Turbulence (then calm sailing, then turbulence) thread.

[Capt. Awesome]

Maybe part of the problem is the lack of alignment generally.

Support sorta sits in a few different places between three places:

• this online community - including a lot of the original Marinators
• the Yellow Army, which is much more Facebook and Twitter driven
• the Official Supporters Club

There isn't one voice. It'd be good if there were.

When "Coastie Boys" split off and did their own thing deliberately excluding many people who had contributed for a long time, that did a lot of damage. The Yellow Army / CCMFans divergence has also been unhelpful. It's simply hard to organise "the fans" because it's not a single group. It's not quite the People's Front of Judea, the Judean People's Front, the Judean Popular People's Front, the Campaign for a Free Galilee, and the Popular Front of Judea, but you get my point.

The interests of football on the Central Coast aren't really aligned either. CCMFC and International Football School are sorta working over here and CCF is working over there. The end result is that it feels like we are all on different pages. I really do get the feeling that CCF has felt burnt by a number of interactions with CCMFC, and there are far too many stories going around about things not being delivered or paid to think it's all bunkum.

It might take a bit of an investment, but running strong community engagement programs with CCF should be a no brainer, and it shouldn't cost the earth. We have 12,500 players or so between 25 or so clubs - they've got their own volunteer networks, it can all come together if we want it to. And even if they spent $100k on building up a big community program, they would surely stand some chance of getting that back. Get another 500 members signed up and we're in business. And the word of mouth marketing value of having thousands of kids talking up whichever player was at their training sessions etc. is definitely worth something.

Add to this CCF and CCMFC pairing up on the Women's and Men's NPL programs and using them as a basis for presences in the NYL and W-League is surely a no-brainer. Again, it's not something that happens for free, but it's part of expanding the reach and building depth in the relationship with football on the coast.

All the forces are there, but they're all milling about in different directions. Get all the troops marching in the same direction and we look like something to be reckoned with.

Totally agree with you dibo. It would be great to bring all these parties together for a meeting to start a dialog. There is definitely enough football fans in the coast to support our club. Everything is just so broken and disjointed.

I would definitely put in some time and effort to make this happen if others joined the fight. I'm not prepared to lose our wonderfull club.

 

[nearlyyellow]

(snippety)
Then you add the cost of bar staff, food stall staff, cleaners pre/during/post game, stadium management and help staff, fireworks staff. etc.

Just for staffing.

I accept cleaners, fireworks staff. But surely bar and food staff would be paid by the contractors who do that stuff?
Stadium Management & help staff? Who are these people? The people who assist through the gates and those who tell you where to sit with your ticket would be under the security banner probably, so they would be a CCM responsibility. Security and police staff would be the major staffing costs, I reckon.
Ticketing staff would be the responsibility of Ticketek or the like.
Who's missing as far as game day staff mentioned above? Ambos, probably? Referees? Who are they paid by?

It's a pretty extensive list, but I still can't see a game day cost burden to CCM of $150k. for our stadium.

EDIT: Based on the top staff numbers you mentioned for security staff cost would be approx. $36k.

 

[sydmariner]

Referees? Who are they paid by?

the opposition players that's why we lost on sunday

 

[dibo]

Anyone want to talk to the club direct?

@CCMariners ASK THE CEO: We’re giving fans the chance to ask our CEO their questions via our official podcast. Deets here: http://on.fb.me/1xImL9u #CCMFC​

Fire away.

 

[Bladesman]

Anyone want to talk to the club direct?

@CCMariners ASK THE CEO: We’re giving fans the chance to ask our CEO their questions via our official podcast. Deets here: http://on.fb.me/1xImL9u #CCMFC​

Fire away.

Appears you need to be on Facebook to ask a question better hijack the missus account.

 

[Capt. Awesome]

Anyone want to talk to the club direct?

@CCMariners ASK THE CEO: We’re giving fans the chance to ask our CEO their questions via our official podcast. Deets here: http://on.fb.me/1xImL9u #CCMFC​

Fire away.

Already asked a heap.

 

[neverwozza]

My experience with the CEO is that he always give excellent positive responses and is great at apologizing for what has happened in the past and then proceeds to do f**k all about it.

