Trader wrote:morell wrote:You lack basic level empathy Trader and your privilege taints the way you think.
C'mon Morgs, just cause I don't agree with you doesn't mean you need to have a swipe at me personally.
As you've said several times on here, if we didn't have different opinions a forum would be a very boring place.
Sorry mate, that probably came across harsher than I intended and I was replying to the man behind Trader a little bit.
But still, you don't get to imply someone who falls victim to a workplace accident as "being stupid" and "removed from the gene pool" without a slap from me. And within the context of this discussion, you're a Prince Alfred Old Scholar. Not wanting to take anything away from your achievements as a club and I am sure the volunteers behind the scenes bust their arse, but PAOC are most assuredly privileged.
Trader wrote:To avoid banging on when we clearly aren't going to come to an agreement, I'm happy to agree to disagree on the economics of amateur football talent.
However, can you please explain to me (as someone who clearly doesn't understand lower grade footy), why does Mitchell Park need to buy a whiting or 3?
You talk about the need to maintain lower grades as places for social footy and gateways for people to join the game and hopefully move up. I agree with this completely. What I don't understand is why that requires Whiting to occur? Can't they simply be 22 unpaid blokes running around having a kick and a catch?
This is a fair question and its something that we struggle with internally in terms of positioning ourselves within the marketplace. Are we happy to just be kick and catch? Or do we strive for more professionalism?
Within our context I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. We want to provide an environment that enables people who are new, not as fit, not as coordinated or simply not as committed time wise to still be able to enjoy football. But we also want to be successful and sustainable.
It's the nature of football I suppose where people really just want to win. So to be able to provide the aforementioned avenue we need to be able to recruit enough talent and ability to be successful in the competition that we're in.
I don't think we really have the goal of ever being a D1 or D2 club - for us its more about ensuring we survive the short term, build into some sustainable strength at the lower divisions and push into D5, D4 and maybe D3 one day. To do that, we need our fair share of Whiting.