NPL to Bundesliga is an extraordinary leap. 

“You’ve got the AIS in Canberra. A perfect place for an A-League team to have a training HQ",  added Wade, who played over 100 times for the Socceroos in the 80s and 90s. 

“Being based there [at the AIS] would make it one of the best training centers in the A-League. 

"And I’m sure this would help attract the best young players who are good enough to play A-League football. 

"You want clubs to have good facilities and if the club can come to a deal with the AIS that would be huge. 

“Canberra has always produced decent talent.

"This is the chance for younger players to aim for professional A-League football all around the ACT region and even beyond, in Wollongong and down the south coast,” added Wade. 

Wade played for Canberra Cosmos towards the end of his NSL career in the late 90s. 

Former ACT goal machine Thomas “TJ” James added his voice to the A-League bid for Canberra. 

The Wollongong Wolves striker banged in an astounding 80 goals in 83 games over four years in the Capital Football NPL before a move to the south coast in 2019. 

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UK bad boy reinvented as Wollongong A-League target

In Thomas James’s words, if he stayed in Boston, ‘by now, I’d probably be in jail’.

The English-born striker lit up the local league in the ACT.

He told FTBL from Wollongong there is young talent everywhere in Australia.

"If you are expanding the A-League you are also expanding the opportunity for young players to come through. 

"Not having an A-League team in the capital city of a country is stupid. 

"I think they [Canberra sports fans] would get behind it for sure, I mean it only needs 2000 spectators for it to be deemed a success if you were going to compare it to some other teams in the A-League.

"If they are going to make changes and expand the A-League they need to expand the talent, also.

"They need to get some quality players in.

"If money is going to be an issue then raise the A-League salary cap or do something, because it’s an absolute eyesore watching some of these donkeys run around for 90 minutes," James added.