Angst please.

 This constant obsession with Rufer is bizarre. Good player don't always make good coaches.

Highlighted in the transfer speculation thread but probably better given a good hand-wringing, caterwauling, indignant response here...

"We are extremely concerned,'' Dome said. "There's no doubt the crowds outside the first game with Del Piero have been poor. It's not sustainable. At the moment, Wellington is saying to us that football in the capital is not a sustainable business model.

"If it means playing away from Wellington, we will look at it. If it means more money to buy players, we will do that. It's all up for grabs.''

Yeah, pisses me off. Complete U turn on what they were saying when they originally acquired the team.

Im with you on this as a fan who has attended every home game im really concerned that Dome appears to have shown little respect for us loyal fans.As for looking at taking games away how does that fit in with the line we did it for Wellington we keep getting thrown from Welnix.As has been pointed out a number of times one of the answers for crowds is to start putting up at home the same type of performance they gave at Newcastle.

These types of threats from our CEO will do nothing and just really piss people who have been the ones to support the Phoenix through some pretty rough times.

It puzzles me when the club threaten people who aren't attending matches that they may get less matches to attend. Wouldn't they either be happy or, at best, indifferent?

its cost versus value...and at the moment it doesnt stack up..all codes seem to be suffering

This is completely ridiculous.  Dome really struggles with the media I think, he always seems to get his tone wrong.

The Phoenix have no divine right for people to turn up and watch.  His job is to figure out why people aren't turning up and then do something about it.  The are putting on an entertainment product and right now my guess is people don't feel like they are being entertained.

I think they need to look at the make-up of this squad.  God knows what some of the players are getting paid but over 3m kiwi for that lot is pretty hard to accept.  And I think Herbert is part of the problem, people (maybe not on here but generally) are slowly losing faith in what his teams offer - you can feel it in the coverage.  Respect has given way to grudging respect and is moving towards indifference.  Even after a 3-0 away win no-one is amazingly stoked because the play is just so awful.

The management need to start asking some tough questions because there's no future in attempting to guilt trip people into turning up or blaming the weather.  This is Dome's job, it's what he's paid to do.  There is clearly plenty of interest in the Phoenix but people aren't turning up to the matches, he needs to figure that out 

They never thank the fans that turn up.  They should be tweeting and facebooking every home game (and perhaps away games) to thank fans watching at the stadium and at home.  Sometimes (I've heard) they don't even go show their appreciation to the fans at away games.  Not endearing themselves much in that respect.

David Dome seems to have caught the Frank Van Hattum syndrome of threatening fans. 

Sack Domey!

(The team applauded us at the last home game)

Would be great if one of the podcast boys could interview Domey and ask for clarification on what he said.

Also, this is another reason Dome needs to do some actual thinking about this.  Taking games elsewhere is no panacea once the novelty wears off.  What they need is to get the loyalty back in their home market.  

It is completely short term to think they can run what amounts to little more than a travelling circus - for one thing our results will inevitably suffer when you add more travel into the equation.

It's totally bizarre.

The more I think about this the worse it gets.  I hope this isn't the thinking that pervades the club from the board down.

I'll add a few to the 22 and 27 December games and bring along as many as I can.

P.S. Has Yellow Fever stopped emailing people when there are replies to threads?

I'm sure the Auckland crowd came to see the dancing girls - same as TW spectators come for the sausages. 

Unforunately a tad late for this week's one.

just emailed mr dome with a please explain!

Actually - in the FZ is OK.

 I don't think you can extrapolate that to bad players ALWAYS make good coaches TopLeft.

What about "Average players make Average coaches"?

What about noone makes good referees...

Football culture: Ticket prices, fan base, standing at games, yoof focus...

The German way 

und ein andere 

Mr David Dome, could you please stop threatening the public that you will take games away from Wellington if they don't start showing up? It's clearly not encouraging people to get along to games, and is just alienating your loyal fanbase.

So much this, they talk about the declining fan numbers, yes less on Sunday, but did they see the weather? Our average so far this season is still above the average after the same number of home games last season. And other than season one it has grown slowly, come up with better ideas to get people along, not threaten us with taking games away.

Not really sure how telling people who are not coming now, that if they don't come then the games will be moved is going to encourage them to come. I see there is another article on Stuff today about moving games (Talking 5 games a year elsewhere), so lets see, more travel for our players, more games "away" from home, I don't see how this idea is helpful.

WHat annoys me is no-one seems to be able to even ask, let alone answer the difficult question - why are crowd numbers so poor?

I think I'm correct that's the worst crowd for a weekend match, if not it's very close, but it's not the first game played in poor conditions.  So something is different now to previous seasons and I still haven't heard any convincing theories as to why that may be.

So why are the crowds so poor?  Taking games on the road is a quick fix but it ignores the problem.  Easy for Fred to float it but I'd suggest he's thought about it for 5 seconds and ignored all of the down sides.  It's short term - it removes one of our greatest advantages, how can we voluntarily play matches away from our home venue and expect it not to affect our results.

 Also ignores trends like the 5k drop between the two Chch crowds or the huge drop between Dunedin pre-season and Dunedin in season (no students, blah. blah. blah).  Either way it's a business model that doesn't trend positively.

 There is advertising?

Other than the stock standard "where wellington go to see....Del Piero" I see nothing.

The economy is a very sound reason. With you not being in Wellington you wouldn't have a very good view of that JD, so I can understand why it wouldn't sound convincing to you.

Wellington is getting smashed with redundancies. Yes a lot in government but a lot elsewhere too, and don't forget that less government in the city means less money for all the companies that service government, including retail in general as well as big suppliers. I'm involved with a decent sized company (300 staff)  that's been shedding numbers all over the show, and our larger parent company (also wellington-based) is shedding staff at an eye-watering rate. 

I've escaped redundancy but I've also not been attending phoenix games for the first time since our inception. Purely financial reasons, new baby and new house on the kapiti coast. However if the economy was better and I wasn't so careful with our money, I would still go. The world economic situation has not yet affected my job or cash flow, but it has changed my behaviour with our finances, enough to make me miss an entire phoenix season (among other things) and save our money instead. That trend in financial decision-making is reflected in recent survey results I heard on national radio - if people aren't being made redundant then they are at least changing their spending habits and saving more of their money. The phoenix suffers for that unfortunately, and it's reflected in all our sporting crowds.

Can't say I'm a huge fan of that campaign, I really don't think it gets a message across to the average punter. In my opinion "GO TO THE F***ING FOOTBALL FOR F***S SAKE" would be more effective. It'd at least be a little more obvious.

Think got 3.7K to that aweful Perth game on sunday in January.

Also worth noting that the Lions only got 6k to their semifinal in the ITM cup this year. The last black cap cricket game got 9K on a saturday. Hurricanes games ranged from 9K to 22K.