Andy Martin - All you expect and less

It's astute, but their reporting of it (and accounting for me) is misleading.

If my company makes $4m in Year 1, and then makes a $1m loss for the next 4 years, it would be misleading to report that as no profit in Year 1, and no loss for the next 4 years.

It gives an impression of stability that doesn't exist.

And I also endorse your point about having money but not being able to afford games. At least get your story straight!

Unbelievably pathetic. 

Here's another story.

A while ago NZF was required by FIFA/OFC to amend their statues around governance. Part of that was calling for expressions of interest from bodies who thought they should have a vote at congress. NZF reached out to YF to see if we were interested from a fans perspective. Sound good, doesn’t it?

We put some time into developing a website and thought about how we could engage fans from around the country.

A meeting happened between YF and Andy Martin in Wellington. Martin’s main line of questioning was around how we would deal with people who say things negative about NZF. YF’s response was to point out that the whole reason is to give fans, as a stakeholder in the game, a voice. But Martin continued down the line of how to silence those people.

Fair to say, we left.

That really depresses me.  It's one thing to think that they just ignore criticism from ignorance, but knowing that they actively go out the way to suppress opinion is just sad.  I'm past angry, i'm saddened.

It appears to be a classic case of some chap being able to say he engaged all the stakeholders before coming to decisions that he has already made.

what a prick

he needs to f u c k off back to where he came from

NZF desperately need some perspective. Martins wages are paid by the sub's of those fans who he so easily dismisses along with thousands of others. You listen to your customers, it's how you stay in business.

All the time but not usually from the CEO

But you are making the point that it's not really a company, it's a co-op where the participants own a big part of the organisation. The more I hear about this guy the less I like him. It's not a bank where you shut people up and keep raking in the profits. The easiest way to avoid criticism is to get the AWs playing good football, often enough for sports fans who aren't close followers of football, to know who they are and give a crap about them.

Be careful what you say - he'll have the GCSB monitoring us all.

As a friend of mine commented on Martin - he's a right wing ex-banker rugby loving tosspot who pretends he supports Liverpool - just like David Cameron.

What really pisses me off is that the Board Of NZ Football passed a vote of confidence in Martin after the "on loan" Phoenix player transfer cock up which was just one in a string of NZ Football Cock ups. The Old Boys Network is still well alive.

What pisses me off is that there is no transparency, they have a circle the wagon mentality and dismiss anything external as the talk of haters.

What pisses me off is being continually pissed off.

He has quickly joined the old boys network by necessity.

The  Olympic Qualifier debacle is a prime example where they appealed the decision  even knowing that they cheated.

They needed to buy some time and cover one another's' backsides. Having done this then they were duty bound to stick together when further cock ups occurred.

Its actually understandable for NZF to have that mentality. In my 45 years in the game the one single constant is the football public moaning about the national association.  45 years witnessing an organisation being under the hammer, sometimes deserved and sometimes undeserved.

The truth is our football community is very divided across all areas. So many different people with differing opinions on how things should be done mean that ego's kick in over sensible progress.

I dont see this type of thing to the level we have in other NZ sporting organisations, just ours.

So so many initiatives ripped to bits by critics every single time something is tried. We really do love to slag anything and everything NZ football do no matter what it is.

This applies to our attitudes to coaches, managers, officials, players fans etc. The NZ football community is often quite poisenous. I would never take a job at NZF because I know from the moment i turned up to work there would be people wanting to complain. 

I remember an hour or so after we had beaten Bahrain to qualify for the world cup Chris Milicich telling a group of us how Herbert had got the tactics all wrong and had done an awful job.

Thats the mentality that prevails across all our football scene.

I am as guilty as anyone. 

I am not surprised at all that NZF has a circle the wagons mentality. Its perfectly understandable.

I think you have hit on something there Alf. You do get that same attitude with the likes of Rugby League and some other minor sports and it is only in times of relative calm that these sports tend to do well internationally. You certainly don't see it in rugby union, they always seem to be generally on the same page excepting for the usual high expectations on our top players. Football has always been split by petty rivalry and politics, never really lost the whingeing pom perception of the 70s and 80s. If you were to take a dispassionate view of the entire game, you could be excused in thinking it was rotten, right from the player/spectator attitude towards game officials through to the vitriol over the fudge ups made by NZF. A lot of it might be deserved but it does nothing for the culture of the game overall.

...but that is just an indictment on New Zealand football. Rugby manage the messages from the game at every level because they have the best people doing the job. New Zealand football treat the media people in their own organisation as an afterthought or damage control arm.

NZ Football these days has media people for a very short stint and they are overworked and often bullied into towing an individual's line. There needs to be an investment in branding and the message from New Zealand Football.

Someone who will see what Hudson prattled on about yesterday and note that putting him in front of the media like that is stupid.

Someone who will make sure Andy Martin doesn't ask questions about how supporter groups will stamp out criticism of the administration.

There are a number of very good people in the game in this country that could make a real difference in this role but I suspect the fact that they would challenge the view of the Martin/Hudson cadre would mean they are zero chance of a job under this administration.

If Andy Martin is only waiting on a Super Rugby job, why hasnt any NZ Journalist called him up on this?

