Let's focus on the positives here.
The Phoenix are close to if not the best supported sporting team in Wellington (total crowd numbers per season).
There were 7500 people there on Sunday for an ordinary league game, poor team on a very bad run of results against Perth, not a glamour side. That's disappointing but if it was 8500 people it would have apparently been fine. That 1000 people. They are in the ball park, it's not as if they need to double crowds.
The club need to move on, start focusing on the people who are turning up and stop turning every slightly poor crowd into a story about the future of the club is on the line. Who knows, perhaps if they started understanding why people go they might do a better job of attracting the missing 1-2k they are so obsessed with.
And if they want to obsess over crowds, which is frankly tedious, how about doing it behind closed doors for once because I am sick of hearing about it and it's not news!
The article in the paper on Tuesday after a Sunday game should be about, in no particular order:
- follow up from Ernie with more detail about the team's performance
- injury news etc
- discussion of how the new guys went, maybe some quotes,
- thinking about possible changes for the weekend
Dome needs to get on top of the media and go back to PR 101 - control the news cycle. The dompost will write crap from time to time but there is far too much focus on off field stuff. The last thing we need after 1 game, 1 GAME, is more Phoenix in crisis headlines.
Focus on the football and the fans you have, it's so simple I don't understand why this isn't happening.
Absolutely agree.
It's time to appreciate the 7700 that do turn up.
I like to put it into context:
- The standard of the football in NZ / Australia is much lower than in Europe and South America (Whereas we are up against some of the best Cricketers / Rugby pros in the world)
- There are many sports which are popular in NZ
- NZ has a small population
Considering this and the fact we are not playing well to me shows that a crowd of 7000+ is actually pretty good!
Perhaps we should try and focus on how to make a pro football club with the crowds we're getting work, rather than focusing too much on trying to increase attendances?