and a system of promotion and relegation linked to the A-League.

Kalas is a former South Melbourne Board Director and said the AAFC had been involved in a consultative process with various stakeholder groups of Australian football.

He was adamant it was not a revolt.

“The word is too extreme,” he said.

“We’ve been in contact with FFA, there is dialogue with the PFA with the A- League Association and obviously FIFA. More importantly what we are doing is in many ways an education process.

“There are flow-on effects from decisions being made at the top which impact severely in this important football tier. Head office is too removed from the coalfaces.

“We need a better balance of people with hands on football experience at these discussions because football outcomes to date prove we need to get together and find suitable models that will improve the entire football ecosystem."

Kalas said the push behind the formation of AAFC came when the governing body announced last month that they were looking at changing the ownership and operating model of the A-League & W League.

“The impetus was when the FFA said in February that they’ve got the wrong financial model for the top tier and they recognised that it was not working,” he said.

“Instead of us focusing on and developing football clubs in the tiers beneath the A-League, to build football culture, we are spending it wastefully trying to attract the entertainment market to fill stadiums.

 “This flawed strategy concerned me and many others in football as we’ve built an expensive cost model to run our top league which is unstainable.

“So we brought the NPL clubs in Victoria together then other NPL clubs around Australia, so as to be unified with one national voice. This unified voice will sit at the table with the FFA, the A-League clubs, the PFA and other stakeholders to help restructure and unify our code.”

Regarding the national second tier, Kalas said even though they would like to see it up and running by the 2018-19 season, it could take longer.

“We must look at doing this together with all football’s stakeholders,” he said.

“We’ve got to get it right, we must work together to do financial modelling and devise an affordable and sustainable model.

“We can’t afford to make another mistake.”

Kalas said the heavy emphasis placed on growing the A-League over the last decade needed to be shifted.

“I fear for the game because we are focusing on attracting the entertainment/leisure classes which is very shallow and they will move at the whim,” he said.

“We have tried to implement the wrong strategy, But I have to emphasise that the strategy was well meaning when it was introduced. Mistakes were made before the A-League era and mistakes made during the A-League era as well.

“Hopefully this third time we get it right. We need to restructure football to get people thinking and focusing on building football culture via club development; infrastructure improvements and expansion of the facilities footprint across Australia.”