Andy Martin - All you expect and less

Didn't Abbey open a can of worms! Haven't even read the article - but reading the YF forum, think have fair idea what she said. Few quick points -

Doloras don't agree with everything you have said, but respect for being the almost sole XX chromosome voice on the forum. That can't always be easy, and the 'traditional' male sports need to embrace their female players & fans not shun them.

I live in Brisbane. The AFL is easier smartest large sports organisation in Aussie. They cleverly saw an empty sporting window of February-March, when the cricket season is effectively finished and the AFL men's comp is yet to start - so launched their new women's comp in this window. It has been a major success. Still your rabid AFL tragic would watch a flea circus if the fleas were decked in the guernseys of his footy team. AFL fans are the closet Aussie has to the tribalism of say your English club football fan. The club comp is everything - there being no state of orgin or international AFL.  Having the women's AFL teams based on the mens AFL club teams was a masterstroke. Also the AFL have over the years made a real effort to make attending footy games family/female friendly, eg small example no scantily clad cheerleaders. So in stark contrast to the NRL, they have not a bad image to general female populace. When I lived in Melbourne a lot of girls talked fondly of attending AFL games with their dads, mothers, brothers as kids.

Still is a 'honeymoon' 1st year for the ladies AFL - so be interesting to see if interest drops in following seasons.

Wouldn't getting a Kiwi women's semi-pro side in the W League solve many of Abbey's gripes? With flights, salaries, accommodation etc not cheap of course. However isn't there a major company like say Lorna Jane - that has an almost solely female customer base that could be approached to be the major sponsor?

When were the team and supporters shunned?

I think there is quite a good FF supporter base here, and with the exception of a few d-bags on game day I see very little sexism going on here.

A Kiwi W League team would be awesome but where are the semi-pros getting paid from (you'll need more than 1 major sponsor) and what do you think the honest odds are of the FFA letting us get more NZ teams in their leagues?

We are struggling to keep NZ's only pro team in their league, I'd be very surprised if the FFA would be very open to the idea of another NZ team in another league, and with the increased W League costs (like every other teams travel), unless some philanthropists had osme deep pockets, I couldnt see it happening. 

The need for 'traditional' male sports need to embrace their female players & fans not shun them - was meant as a general comment. I get the overall feeling NZ rugby is worse, in embracing the fairer sex.  It's great that there is a page on this forum dedicated to Football Ferns, and no doubt 99% of people on here also want to see them succeed and do NZ proud. But also a fact that appears 99% of folks on this forum are male, and I find that a bit disappointing.

Re a NZ W League team. Yes of course it would be expensive, and good point that FFA may not let it happen. From memory a Kiwi women's basketball side out of Christchurch only lasted a season playing in the Aussie women's basketball comp.   

But I just like to see people at least try & come up with ideas to problems, rather than throw their hands in the air and say it's all too hard, and/or run to some govt/FIFA funded money pit asking for a handout.  I guess that's why I left the endless whinging of the office cubicle rat race to work for myself.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/nz-teams/896...

I read this article by Tony Smith and think its not bad and think this sums up the wider picture better than Abbey was trying to convey.

Still people are retardedly spouting that NZF make profits. They do not. They pull money from their stockpiled 'International Teams Fund' to make it look like they make money. In essence, their International Teams Fund is not what it says it is but just stockpiled money from every 4 year WCQ cycle where we either get TV money or qualify. Imagine how thats gonna look next year.....

thought Andy Martin explained things well on radio to the aggressive interviewer

Thanks. The really weird thing is when people are yelling at me things like:

Good luck running the women's game in this country without men Doloras.

If you have given a fraction of your time to women's footy that some of the males pointing out the practicalities of this have - then I would be surprised.

All the best with your all men are against women's football argument though.

... when I've been supportively quoting Jeremy Ruane, Enzo Giordani and Nick Robinson, all (I believe) men, and Jeremy at least is very involved in women's football. This is what I mean by people arguing with what people imagine you say. If you are seen as promoting a feminist argument, some people knee-jerk to the belief that you are making a female-chauvinist all-men-are-pigs argument, even when that's the opposite of what you're actually doing. They're arguing with an imaginary ball-busting-bitch.