 

[neverwozza]

Oh and missed the page before this one until today. Some great stuff from Dibo and Mick. Mick really hit the nail on the head in regards to CCM's poor attempts at marketing and Dibo's comments about lack of engagement are spot on. The club has only itself to blame for lack of funds and Charlesworth's sole focus on crowd numbers is laughable. I'm kind of hoping he does something really stupid and FFA take the license back of him and fund us until a decent owner can be found.

 

[VicMariner]

FFA take the license back of him and fund us until a decent owner can be found.

I was thinking this might not be so bad myself. I get the feeling MC is only interested in the COE, the club is an unwelcome distraction.
With Lowy saying he expects the sport to double or triple in popularity and a bigger media deal just around the corner, someone would eventually see us as an attractive proposition.
Would the FFA hang on long enough though?

 

[Paolo]

Just in respect to stadium rents, Lawrie has confirmed it only costs $7500 to rent Grahame Park and in comparison Adelaide Utd pay $33,000 for Hindmarsh http://m.adelaidenow.com.au/news/adelaide-united-hits-out-over-rent-hike-at-coopers-stadium/story-fni6uok5-1226761443826?nk=23778327830236f8b8bf03ee0f3f77ba

Not sure MC has a leg to stand on if he is using nso as a negotiating tactic. Also if NSO is cheaper i cant see it being cheaper for too long once North Sydney Council has reeled us in.

 

[gull]

Not sure MC has a leg to stand on if he is using nso as a negotiating tactic. Also if NSO is cheaper i cant see it being cheaper for too long once North Sydney Council has reeled us in.

Plus they'll have the "upgrade" costs to recover as well.

As always the reasons for MC playing matches away from home just don't stand up to analysis.

 

[Paolo]

Further to the rental costs...the cost of maintaining Grahame Park your council is in excess of $200k, so our our rents don't even cover 50% of that. Therefore expectations that council should just drop the rents more isn't really practical

 

[nearlyyellow]

Further to the rental costs...the cost of maintaining Grahame Park your council is in excess of $200k,

Source please? What period does the $200k. cover? And a breakdown of the amount you quote please.

so our our rents don't even cover 50% of that. Therefore expectations that council should just drop the rents more isn't really practical

Yes, but we only tenant the stadium for a maximum of approx. 7% of available weekend days (Fridays to Sundays). Unreasonable to expect CCM to meet the suggested $200k. over any of it's 11 home game days, don't you think?

 

[pjennings]

Further to the rental costs...the cost of maintaining Grahame Park your council is in excess of $200k, so our our rents don't even cover 50% of that. Therefore expectations that council should just drop the rents more isn't really practical

From what I heard the improvement in the stadium surface only came about after GA convinced MC to provide extra funds for the maintenance. Can someone confirm.

 

[Paolo]

Source please? What period does the $200k. cover? And a breakdown of the amount you quote please.
Yes, but we only tenant the stadium for a maximum of approx. 7% of available weekend days (Fridays to Sundays). Unreasonable to expect CCM to meet the suggested $200k. over any of it's 11 home game days, don't you think?

Iv seen the figure (albeit 3yrs ago) so you can choose to believe me or not. Not fussed either way.

I never said i expected them to cover it all, but now youve said it to cover the cost ccm rent would need to be 18-19k per game which is still significantly lower than rents elsewhere in the league.

It is a case of MC trying to increase his bargaining power as a buyer, but equally GCC has strong bargaining power as a supplier being the only usueable facility in the region

 

[nearlyyellow]

Iv seen the figure (albeit 3yrs ago) so you can choose to believe me or not. Not fussed either way.

I never said i expected them to cover it all, but now youve said it to cover the cost ccm rent would need to be 18-19k per game which is still significantly lower than rents elsewhere in the league.

It is a case of MC trying to increase his bargaining power as a buyer, but equally GCC has strong bargaining power as a supplier being the only usueable facility in the region

Please don't take me as being disrespectful to your post, far from it. I actually would say that $200k. would be way under the annual cost of just maintaining the playing surface, let alone any other building etc. maintenance costs.
It's really a Catch 22 situation for both the Council and the Mariners. Council has no other ground tenants of note and the Mariners have nowhere else to go. Or do they? NSO anyone? Brookie anyone? See MC's bargaining power here?

 

[Paolo]

Please don't take me as being disrespectful to your post, far from it. I actually would say that $200k. would be way under the annual cost of just maintaining the playing surface, let alone any other building etc. maintenance costs.
It's really a Catch 22 situation for both the Council and the Mariners. Council has no other ground tenants of note and the Mariners have nowhere else to go. Or do they? NSO anyone? Brookie anyone? See MC's bargaining power here?

