R9 vs Victory | Sat 5th Dec 7:15pm | #FeverTour to QBE Stadium, pregame at The Merchant from 3pm

yeah cool - but why oh why oh why didn't we play in Yellow and Black??

Grandadi, can I ask what kind of Auckland crowds would be good enough for you? 40K like in Melbourne? The kind of crowd the Warriors get? I suspect the question is asked in bad faith - since these grumbles don't seem to happen  after Chch games, it just is sheer anti-Jafatism.

Anyway, it's not me you have to convince that the Nix should only play home games at that inappropriate stadium near the rail lines. The bosses want to expand the market cross-country, because the FFA says they have to, because #metrics. I'm afraid you're stuck with the roadshow in current circumstances.

To answer another groan: if you don't like Akl traffic, don't add to it. You should have parked in town and taken a convenient, no-congestion, free bus.

Agree.  Personally I think we should play in yellow & black every game unless there is a colour clash, and then we change to our 2nd strip, which would be nothing like yellow & black (e.g. last nights silver.  I see no need for the searchlight strip) 

Please don't personalise, it was never a case of " good enough for me"- surely it's just self-evident that Auckland just doesn't do football, after several decades of Knights, Kings and latterly Nix exposure? David Dome on telly just now saying that they want to take more games to Auckland. Nothing is being learned, minimal marketing STILL for most Nix games (with the honourable exception of what the Fever organised, which gathered more media traction than anything else I can remember from the Club, BTW)- I go back to what I said earlier- Einsteins model. If you keep doing the same things over and over, expecting a different result, you're probably a dick head. Or words to that effect.

Word on the street seems to be that FFA made the decision on the kits. If this is true , then its a prime example that are not fit to run a game of football, everything seems to be a one-eyed focus on money, which is rather lacking of recognition that at the end of the day its the fans who pay for everything, whether its attendance money, TV money or sponsorship money.

Hightlights

Nix v Victory

This is completely wrong. 

Two season ago, the club got more income from the two HomeAway games (Auckland and Chch) than the entire season of Wellington games.

It wouldn't have been quite the same last season because of only the one game up in Auckland, but I expect a return to that this year. 

Crowds of 10,000 are perfectly healthy because other parties (councils, sponsors etc) underwrite all the costs associated and the Nix take a large payday based on ticket sales.

I would also like to know how much it costs to rent Albany verses the problem child Westpac. Think you will find it would be cheaper 

Good, sort of, future news.

Warriors will be at Mt Smart for another decade, Western Springs won't become a cricket ground.

And they're looking at the possibility of a 20k capacity rectangular stadium somewhere in central Auckland, you know, so people can get to it easily.

Imo crowds in Auckland with their football base, I would hope for a 20k attendance as it is only once a season. As for the traffic issue, the drivers up there are like the wild west. I saw so many near misses no wonder Motorway Patrol has plenty of footage for the show.

You don't have to pretend. Everything was ok. Pitch bad? Meh. they played on it,these things happen sometime.

What I have seen on here has been a bit of a Wellington wankfest

Atleast our problem child has a decent turf, makes a profit every financial year since it's inception in 2000 based on it's financial report, Good sponsor's, it may not be a rectangular stadium but it's the best stadium along with Forsyth Barr in the country.

Still recovering from being outed as a David Gallop doppelganger at Foxes last night. I may never be respected again.

#TurfOutGallop

So in summary, the result was good, the crowd that made the effort to attend were good, the Merchent was good, the weather was good, the bad referee pulling a Hammy was good.

That was uncanny.

Crowds of 10,000 are perfectly healthy because other parties (councils, sponsors etc) underwrite all the costs associated and the Nix take a large payday based on ticket sales.

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This is precisely the point I was making to Grandadi. Money-wise, 11000 at the Albania sandpit was probably a damn sight better than 15-20k at Eden. Maybe even better than the same number at the RoF, who knows. But it WASN'T a failure, except in the eyes of those who oppose the roadshow on principle, so Einstein is not relevant.

Note I have nothing against the RoF - it's the people who go to a dozen games a season there who complain about wrong shape, wrong size, wrong colour seats, and want it wrecked by a runaway train.

LG: yes, Auckland drivers are awful -or, to put it another way, Wellington drivers are much better, because they have to be in a city which wasn't fudged up for 50 years to make it easier to drive in.

Look, I'm not against the idea of taking a couple of games away from Wellington every year but I do think that the success of those games has to measured against how they contribute to the cluba as a whole. I don't buy Fitzy's argument that its growing the brand outside of Wellington - if that was the case then wouldn't attendance figures in Auckland each year have risen? Instead they are trending in the opposite direction. And I'll accept Patrick's comment that the games are money spinners because sponsors and councils underwrite them. However,the  point I was making was that the public interest and support which the buildup to the Adelaide game and the game itself created will have almost worn off by the time there's another game in Wellington. Normally this wouldn't matter so much but the timing with the FFA license bullshark  and the save the nix campaign has hit us hard. 