Anyway, thanks also for taking up the question of the AFLW. Of course it's the first season and there's novelty value. But honestly, from what my Aussie friends tell me, the AFL have a better history of valuing women in their sport than the FFA. The point is that even when the W-League was new you could never pack out a 20,000 arena (even if the tickets were free). Why not?

When you start your comment with a "a lot of dudebros".......

If we were to look at the top 40 NZ eligible players for the FF and looked at their careers outside of football, you would expect that most of them are like your standard person with a 5 days a week job at standard pay with standard employers. 

The fact that in order to participate in the FF set up, you would have to stop working / take leave for multiple months and weeks of the year in order to train and play for the FF. That is going to be somewhat compensated by the daily rate from NZF - but I feel that what Erceg is saying is that this isn't worth what you have to give up - in terms of work and family and life. 

She is clearly not doing it for her own benefit - but wants the entire structures changed so that if NZF expect the FF to compete at the top, then they should not have to be personally worse off from playing for their country. 

The men's team is not as impacted as the top 40 ish players would be able to support time with the national team due to footballing careers being their main career. 

The likely issue here is that she feels that NZF have misused the limited funds they have already, and even if they were only to get a slightly better deal, she isn't willing to be a part of that. 

She is taking a stand because the net effect of her playing in the national team is now not worth it, and wants change so that doesn't become the case for others. And she wants the FF to have the best players playing for them, and that won't happen if it isn't worth it for some to be playing.

... some people don't bother reading further because they assume it's the SCUM Manifesto?

they probably notice who wrote it before that and don't bother reading further

The best thing to happen to football in NZ over the last 20 years and especially the last 10 has been the growth in womens football.

There has been a change in all sorts of things which are massively positive, from the introduction of player centered coaching methodology (first implemented with the girls coming into the game) through to the change in demographics at local football club level. Girls school football has taken off and a lovely additional benefit is how clubs are so much more pleasant to be in with the added female prescence. I remember hating the way football clubs after games were during the 70's,80's and 90's. Now we see a greater mix of people using them. I also love that we get girls going to watch boys play and vice versa. Women and girls now actively talk with men and boys about tactics, skills, coaching on an equal level and the growth in female numbers coaching and involved in running clubs from a coaching standpoint has brought a sensibility and balance we have been lacking for decades.

I remember how football and football clubs used top be and the single biggest improvement in the local game has been the growth of the female side of the game. There are a ton of lessons our male side of the game can learn from the womans side of the game and I just hope we are smart enough to watch, listen and learn.

All the best to Abby.

I don't think any person here is saying 'Fudge women, fudge the FFs, its all about men and the AWs' - In fact I see the opposite.

There are certain acknowledgements that need to be made that money that has funded the game, the national body, all comps and development programs in NZ since 2010 has come from the AWs qualifying for South Africa and the Mexican TV deal from the last failed campaign. Thats not saying 'lets all praise the men folk' (before you start up Deloras), thats saying that the entirety of football in this country has been funded on the fortunes of one team. We got lucky with Mexico in that even though we failed, we still got paid. If we had not had that, we would be infinitely worse off which should make people look forward to the next 4 year cycle beyond 2018 and how the funding will go because 1: we wont qualify 2: we wont play a country that is going to throw crazy money at us to broadcast 1 game here in NZ.

I think conversely, the game has improved out of sight in the womens program over the last 10 years on the back of the ex coach John Herdman and what he put in. I was not a fan of him but his finger prints have lasted and with retrospective hindsight, he looks like a genius and I look like a fudgetard. They have far better alignment than the mens program and you look back to 2008 when they hosted the tournament here and how the girls in those teams stepped through each team, performed well and rose up the national team quickly because of their alignment. It would not surprise me to see Hudson look at that with envy because they have it right, and his 'alignment' is like a drunk brick layer.

