The Eliza Cup is the premier fantasy A-League competition.

 Beginning in 2012, what began as a small fantasy league among high school mates in Melbourne’s west has grown to become a huge competition spanning multiple divisions of players across Australia and New Zealand.

 Today the league boasts 3 divisions with promotion and relegation year on year, an FA cup style knockout competition, Champions League and even a real trophy that gets engraved and passed on to the Division 1 champion each season.

Hello, it's Cowie, Kallo has asked me to create a history of the Eliza from my perspective for his website. It's a little late but here it is. Some may remember things differently and if they do, please speak up but this is an honest history from my point of view. 

The Eliza Cup as a concept first originated in 2011. Founders Ben Khouri and I, Anthony Cowie, overheard our science teacher asking another teacher a question about Football. Mr Lee was a Chinese Englishman with a very heavy scouser accent, what was probably "Did you watch the Europa?" sounded like "Did you watch the Eliza Cup?" Which Both Khouri and I found funny because we were little arseholes in year 9. The Eliza cup took several forms before it settled on fantasy A League. Pencil Basketball, where paint is shaved off pencils and numbers drawn on each flat face, a player would roll the pencil to take their turns, to pencil case soccer (literal soccer with Ben's pencil case) when our math teacher forgot to show up to class. This is where the two foundation clubs Lindon-Chevella and Dinkin were born. 

When Harry Kewell came to the Aleague it was a prompt for many of the original teams to begin following the aleague and begin a fantasy ALeague competition. The first season of the Eliza Cup was popular enough with around 12 teams on Fox sports. It included Brenton Speed as every league could add his account, it was largely uncompetitive and would have resembled today's Division 3 if that. 

The Eliza Cup has had a long history of controversy, it has been these moments the league has taken advantage of to grow, people were attracted to the competitive chaos. When the next season dropping to a record low 6 teams the season is largely remembered by an alleged match fixing scandal and life ban.

With Dinkin ahead in the league followed by Spooners, the Lindon-Chevella’s manager Ben Khouri has always alleged Spooner’s coach Sam Barnes had tried to convince Lindon to drop their game against the Spooners. 

"Pick your players and your captain wisely" it is alleged Sam offered a bribe of an 'iced tea'. Khouri was also labelled as a cheat because he didn’t report this straight away, instead he decided to black mail Barnes. 

This resulted in a trial which took place in year 12 home room with 'Judge Fudge' Dos Hunter running the trial, I was prosecutor, something Barnes labelled a "Kangaroo court".

The trial never came to conclusion with Homeroom teacher Matt Grossman insisting on reading the morning bulletins and showing his local football and VFL highlights for a fifth time. Matt Grossman has as a result been given a life ban from the Eliza Cup for "being a massive flog and preventing the course of justice"

The next season saw the first big boom in numbers, 6 teams into 24, with people intrigued by the match fixing controversy. Barnes decided to have a sabbatical season in which he claimed his team was instead playing in the "Global League", he returned a year later. This season saw the introduction of the Roddy Rodriguez cup after Jarv bullied Khouri all the off-season because he finished ahead of him, with Khouri protesting he ranked higher than Jarv. 

Many teams came and went during the next few seasons. Stairway to Evans came in in 2016 having never followed A-league and won his first season. Which really pissed a lot of people off not just because it was his first season but because he was a self-righteous piece of shit.

The next major moment in Eliza Cup history was the famous asterisk season. Dinkin and Lindon-Chevella was 1 & 2 on the table with the biggest 'Derby of eternal enemies' in history arriving. The two foundation clubs already did not like each other. The match up begun with Mark Milligan missing his first penalty in a long time. Jason Geria got an assist but was on Khouri's bench. Khouri, wanting Geria on the pitch, traded one of his players for a Western Sydney bum Chris Herd, who in his 2 years with the Wanderers only made 9 appearances. He also played 1 season with Perth not appearing at all. Luck seemed to be on Dinkin’s side however, with Herd coming on to the pitch late in the Wanderers game. He got a yellow card and scored 0, this meant Geria would stay on the bench and effectively would decide the game in a very close affair. 

It was still a nervous wait as back in the fox sports days close games were regularly decided by adjustments. You would be wanting to be winning by at least 7 before giving it to your opponent. It was a long wait as results didn't come in till about Tuesday or Wednesday. When results did eventually come in pandemonium took place. Chris Herd had been put on the bench with Jason Geria on the pitch, going against Fox sports own bylaws. This meant Lindon-Chevella won in what many considered an incorrect result. Many in the board wanted to result changed right away, I had the deciding vote and voted for the result to stand with the proviso that we come back to it if it influenced the championship.

