I don't think anyone is criticising people on here who don't go to games because of family or work or geography or anything like that. I think it's when people don't go but have no excuse other than the poor form or the club's attitude or something like that that people are getting wound up.
I don't want to tell people what they should do with their money and time - if people don't want to go to games then that's fine. Each to their own. But I do get pissed off if people who call themselves fans and were fighting to save the club and bitching about the FFA then just decide that because we are on a bad run of form they are going to stay home. Didn't the whole metrics/savethenix thing make us realise that the club is dependent not only on the goodwill of the FFA but on the support of the people of Wellington?
Yes we are in shark form. Yes this has been a frustrating season. Yes it is annoying to watch the team roll over meekly and get smashed by Adelaide. But this is the exact time when the club needs the fans. We need to keep getting good crowds. We need to have a great atmosphere so that if a random comes along they want to come back.
When results are going against us the casuals won't turn up to bolster the crowds. The publicity that the Nix in particular and football in NZ in general has had recently has been horrible, and we are fighting the start of the Super rugby season for public attention too. The only way we will maintain decent crowds at this point is if all the fans who are emotionally invested in this club get their arses through the gates at home games.
Plus bigger crowds drive the team on and make better results more likely!
It's simple for me. We are missing two starting strikers, to injury and to abject Sarpong-failure. We are missing our toughest defender and on field motivator. We had no club up to a couple of weeks ago and so could not address the problems in the January window.
Despite that we beat a team 5-1 that was otherwise about to go top of the League, in what was a performance when everything went right, but in which we also played pretty damn well. We then beat another club that was about to go top of the League, 2-1, in a performance that was a bit fortunate but throughout which the players worked their guts out, at home, in Dura's 200th game, to hold a lead that it looked like we'd loose every minute from around the 20 minute mark..
I'm not seeing guys not playing as hard as they can. I am seeing a team that has pretty big limitations right now that they simply cannot overcome every week, BUT that has nevertheless done us proud in a couple of yuuuuuuuuuge wins that no-one expected. So we then get towelled by the team that will likely win the League on current form, which had the sort of goal to shot ratio that we got against WSW and a few heads went down on the field. And we are frustrated here. I guess hardly surprising given the extent to which we'd over-performed the last few weeks.
Personally I enjoyed last nights game. Adelaide played some fantastic, clinical, fast, counter attacking football and they were very, very organised and disciplined in defence. They were worth watching. We had no-one with the skills, pace or luck to break down the sort of defence that our weakened team has had trouble breaking down all year. But we went closer several times than we have in other games. Surprised we lost? Not really. Dissapointed? Sure. Do we have a football team? Yes we do. With Ernie stating he is looking for two strikers and two defenders for next year, and with a ten year license do I think we'll be a much better team next year. Sure, I do. Sure, I hope we do.
I turned up last night. We didn't win. Shark happens.
Magnificent post.
Agree with most of this but we do not have a 10 year licence. We have a 4 year licence then a hurdle, then 3 plus another hurdle, then 3 more.