Taking games on the road might make more money in the short and medium term but any clubs long term stability relies largely on committed fanswho feel connected to the club. It's a delicate balancing act but I think that the potential value of a new fan in Wellington is far greater than the value of a new fan outside Wellington (purely from a monetary perspective) so games outside Wellington do have to make more money in the short term to make them worthwhile in the long term. If that makes sense. That's what I was meaning about the opportunity cost.

We won and bet the fudgeing victory!

Second clean sheet in a row, both against teams higher on the ladder than us!

Sorry Fitzy, misread your post up there. You're right, if the FFA are measuring fans outside Wellington as part of their BS metrics then I guess we need fans outside Wellington.

We bossed the mother fudgeing victory!

If the roadshow makes money, makes new fans around the country, and keeps the FFA happy, then all cool with me. 

Reckon we should be doing a bit better than 10k in Auckland though. 

Doloras, we have our share of idiots on the roads down here too but with you guys having a larger population, the incidents are a lot higher to view. It was good to hear you on form in the crowd.

It would be interesting to know how the Phoenix merchandise shop did compared to a normal home game.  When we arrived 40 minutes before kick off it was 5 deep at the counter and the staff were frantically trying to keep up. Does the club own the stall or is it franchised out? Anyone know?

But we're back to the quandary - some fans think Aucklanders should support a Wellington team. Either get used to the fact that many won't on principle, or be prepared to make concessions to the out-of-towners, although not stupid ones like "NZ Phoenix" or grey shirts, hopefully.

Thanks! I was actually saving my voice for yelling at my own fullback line today. :)

Here's my match report that barely talks about the match...

http://in-the-back-of-the.net/2015/12/06/pitched-battle/

On attendances, the Warriors pull in 5k more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_New_Zealand_Warriors_season  - but that's with season tickets and all sorts, because they're based here. 

With a one off game, it's not tradition or routine to go to a match, which is sort of how sports crowds work isn't it? The one off nature both makes it special, but also means that if you're not a Nix supporter and something else comes up - or it's hassle to get there, you can sack it off without much worry.

Thanks. Your quote about the Man U fans at the end sums up a major problem with NZ football, that - as opposed to Australia where it's had an indigenous base for 50-odd years with Greeks, Yugoslavs etc - it's been dominated for far too long by Brit expats who grew up in Football League/EPL/SPL culture and still think of that as "real" football. We'll need another 20 years before we have our own indigenous football cutlure.

BTW, our bus driver got lost on the way back to town! We ended up in Newmarket and had to take the slow way back.

Access is a big thing. I've got a school full of football mad kids from Fiji in SE Auckland, some of whom have Nix shirts but most have Arsenal, Barca and all that.

They'll grow up and go to games if it's presented as an opportunity and a regular one. Get them going to NRFL and ASB Prem and they'll go to Nix too.

I think you will find that the majority of the football community in Auckland do support the Phoenix. Everyone i know watches the games on tv and follows their efforts. There is a small group who dont like the Phoenix but they are in a very small minority.  I dont think its a case of some think Aucklanders SHOULD  support the Phoenix,  I think most actually do.  Its a shame we didnt get 15k-20k crowd on Saturday.

The Blues first game of the season at Albany against the Chiefs, the derby as such, only pulled in 300 more supporters than the Nix did yesterday...

http://www.sarugby.net/component/match_centre/?view=match&id=135694&leagueid=2174&homeid=23274&awayid=23284

Yes, it's because the Blues are shark, but that was the FIRST game of the season and they couldn't get much more than the Nix.

There wasn't, I reckon, a 20k crowd for any Blues or Warriors game this year - and they're both based here!

NHS is the birthplace of professional football in this country.

That holds more significance now than something which is now 33 years ago and counting.

I was mainly just going by the previous crowds for nix games in auckland when i made that comment doloras.

If the reason is NHS then we shouldn't play there... perhaps it was sentimentally nice just the once...

I think a kind of tradition was emerging TBH. Last couple of years or times it has been at Eden Park in February. All the football people I know went. 

This time December at QBE- guy at work had his wedding anniversary and I had a really good mate off the plane from England and his Dad's birthday. Imagine there are a few end of year type functions going on and things like this...But all the football folk I know here check the schedule for the Auckland game as soon as it comes out and lock it in....that's a tradition to me...

you get to watch the rest on telly or fly down occasionally, and then there's the one game in your city once a year. There's defn tradition there.

I remember the 20k game at Eden Park had a shirtload of advertising and had Ifill in those ads IIRC and maybe Leo...

Also oddly enough they might have benefitted from the Breakers run, because people who didn't usually go to things were leaving the lounge for that, so did for this too...

Don't think the crowd is that bad, and if we do well and Roy or Roly someone else gets a face you can plaster all over the city we'll probably do all right....

Also I've always enjoyed the Westpac experience. Even for the Bocca Juniors game

...and very nearly its grave. What number am I thinking of? That's right - 527.