I don't buy the "we lost out to Chch, therefore we suck" narrative.
We don't know what criteria OFC based their decision on, let alone how they were weighted. This isn't a conspiracy theory about dodgy deals in smoke-filled rooms: OFC have outcomes they want to achieve with the league, some longer-term or less obvious than others, and their selection criteria will have been designed to pick the clubs whose participation would best support those outcomes.
Maybe the desired outcomes simply don't align with a club like the Phoenix. That's not an indictment of the club, all it means is that CU's bid was stronger than ours when assessed against OFC's particular criteria. It doesn't mean we're "worse" in some absolute sense, and it doesn't automatically mean that the club botched the bid.
Sure, it's possible we didn't present our strengths as well as we could have, or that we're weak in certain key areas OFC really care about, or that we didn't do as good a job of reading between the lines in OFC's guidance for bidders to divine what they really wanted - I know I've been involved in RFP responses in my job where it's become painfully obvious that the customer's stated requirements weren't actually what they wanted at all.
But without knowing how our bid was assessed it's unfair and unjustified to accuse the people involved of incompetence. Maybe we missed out on a golden opportunity here, or maybe we dodged a bullet.
We don't know what criteria OFC based their decision on, let alone how they were weighted. This isn't a conspiracy theory about dodgy deals in smoke-filled rooms: OFC have outcomes they want to achieve with the league, some longer-term or less obvious than others, and their selection criteria will have been designed to pick the clubs whose participation would best support those outcomes.
Maybe the desired outcomes simply don't align with a club like the Phoenix. That's not an indictment of the club, all it means is that CU's bid was stronger than ours when assessed against OFC's particular criteria. It doesn't mean we're "worse" in some absolute sense, and it doesn't automatically mean that the club botched the bid.
Sure, it's possible we didn't present our strengths as well as we could have, or that we're weak in certain key areas OFC really care about, or that we didn't do as good a job of reading between the lines in OFC's guidance for bidders to divine what they really wanted - I know I've been involved in RFP responses in my job where it's become painfully obvious that the customer's stated requirements weren't actually what they wanted at all.
But without knowing how our bid was assessed it's unfair and unjustified to accuse the people involved of incompetence. Maybe we missed out on a golden opportunity here, or maybe we dodged a bullet.