Central Coast Stadium

[Pirate Pete]

But if you're looking for a hotel and you're looking on getahotel.com.au
if you see it's next to there's no way you'd book there.

Those bloody sauce bottles will spoil the view of the nice new shiny ATO building from the hotel too.

 

[JoyfulPenguin]

Charlesworth wants to talk to Baird:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...d/news-story/df15ed25a51b0cf5afefe3043ac6ff88

 

[FFC Mariner]

Build a casino and Baird will be all over it.

 

[dibo]

Interesting!

 

[scottmac]

Wow. It's getting quite a bit of air time. For Holstein to come out is interesting.

 

[pjennings]

Updated plans

My wife is growing tired of the cannon. She reckons we should celebrate our goals with ejaculating sauce bottles.

 

[dibo]

There's an image for the kids.

*SPOONT!*

 

[midfielder]

I am starting to think Charlesworth could be one of the best owners in the league.

He may have some wacky ideas at times but you cannot say he is sitting on his hands waiting for something to happen.

If we finish up owning the stadium and the coe we will be one of the best clubs in Asia for facilities.

We have a stated policy of developing youth and of using those players in our side and then on selling them.

 

[Big Al]

Should just get the players to all apply to be councillors.

If he is serious he will need to support some candidates.

CCM putting public pressure on a council who just want to be bland and get paid to collect the rubish each week is interesting. The council have a clear objective not to anything that could be politically upsetting, even if that means turning there eyes to positive ideas.

They are called a holding government for a reason

 

[JoyfulPenguin]

Coast Community News report:
http://coastcommunitynews.com.au/2017/01/mariners-seek-transform-stadium-world-class-hub/

 

[JoyfulPenguin]

Should just get the players to all apply to be councillors.

If he is serious he will need to support some candidates.

CCM putting public pressure on a council who just want to be bland and get paid to collect the rubish each week is interesting. The council have a clear objective not to anything that could be politically upsetting, even if that means turning there eyes to positive ideas.

They are called a holding government for a reason

I don't think we can really blame those currently in charge of the council. They would be under a mandate to make as little decisions as possible considering they are not democratically elected.

 

[Pirate Pete]

I am starting to think Charlesworth could be one of the best owners in the league.

He may have some wacky ideas at times but you cannot say he is sitting on his hands waiting for something to happen.

If we finish up owning the stadium and the coe we will be one of the best clubs in Asia for facilities.

We have a stated policy of developing youth and of using those players in our side and then on selling them.

Not only that, but he's a "millionaire mogul" now too. I wonder if he's aware of that.

I see Chris Holstein is trying to get himself involved again after his short spell in State parliament.
He used to stand at the back around bay 14 or 15, but he was up in bay 44 the other week.

 

[midfielder]

What I find interesting but not surprising is the lack of support in an editorial sent from SBS

SBS have been crying out for this kind of Club ownership of stadiums for a long time and aside from the re copy of our release have not issued any kind of statement of support

I had hoped for a Fozzie or Les article of support given both their often statements on the matter.

SMH have also been quite, only News has been supportive.

 

[nebakke]

I don't think we can really blame those currently in charge of the council. They would be under a mandate to make as little decisions as possible considering they are not democratically elected.

Wow - didn't realise I harboured this level of frustration - you can always just skip to the bottom two lines for the shortened version

You're sort of right, only as Shaun outlined on the podcast this week, for the club it's coming up on a "do-or-die" type moment... They need some certainty about the future and are trying to do a strategic piece under which they can move forward... It is getting to that time in the lease cycle, where they need to know if they have to start looking for a "new home". We all know that they're not likely to need to, but "not likely" isn't always good enough.
So - for mine - this is starting to smell like exactly the sort of thing that you have an admin council appointed for... Not the sale etc as such, but the sort of thing where a decision can't really wait until a new council is elected and have gotten themselves into a position where work will actually commence. Knowing public sector, if they're elected in September and actually go in say - at the end of the mont... They're going to spend a couple of weeks working out if they can agree on who's going to be mayor... After that, the mayor is going to want to restructure everything because the administrator hasn't been doing things quite according to his vision... As a minimum the sanitation department should be renamed, and rebranded, the Department of Sanitation (because the 'of' makes all the difference).
Then all of the people actually employed and doing the work, will be cast into a couple of months of uncertainty over their jobs, because the new council invariably will be flagging "fiscal responsibility and expenditure restraints" leading to "cuts in administrational backend services" while the councillors are flagged for a pay increase to "bring them into line with senior private sector roles".
Then it's Christmas and New Year and then, they'll start 2018 with a gung-ho attitude only for the state government to be thrown into some sort of embarrassing situation, leading to Mike Baird stepping down and an election being called a year early, so the state government goes into "care-taker-mode" and Labor flags a significant disagreement with the new council setup, so no one can do anything until after the election, which Labor wins after which they start another council amalgamation piece, which puts everyone on notice and advises "patience and restraint" for the duration.
It then runs for a year-and-a-half, before they decide that the core problem was with the communications between councils and state government, so they setup a new communication forum and start discussing their issues.
Now then, we're in mid-2019 and a council worker finds a post-it under his desk, saying that Shaun has been calling for months, sounding increasingly irate, wanting to know what is happening with the lease review and expansion plans... The worker calls Shaun, who is watching that week's a-league game from the stands at the COE as the club was forced to relocate all games at the last minute, because the CCS lease expired.