It did influence the result, and Lindon would go on to win the league by 6 points with an inferior overall ranking, meaning if the result was flipped Dinkin would have been 1st. I emailed Fox sports who admitted a mistake was made and said they would get back to me. This was followed by them ghosting me. The board would once again have to decide if it was going to, for the first ever time change a result. I changed my vote this time to flip the result, but Barnes infamously changed his as well, stating "I'd rather Khouri win it then Cowie". The vote was a tie meaning the result could not be flipped. Dinkin and several other clubs refused to recognise the championship, an agreement was later made between Dinkin and Lindon that the league could recognise the championship as long as an asterisk was displayed next to that season and championship. 

Like the Barnes match fixing, the asterisk controversy caused a boom in Eliza numbers. It was decided a 2nd division would be formed. Despite a strong push from majority of the league for it to be called 'The Chris Jarvis league of shit individuals' with Jarv relegation looking possible. 'Segunda Eliza' was eventually decided on. This was later rebranded to Division 2. 

A team limit of league teams was at 24, so teams were told to apply for an Eliza license with 3 division 1 spots up for grabs. We used a bingo machine to draw the teams and streamed it live on the Eliza Facebook group. Barnes was so furious with the results of the draw he decided to form his own league 'The V-league'.

V standing for Value, it was a league that would run in conjunction with the Eliza. With whom Barnes would deem the members who offer the most 'value' not necessarily the best players. Barnes said the league results wouldn't be as important as the Eliza's but would provide good banter. Seen as a possible break away league many of the assigned V league teams refused to enter and the V league never took off due to a lack of popularity. Supporters of the V league will say the three Bum teams chosen in the bingo draw were all non-active failures, whereas the new Segunda league was won by Max Dekkers 'Loading', a V league team. 

The next major incident in the Eliza Cup was the death of fox sports Fantasy. Fox sports is remembered fondly by most who played but I could also see people hating it if we went across to it now if it hypothetically existed. The idea of reducing Division 1 to create a better div 2 had been floated before. It was always met with criticism. people wanted to play Eliza Cup. When Fox sports fantasy died the only real platform left was Sportsdeck with maximum leagues of 12. The Eliza Cup had about 20 teams playing division 1 and around 8 playing division 2. Division 2 was failing and was filled with inactive players, division 1 also had more than its fair share of inactive players. In hindsight the shrinking of the league probably helped the Eliza to become higher quality.

For various reasons my interest in the Eliza Cup waned for a period of about 2 or 3 seasons between Khouri's Eliza and Covid. Barnes took charge and did a very good job. He reformed a largely lawless chat where Socceroo matches meant the N word would be said 500 times even if an African nation wasn't playing. During the COVID season, Jarv historically won the Eliza's first ever #1 overall rank.

When I returned to commission the league, participation was low and the Eliza needed more good teams. Jarv had just been relegated for the first time following a very close call a few years earlier. To combat inactiveness in the 2nd division and bring back enthusiasm from when we did the bingo draw, I created the Eliza FA Cup. I actively tried to recruit new people to play and got Kallo and Sauce from an A League fantasy Facebook group. (Kallo was good straight away, but Sauce was shit, neither got involved in the chat).

Ayris won a historic treble (Eliza, Roddy ,Shield) in one of the most dominant seasons of Eliza cup there has ever been. 

The next season I plucked BC and Andrew from the same Facebook group and Jayden somehow pulled more than a dozen passionate aleague supporters out his arse. Why he didn't invite them earlier we will never know. If we knew we were going to get such an influx of players at once maybe we would have made it into 3 divisions right away. We did not know how many would be active and how many would stick around. Players also wouldn't have been happy about being put into div 3.

This meant the arrival of Ayden, Bilby, Christian, Max, Ryan, Zac and probably some others whose names escape me. They were all very active in the chat. Polite little chippa was providing everyone with the division 2 league code, including division 1 players. He was given the role of division 2 commissioner. BC famously wanted everyone's opinion on almost every choice of player. I can vividly recall going to a Victory game and Jarv saying "fuck how about all these fucking new blokes, how about that one Bozo that wants us to pick his entire fucking team". It was agreed BC would be a very shit team.

That brings us to the modern history of the Eliza which probably doesn’t need mentioning in my section of the history. Next year the Eliza will turn 15 and my only regret is not keeping records of old fixtures. If I knew the league would grow to what it is now, I would have, but it seemed I was the only one who really cared until about 5 years ago. 

It is worth also acknowledging many of the platforms that make the Eliza the Eliza. From defunct betting organisations such as Jarvbet and snakebet (which was simply Jarv, Doman and Evans coming up with odds off vibes) To the incredibly complicated Bilbet with algorithms which closer represent a professional betting company. Kallo's amazing sheet and website, which have transformed the Eliza into an almost professional fantasy league and of course the tabloids Eliza Times, Eliza Review and even the crappy Eliza Daily.