I also add that it seems Aaron McFarlane has gone back to Central because of the funding cut and I believe Danny Robinson has gone overseas because of the the funding cuts so I think there are more people affected because of their below objective performances at the last 2 tournaments than she realises.

The central issue in this argument is not gender or team. Its money. More money means there are no arguments. NZF have no money ergo regardless if this was Winston Reid/Wynton Rufer/Ryan Nelsen crying out, there is no money.

FIFA are the villains here for me. The sure fire way to grow the women's game globally is to increase prize money for the women's world cup. The sort of comments FIFA execs make about the women's game don't inspire confidence though 

Anyway, back to business. "I think what New Zealand Football is failing to realise is that there a number of players who are on the brink of leaving, so this is kind of a last-ditch effort to make sure it doesn't happen, because we know it's going to be detrimental to the game."  - Abby Erceg.

I think this squabble might be because some of us guys, myself included, have maybe made some statements that to us, from a male perspective, don't seem sexist or inflammatory. But if you're a woman who gets shark for being a woman sometimes and who lives with society's basic sexism everyday then some of those statements do come across as sexist or at the very least condescending. And as always, with it being a text conversation the tone and intent can kind of be lost both ways. So, apologies to Doloras and any other female fever member for my comments if I have crossed a line. 

As an aside, does anyone actually know how many men and women are on the forum? Most people are completely anonymous, and their names and avatars and posts don't really give clues. It seems fair to assume a lot more men than women but I wonder what the actual ratio is.

But stockpiled money is exactly what it is. Whenever they get a big payday via the All Whites advancing, they put some aside for the lean years. It's not trickery at all.

I'll contextualise it in a different manner for you

You have $1k in your bank. You earn $500 a week but spend $700. If you take $300 from your savings (dropping that to $700) and put that $300 into your main account, do you tell everyone you made/saved $100 last week? Common sense says that in 5 weeks time, you will be broke unless you change the way you spend. Rather than do that, you keep trying to win the lottery and when you hit your mates up for cash, they decide you are a basket case (cause you spend more than you earn and make a dick of yourself on the piss) so decide not to lend you any. To compound that, you've got a landlord saying you need to pay more rent, gas company wanting to increase your bill, Sky wanting more cash but giving you less and you've been spending money on taxis when you could probably walk.

Thats a real world scenario of NZF.

So this is much more insightful http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/nz-teams/896...

Not expecting non-existent money to fully fund all players overnight, but hoping for some petrol money to start with. And maybe even a conversation about it might help the players feel like they are valued. And yes I know there's still no money, but if that's our only argument we might as well pack up and go home.

But if some of that $700 is spending that I'd set aside $1000 in savings for, back when I won lotto 4 years ago, isn't it only fair that I bring it across when I need it?

It also points to a couple of things

1: Abbey (and others have regurgitated her quote) has said NZF has made profits for the past 8 years. They have not. Operationally, they have spent more than they have earned and if not for being heavily reliant on the AWs and there 2 windfalls, we would be right in the shark. We are lucky we are not broke and you can only ride that horse so often until you break its back. We need to stop saying NZF are making a profit when they are not because its not right and just keeps up the illusion that NZF do a good job.

2: While your point is that essentially 'its an argument around semantics' has a point, NZF trot this out as a balance sheet in their annual review to justify the good job they do and healthy state of the game but when they need the cash for things that Abbey whinges about, they actually have none because the reality is, they have none. Its more than financial planning thats a problem, its the whole lot but no one is held to account because the game shows a profit. People that rip companys off hide money to cover their tracks so no one will look into things. I'm not suggesting anyone is ripping NZF off but the very fact they don't report it properly, hides the shark job they do.

Now if Abbey had come out and pointed the finger at NZF as being an institutionalised basketcase and not solely about 'we gone get paid' then she would have far more support because NZF is a complete basketcase. The fact alone that she is saying they need more money when NZF have none, is what makes her entire outburst a mockery and her position built on misinformation - like NZF makes 8 years of profit. Further irony is that had NZF been reporting this properly i.e. a loss for the last x amount of years and a decent International Teams Fund, a: FFs could get their cash b: There would be more eyeballs and scrutiny on exactly what goes on at bullshark castle and why they are losing money each year. Because they record profits, I guarantee you most casual observers move along pretty quickly as there is nothing to see there. There is already one guy in the Football Ferns thread that said 'a quick google says they make profits'. They do not.

