The team which will kill this club is not the women’s team and never was irrespective of performance.
But the team that saves it might be.
I know people will point at Canberra as proof that an ALW team on its own can’t pay the bills, but I suspect that between salaries and the cost of hiring Sky/Hnry we’re bleeding way more red ink on the ALM side this season.
Yes, we’re lucky that an unlikely set of circumstances lined up to get us Bev as a coach, but it’s not all luck. Emma wouldn’t be here if the club was the shambles you make it out to be, and I’m sure they had some serious conversations about committing professionally and personally to Wellington that could easily have gone the other way.
Similarly Bev’s mana had a big part to play in our signings this season, but would Vlok for example have moved here solely for a coach who could well (as coaches do) move on?
Players aren’t stupid, they know they’re signing to a club not an individual manager, and it’s taken years of investment and behind-the-scenes work to build the Phoenix as a club - work that you seem very quick to discount based on the performance of just one of our two professional teams.