Jetters wrote:Why would you highlight 'ALL' when I clearly, and deliberately, wrote 'most'?
You have the balance wrong. “Most” of the issues are currently out of our control or at least require years of toil and hard work to resolve. Yes, our club leaders can improve and they would be their own harshest judges for that, but to put into perspective our management consists of Ken Kelsall, Kylie Weekley, Wayne Wyld, Mark Sansome and Anjuli Weekley.
President - Ken Kelsall is a very experienced campaigner and if you will be searching for a long time to find a better delegate or harder worker for a football club. Gun.
Sports Club President - Kylie Weekley has been part of football for decades, been on committees for sporting clubs for most of her adult life I suspect, also was an expert administrator for the SAAFL for many years. Gun.
Football Director - Wayne Wyld has been in and around successful football clubs for goodness knows how long. Key player in Edwardstown successes and a very astute football person. Gun.
Junior President - Mark Sansome has turned an almost non-existent junior program into one that is now starting to thrive. Incredibly hard worker and doing a great job. Gun.
Treasurer - Anjuli Weekley whilst pregnant is still undertaking a treasurer role and doing an amazing job balancing the books. How we’re still solvent considering all of our issues is a credit to her. Gun.
You could put David Koch, Andrew Demetriou, Bob McLean and you yourself Jetters into some of these roles and you wouldn’t be able to do a better job.
Principally our biggest issues, in order, are
Structure with the Sporting Club in regards to revenue – take away bar takings, means you can't play players, means you drop divisions, means people leave because they don’t want to lose. It is that important.
Our lease agreement with Council in regards to the site – we are confined with what we do to Council processes. We currently have no lights. Having lots of fun training in the dark. We have no scoreboard. Ever submitted a residential development? Multiply it by a thousand fold.
Lack of resources, both monetary and human – we’re a small club, we don’t have that many volunteers and willing participants.
Sponsorship agreements and lack thereof – we’re a club full of tradeys, workers and generally speaking, people from lower socio economic background. We don’t have connections into big businesses. We don’t have ties to wealthy families.
Location, demographics and player catchment pool – Not much we can do about this.
Reputation - amazingly, despite have a better record at the judiciary than most clubs, we're still seen as thugs.
So when you come out and have a crack at the good people that are doing a sterling job considering the circumstances, and say our woes are all their fault, without any real inside knowledge or awareness, to be honest it makes me want to punch you in the face. It is so incredibly insulting, demeaning and arrogant of you to even pretend to know, based on a scoreboard results, how good a job our management are doing.
Jetters wrote:You have difficulties accessing your share of bar revenue. Fair point. However, you have great facilities (which look like getting redeveloped) and are open more nights of the week than most. Everyone has their own advantages and disadvantages.
Its more than a fair point. It is THE point. Take away your bar takings, or for example, Rosewaters, that constitutes approximately 70%-80% of their revenue. How can you possible pay, any decent coin to anyone, without 70% of your revenue. How would Unley go if we took away 70% of your revenue? How quickly down the divisions do you think you would tumble?
You would have the same management, doing the same job, yet the tumble would be uncontrollable.
Jetters wrote:You prefer to blame others and look for excuses for why clubs arent performing, I prefer to attribute the majority of success/non-success to the club itself.
They’re not excuses, they’re realities. They would be excuses if we weren't aware of them or had some ability to fix them. We can't just take over our bar. We can just put in new lights. We can't just start paying gun players. We can't just increase our catchment. We can't just get more cash from a big sponsor. These things take time.
We can and are working hard to attempt to mitigate these issues as best we can. For a person from Unley-Mercedes-Sort-of-Old-Scholars-but-nah-not-really-we’re-in-a-perfect-location-with-wealthy-supporters-and-a-huge-junior-program to point fingers at a struggling club is galling at best.
Jetters wrote:In our area (Unley, Mitcham, Glenunga, CLG, Goodwood, Kenilworth etc) we are all subject to similar circumstances to build a football club and yet these clubs typically range from Div 1 to 6 (some of the typically lower div clubs have improved over the last couple of years). Some clubs have some advantages/disadvantages others don't, but overall the #1 thing that surely attributes to a clubs success failure is its management.
Similar? Maybe in the fact all of them like football, beer and boobs perhaps, but I already know none of those clubs are facing the same issues we are. Problem identification and problem resolution are two very different things you realise?
The biggest problem Unley have is how to come up with an acronym that you can fit on a letterhead.
Jetters wrote:FWIW, I also disagree with the principles behind your player payment example.
I don’t particularly care for you or your opinions.