Speaking as someone who makes their living in the sponsorship space, and has worked on projects with NZF, Martin's tenure as CEO after 3 years is due for serious review. I posted pages back that his report card sux - considering one of his prime objectives was to bring corporate sponsors on board. He's been dead lucky with Mexican TV $ and Japanese philanthropist - neither of which were his doing. The lack of money (plus other issues I'll address in FF thread) contributed to Erceg's action; but I think it's time we look at moving him on anyway. 

The international teams fund, was set up in 2010, as a result of money earned from the World Cup that year.

It was then used to fund international teams, its purpose, in the years that followed, and was only topped up after money came in from Mexico TV rights in 2013. It will need topping up again this year, I imagine, if money comes in, as it has been spent, on its express purpose, in the years since then.

They're not, 'dipping into it,' they're using it for it's fudgeing purpose, funding international teams.

How is that hard to understand?

AFL clubs have mostly been going for over a 100 years (the non-Victorian teams admittedly are only about 20-30 years old) - and there is a real club tribalism, so fans are now getting behind "their" women's club team. Also again this ladies league is a short season in an otherwise quiet sporting window in the AFL states. The A League is only 11 years old, and for example I doubt many of supporters of the Victory's men's side are also fans of the women's side.

Lastly AFL has made a big effort to make attending games a safe family/female friendly environment. FFA faces big challenges in that regard, esp with fan groups like RBB at Wanderers.

I'm tired of arguing with an idiot

They do dip into it cause they state that every financial year on their bottom line as a line item and if it was used for its purpose as you say - funding international teams, then obviously Abbey has nothing to moan about here and we move on.

Don't take my word for it though, read here 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/nz-teams/80437314/cautious-approach-part-of-reason-new-zealand-football-unable-to-secure-march-fixture

Martin says on the radio that the trainings are voluntary, and they are to prepare players for professional football. Clubs couldn't offer that to elite/ upcoming players. 

Voluntary? Hmm. Not from my experience. Maybe its time to decentralise 

Or age groups 

The football ferns is a cult started by Herdman and carried on by Readings if you don't come to Auckland and join the cult you won't be considered for selection. What i can't understand is you retire and slag of NZ Football and still get picked for the next tour is she calling wolf move on Abby let somebody else lead  the cult

There are more international teams than the Football Ferns, who have plenty of costs NZF has to pay for before you get to what Abby is "moaning" about.

In any given year that money pays for what the All Whites do, what the U-20 and U-17 teams do, and a bit of Ferns, though they get HPSNZ funding which isn't in the International Teams Reserve, so I'd say they have little of it spent on them.

Which is why they take money from it each year - to pay for it!!! Not to trick anyone!!! Or to fudge the numbers!!!

So much for moving to Auckland. I see that Auckland won 2 and lost 4 in the last seasons Womens National League. Then the star player (Palmer) never got a look in for the NZ team which was announced shortly after probably because she was not from Auckland.

Under-20 internationals didn't play in last year's women's league, and under-17 internationals didn't play for half of it. I have no idea why Palmer didn't get a look in for the NZ "A' team, but I imagine not being based in or able to get to Auckland and be part of the regular training programme is part of it. This is also football, a sport where the power of a team vs the power of individuals is as great as it is anywhere (and Auckland were a shambles on that front, not helped by the late naming of that U-20 squad).

Under-20 internationals didn't play in last year's women's league, and under-17 internationals didn't play for half of it. I have no idea why Palmer didn't get a look in for the NZ "A' team, but I imagine not being based in or able to get to Auckland and be part of the regular training programme is part of it. This is also football, a sport where the power of a team vs the power of individuals is as great as it is anywhere (and Auckland were a shambles on that front, not helped by the late naming of that U-20 squad).