I think that is bang on - anyone who is any good at NZF and yes there has been some don't last very long because of both the constant negativity and the NZF circle the wagons attitude - imagine working in that environment....


So the guys who are doing their jobs poorly and don't listen to any criticism keep on going and the ones who are trying to excel and change the company end up giving up.


I have said it once and I will say it again - it's poor leadership from the very top and it's been that way for a long time.

The problem has been that since the 60s the only administrators who know what they are doing are ex pat poms still living on the glorys of Bobby Charlton and Bobby Moore. There has not been a creative innoventive administrator for too long. Yes, I know Van Hatten was there too, one Dutchman versus the rest till Fred the Bong got involved. I remember after qualifying for 2010, Rickie said the same mistakes that were made after 1982 would not happen or would not be allowed to happen again......but they did and they were allowed.

Out of all the NZF CEO's is Andy Martin really the dead beat dad of them all?.

He's up there, but there are definitely other contenders.

Bill MacGowan is probably the best we've had in my time, and he was certainly not perfect. He implemented the Federation system, which was a huge step forwards, but did it in a pretty slipshod way.

MacGowan, Seatter, Glading, Kavanagh...not too many " ex-pat poms " on that CEO list...

It was not intended as a CEO list but a list of administrators since the 60's.

Seems pretty vague and ill defined to me...lumping them all in one basket. 

Childish.

And yours is constructive how?

Lets get this straight, it is not just the CEOs at fault, after all, they are meant to be working as part of a team. Therefore the support people below them are probably just as responsibile. For example the transfer screw up, the eligibility screw up and if you want to go back to 1982, the lack of reinvestment of monies earned, back into the game at various levels. That 1982 team could have commandec friendlies against quality opposition during which course new, younger players could have been blooded so to speak. 2010, something similar happened although we did get the game at Westpac which was cool.

I am probably one of the biggest critics of ex pats in important positions in NZ football. I remember when the AW's were made up of 80% expats and today we see its mostly made up of actual NZers. I look forward to the day that our administration and senior international coaches are predominately NZers.

However its a slippery slope to simply point the finger at expats. The reality is that for all the bad ones there are hundreds more good ones. Our footballing culture was partly built on expats and their love for the game. Every single weekend there are passionate, committed, hard working expats running teams, reffing games and helping administer the game all over NZ. As much as I want to see NZers in the key positions I also am grateful to the expat community and its involvement in the game. BTW i am a 4th gen Kiwi.

One of the reasons that in current times that we see so many expats in important coaching positions and admin positions at NZ football has nothing to do with expats hiring expats or expats making the major decisions.

It is a byproduct of our desire to improve our coaching and admin quality. I know it looks like that hasnt happened. Whats happened is that NZF has headed down the path of hiring people with tertiary qualifications or similar as well as football experience. Football has evolved so much worldwide that its not just a case of hiring a "good man" for the job but there is a general need for multiple skills that arent entirely related to football. So we are having expats hired to do jobs because their resume as well as having footballing experience also has tertiary qualifications. There are very few native NZers who have tertiary qualifications as well as being football people. This will evolve with time just as the number of NZ born players has increased in the AW's. 

I do think that some of the expats in decision making and coaching positions have made some mistakes based upon slight cultural differences but hate it when expats get hammered as being the root cause of some of our problems. They actually contribute far more in the positive side of things than negative side. They are in my eyes a positive blessing in football in NZ.

ps I know Fred personally, have known him a very long time. He isnt a friend, more a friendly aquaintence.  I know him through work. He is a very intelligent guy, someone who before NZ was involved in a high end job with a ton of responsibility and is a hard working faultlessly honest guy. For all those who denigrate him on here I am sure that if any of you spent time with him you would change your opinion of him quickly. I hate reading some of the BS on here about him. 

I agree with your sentiment but I think this just is not true:

"So we are having expats hired to do jobs because their resume as well as having footballing experience also has tertiary qualifications. There are very few native NZers who have tertiary qualifications as well as being football people."

Two points.  Firstly, you don't need to be a "football person" so be a successful football administrator.  Secondly, there are loads and loads of people in the game who are extremely well qualified.  I still think that our strategy from the board down is wrong and we have had conservative and weak leadership over a long period.  I still do not know what the longer term strategy for the game is in NZ, and I am not sure if we even have one

I havent articulated clearly what I meant.

There has been a concerted effort to hire people in football coaching positions and football development positions who have some form of tertiary qualification. If you look at who has been hired over the last 5-6 years we see that they will have some sort of tertiary qualification and have come from the UK. Local candidates have lacked those tertiary qualification. You will see the job adverts have these requirements now.

Typically in NZ in the past we have had football people moving in to these positions and their experience within the local game has been a major part of their cv. Now we are seeing the requirement has stepped up a notch, simply a long period of successful work within the football scene here isnt enough to beat someone to the job who has a tertiary (usually sport related) qualification as well as a football background 

In the past lots of people from the UK got coaching jobs because it was assumed that they knew more about football than the locals.

... and they'd come from a professional football environment.

Certainly not all of them.

I'd be surprised if that's true, my experience is that there are plenty of locals that have tertiary qualifications.