OR - you could just watch Utopia on ABC, would give you a similar story just for federal

Good thing I'm not jaded though, that'd be a harrowing experience... The obvious point is that while the council has heaps of time, the club doesn't

 

[Pirate Pete]

.... or now ICAC has been watered down we could send a couple of bottles of Grange to Casino Mike now and have it sorted by Easter.

We may have to get in quick before Baird does step down.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/nsw-h...-politician-entitlements-20170111-gtpwce.html

 

[dibo]

Labor's nowhere, so we're not going to see a change of government here. If anything, they've gone backwards since 2015.

 

[true believer]

I am starting to think Charlesworth could be one of the best owners in the league.

He may have some wacky ideas at times but you cannot say he is sitting on his hands waiting for something to happen.

If we finish up owning the stadium and the coe we will be one of the best clubs in Asia for facilities.

We have a stated policy of developing youth and of using those players in our side and then on selling them.

the down side in this is . if he doesn't get his way .we could lose the team .
i think its all or nothing .

 

[true believer]

I don't think we can really blame those currently in charge of the council. They would be under a mandate to make as little decisions as possible considering they are not democratically elected.

they've had no problem selling off public lands

 

[dibo]

I am starting to think Charlesworth could be one of the best owners in the league.

He may have some wacky ideas at times but you cannot say he is sitting on his hands waiting for something to happen.

If we finish up owning the stadium and the coe we will be one of the best clubs in Asia for facilities.

We have a stated policy of developing youth and of using those players in our side and then on selling them.

Saying he's 'one of the best owners in the league' is a bit of a nothing statement in a league of 10 teams.

He has had wacky ideas at times that have been outright damaging. The North Sydney debacle shook the confidence of the fanbase. The windmill punching at the local association, state body and FFA at different times have damaged relationships with people who could be very helpful. The austerity approach is understandable, but at times I think it's been really poorly executed.

He's now moving in a better direction. The CEO seems to be very sharp, the coach is an ambitious coach looking to cut his teeth in senior football and the squad is young and has a fair bit of potential. There's a more forward-looking feel to it, rather than just being cheap for cheap's sake as it seemed under Stalder and Moss/Walmsley.

I can wear losing with a coach and a squad of kids who are all learning and improving together.

I can't wear losing with a coach leading a squad of has-beens and never-weres to loss after predictable loss, with no growth and nothing to hope for.

I think the COE and the stadium talk are important for us because it's what anchors us to the region and also separates us from being 'just another club'. They give us identity and security. Without them we could be transplanted anywhere and nobody* would really care.

What's disappointing is that over the years, we've been very hard up for operating capital but we've not sought additional investment. I suspect that the vision could've been sold to investors to accelerate development of the COE in particular and get us to a point where we can be growing the football side of the operation again but for one reason or another that's not happened.

That lack of investment is what hamstrings us. Clearly MC can see that at some point there's going to be some money to be made (or else why on earth would you bother), but I think we could get there sooner with a bit of extra investment. Put in some yeast to raise the bread, so to speak.

So I'm critical, but certainly respect the sums of money committed and am excited by the vision. But there's too much to the picture to call him the best owner in the league. As with everything in life, it's a bit more complicated than that.

*"nobody" being defined for the moment as "nobody aside from the 350,000 people who call the Central Coast home and the many others who are fans of the club"

 

[FFC Mariner]

There is something a bit distasteful about a property developer trying to pressure public officials to hand over an asset.