The $200k+ figure was also at the similar time to Canberra debacle and resurfacing issues. Id suggest its increased a fair bit since then based on the improvements

Edit: i should clarify that the figure was GCCs contribution but obviously would be even further expenses which were worn by the leaseholder (ie singo)

 

[dibo]

Interview with Bruce in the podcast is interesting - this is a potted summary, for the full thing head to https://audioboom.com/boos/2688407-...-coast-mariners-podcast-episode-8-pre-f3derby

Are we moving half our games?
In our 10th year, it's important that the club survives. our club's pioneers lost a lot of money.
The club hasn't made money in last 8-9 years, will lose significant money again this year.
We need a bigger base than 13k players and 340k residents, so we're looking to Northern Sydney.
All the club's early documents said our footprint stretched as far south as Ryde, so this isn't new.
We have to break even, it can be achieved if we expand south.
We are building 3 academies - west of Katoomba, rebuilding Central Coast presence, academy - work with Ken Schembri and CCF to resolve issues, and the northern academy. Footprint stretches from 13k players out to 68k players. This is part of the business model - ensure we see players, bring them through, sell them. We're a development club and it's part of the business model.

Fans boycotting NSO?
Can understand anger and disappointment, but we need to be sustainable, we have to grow.

How many games?
27 rounds? 13 season 2 or 3 games away, 9 or 10 home. 14 season 3 or 4 games away, 9 or 10 home.

Why are tickets not included in membership?
We have a home membership, a northern membership, we've set up discounts for the northern games.

What about the talk of breaking even with 6k at NSO vs 10k at Gosford?
Match day ticket sales are not the primary revenue. Big things are that spaces on the kit are not fully sold. Corporate boxes are not fully sold - we're selling 25-30 out of 300 corporate seats. We need to sell all signage, need to sell LED boards, need to sell sponsorship on match day. need all those before get to break even. GCC don't overcharge us and nor do North Sydney.

Would you consider a meeting to form a united front to keep club viable?
We always need to talk to fans, have been criticised for it in media - e.g. when I asked for fans' views about McBreen.
Our kit, 10 year logo designed by fans in committee. I've opened the door.

Fans fans look forward to 31st december - not there this year. It's a big drawcard, will it be back in future?
Nobody questioned the value of that game but with the Asian Cup and cricket World Cup, they've all been moved around other clubs' venues and dates and we've had a flow-on. We lobbied for and got games either side of Christmas so players could be at home. It's only this year.

What do we do to rebuild crowds?
We must be sustainable. We're a business. We are not the centre of people's universe on the Central Coast - most people commute, are busy with other things. We need to go back and research what people think of CCM. Go and shake hands and introduce ourselves. We need to do it in northern Sydney too, to build a base around 3/4 games. We're rolling out the Mariners MyClub program to ensure every kid playing knows us. This is the low hanging fruit, but we haven't done it properly, and we need to build it up again.

 

[rbakersmith]

It did irritate me how the response to the first question was basically a non-answer.

Surely it wouldn't have been that difficult to say "no we aren't going to move half our games to NS. Our intention is to play 2-3 games per season there" and then explain why.

 

[nearlyyellow]

Interview with Bruce in the podcast is interesting - this is a potted summary, for the full thing head to https://audioboom.com/boos/2688407-...-coast-mariners-podcast-episode-8-pre-f3derby

What about the talk of breaking even with 6k at NSO vs 10k at Gosford?
Match day ticket sales are not the primary revenue. Big things are that spaces on the kit are not fully sold. Corporate boxes are not fully sold - we're selling 25-30 out of 300 corporate seats. We need to sell all signage, need to sell LED boards, need to sell sponsorship on match day. need all those before get to break even. GCC don't overcharge us and nor do North Sydney.

So is he saying that 6k. is break even at NSO because they get more corporate bums on the seats there? Is he saying that they sell more signage etc. at NSO than at CCS? Is he saying that the kit spaces are sold at NSO and not at CCS?
I think Bruce ought to be in politics. He cleverly ducked the question. If he was inferring that *because* of the outreach to NSO and other areas there *will* be more Corpses, LED signage and kit sales then why didn't he say that directly?