Just to add to the whole ASB franchise thing; as my nom-de-plume suggests, I am in Napier and HBU is the team I support in the ASB and know most about. I’m not certain that Blue Magic totally has a handle on how good the HBU organisation really is, he does keep mentioning them as one of the well run teams along with Auckland and Canterbury. I think they do a pretty good job but they really have to work at it and have a core group of good football people that contribute, they take nothing for granted and struggle every year to come up with the funding etc to run the organisation. I hear many complaints about a lot of franchises just being winter clubs in disguise – ACFC – Central, TW –Miramar, CU – Cashmere etc, even locally, there is the accusation that HBU is Napier City Rovers. I can tell you now HBU is not NCR is disguise, but of course, there are a number of NCR players in the side simply because they are by far the best team in HB and playing at the highest level, no one else comes close to them. They also play at the home of NCR [Park Island] but that venue is owned and maintained by the Napier City Council. The clubhouse is run by NCR people and I’m not sure if they get paid or not, but they do a fantastic job. I understand that at the beginning HBU were basically run by NCR because no one else would/could do it but at least 4 years ago there was a strong move to have HBU as a true representation of all of the clubs in the Bay. This meant all of the clubs had voting rights [including junior clubs that weren’t affiliated to senior clubs] the board was made up of people from a number of different clubs and there was also a number of HBU players that played their winter football in the Bay but at clubs other than NCR. Recently [last year I think] Central Football essentially took over the administration of HBU and in doing so, ensured the franchise was a representative of the local football community. At games, I see groups of supporters and players from a number of HB clubs in attendance and I genuinely believe that the HB footballing public [with the odd exception] support HBU as our local ‘National League’ club. We all know that we can’t be competitive by fielding only local players and so we bring others in from outside, many of them return in following years with 1 or 2 even moving and playing winter football here. The purpose of this long minded introduction is that I believe this is probably the model that NZF had expected when the ASB was set up. For various reasons [I don’t know what they are] some winter clubs have ended up running the franchises. That might be because of apathy from others, who knows but it is a bit of a catch 22 situation in some ways, no one else will put their hand up to be involved, the top local winter club gets involved, others look at it as a closed shop, they don’t support the franchise and we are where we are today. I reckon if we managed to get all franchises working similarly to the HBU model there would be more buy in by football people in some of these areas. If that was the case, Auckland could probably have 3 or 4 well supported teams, Wellington at least another one.
Current version
Posted July 23, 2014 03:25 · last edited July 23, 2014 03:39
Just to add to the whole ASB franchise thing; as my nom-de-plume suggests, I am in Napier and HBU is the team I support in the ASB and know most about. I’m not certain that Blue Magic totally has a handle on how good the HBU organisation really is, he does keep mentioning them as one of the well run teams along with Auckland and Canterbury. I think they do a pretty good job but they really have to work at it and have a core group of good football people that contribute, they take nothing for granted and struggle every year to come up with the funding etc to run the organisation.
I hear many complaints about a lot of franchises just being winter clubs in disguise – ACFC – Central, TW –Miramar, CU – Cashmere etc, even locally, there is the accusation that HBU is Napier City Rovers. I can tell you now HBU is not NCR is disguise, but of course, there are a number of NCR players in the side simply because they are by far the best team in HB and playing at the highest level, no one else comes close to them. They also play at the home of NCR [Park Island] but that venue is owned and maintained by the Napier City Council. The clubhouse is run by NCR people and I’m not sure if they get paid or not, but they do a fantastic job.
I understand that at the beginning HBU were basically run by NCR because no one else would/could do it but at least 4 years ago there was a strong move to have HBU as a true representation of all of the clubs in the Bay. This meant all of the clubs had voting rights [including junior clubs that weren’t affiliated to senior clubs] the board was made up of people from a number of different clubs and there was also a number of HBU players that played their winter football in the Bay but at clubs other than NCR. Recently [last year I think] Central Football essentially took over the administration of HBU and in doing so, ensured the franchise was a representative of the local football community.
At games, I see groups of supporters and players from a number of HB clubs in attendance and I genuinely believe that the HB footballing public [with the odd exception] support HBU as our local ‘National League’ club. We all know that we can’t be competitive by fielding only local players and so we bring others in from outside, many of them return in following years with 1 or 2 even moving and playing winter football here.
The purpose of this long minded introduction is that I believe this is probably the model that NZF had expected when the ASB was set up. For various reasons [I don’t know what they are] some winter clubs have ended up running the franchises. That might be because of apathy from others, who knows but it is a bit of a catch 22 situation in some ways, no one else will put their hand up to be involved, the top local winter club gets involved, others look at it as a closed shop, they don’t support the franchise and we are where we are today. I reckon if we managed to get all franchises working similarly to the HBU model there would be more buy in by football people in some of these areas. If that was the case, Auckland could probably have 3 or 4 well supported teams, Wellington at least another one.