I’m still a relative newbie to football fandom so as per with my usual opinions take this with a grain and a half of salt. I jumped on board the Kalezic season, in an introduction that should have had me sticking my nose up at the beautiful game a mere three matches in. Luckily I was becoming so enamored with this newfound intrigue for the sport, the results didn’t matter. “Oh yeah, New Zealand doesn’t have any renowned pedigree in football. Of course, these are the results a club from New Zealand would put up” and that kind of papered over the cracks. Love him or hate him but fast-forward to that Rudan season where pre-covid hoo-hah we looked like genuine grand final contenders combined with a National team set up that had returned from the wilderness to come inches away from a shot at a bronze medal at the Olympics. And suddenly it clicked for me. Why shouldn’t a New Zealand team be putting up results? The talent, and passion, and grassroots setup is there?
Yes, admittedly, I couldn’t have picked a richer part of Nix history to jump in on—more playoff appearances than not. I think what’s so jarring about this season is the hopelessness. The galling apparentness that there is no Plan B. We had seasons under Talay where you didn’t know if one of the young guns was gonna have the game of their lives and race us to a triumphant 3-1 victory or if our defense was going to collapse and we’d cake it on the receiving end of a 5-1 splattering. But it was appointment viewing either way. And you knew as a fan you were going to be entertained. And you trusted there would still always be slight possibility of a way back into the game, attacking options were there it was just about whether we stick the landing or not. This season the impression has been it’s as if we are in damage control mode less than one minute after the ref blows the starting whistle.
We as a fanbase always yarn at the start of the season. “Oh, it’s just gonna take a while for the boys the gel, and mesh.” But we’re two-thirds of the way in and the boys haven’t gelled or meshed, or even looked remotely aligned or competent in what they want to achieve on the field. Is it the players, the coach? Maybe the administration doesn’t have any killer instict? Has the introduction of Auckland FC, and something to compare our beloved club against, put that lack of killer instinct into the spotlight? It’s like a slacker who has rested laurels for all too long throughout their twenties and then one morning turned thirty and woken up from a decade-long drunken haze, and had the horrible realisation that “crap, nobody is coming to rescue us.” Even in a bad season you still have a few senior heads who continue to show their class and display why they are seasoned pros. It’s really tough to watch at the moment because it seems like even our senior guys have lost any spark to carry a game.
We’ve got not flair, we’ve lost our joy on the field, we don’t back ourselves, we seem unlikely to win those 50/50 moments that could turn a game.
Should Chiefy get the extension? It’d be uncharacteristic of the club not to give it. And if this season has heavily delivered below expectations, last season certainly punched well above. There’s a balance there.
It’s been a tough watch this season, and despite hoping against hope, it’s really grueling when you can’t even trust your side to be able to pop a few shots of, if nothing else. Chiefy and Domey seem to think they can turn it around in the final nine games. There’s been nothing on display so far this season that would suggest their assertion is grounded in reality. But jeez, I really hope they can because I love this club, and have loved riding the ups and downs of the last seven seasons, and whether it happens this coming Friday or not until this October, or beyond that even - I can't wait for the day that we see us firing on all cylinders once again.
Yes, admittedly, I couldn’t have picked a richer part of Nix history to jump in on—more playoff appearances than not. I think what’s so jarring about this season is the hopelessness. The galling apparentness that there is no Plan B. We had seasons under Talay where you didn’t know if one of the young guns was gonna have the game of their lives and race us to a triumphant 3-1 victory or if our defense was going to collapse and we’d cake it on the receiving end of a 5-1 splattering. But it was appointment viewing either way. And you knew as a fan you were going to be entertained. And you trusted there would still always be slight possibility of a way back into the game, attacking options were there it was just about whether we stick the landing or not. This season the impression has been it’s as if we are in damage control mode less than one minute after the ref blows the starting whistle.
We as a fanbase always yarn at the start of the season. “Oh, it’s just gonna take a while for the boys the gel, and mesh.” But we’re two-thirds of the way in and the boys haven’t gelled or meshed, or even looked remotely aligned or competent in what they want to achieve on the field. Is it the players, the coach? Maybe the administration doesn’t have any killer instict? Has the introduction of Auckland FC, and something to compare our beloved club against, put that lack of killer instinct into the spotlight? It’s like a slacker who has rested laurels for all too long throughout their twenties and then one morning turned thirty and woken up from a decade-long drunken haze, and had the horrible realisation that “crap, nobody is coming to rescue us.” Even in a bad season you still have a few senior heads who continue to show their class and display why they are seasoned pros. It’s really tough to watch at the moment because it seems like even our senior guys have lost any spark to carry a game.
We’ve got not flair, we’ve lost our joy on the field, we don’t back ourselves, we seem unlikely to win those 50/50 moments that could turn a game.
Should Chiefy get the extension? It’d be uncharacteristic of the club not to give it. And if this season has heavily delivered below expectations, last season certainly punched well above. There’s a balance there.
It’s been a tough watch this season, and despite hoping against hope, it’s really grueling when you can’t even trust your side to be able to pop a few shots of, if nothing else. Chiefy and Domey seem to think they can turn it around in the final nine games. There’s been nothing on display so far this season that would suggest their assertion is grounded in reality. But jeez, I really hope they can because I love this club, and have loved riding the ups and downs of the last seven seasons, and whether it happens this coming Friday or not until this October, or beyond that even - I can't wait for the day that we see us firing on all cylinders once again.
