What's really wrong with the Wellington Phoenix?

That is funny as!!

Good luck with your protest LG.

I applaud Lonegunman's bravery and look forward to seeing if he follows through in action.

I reiterate once again that not going to games after you've already bought your season ticket means nothing to the Nix management.

Don't buy a seasonpass and sit and on the sidelines and bitch instead.

I'll take some pics for you D. Thanks for the support. You are right about they have my money so don't care.

Dolaras on many occasions you have taken a hammering on these forums by many (some justified, some not, some by the fever elite and some not)

On this occasion look at this rationally.

If joe blogs whom no one knows and sits with his wife in the middle of the stadium leads a conga line (or what ever you call it) and told the fever to join him across the stadium in protest at the management of this club, then no one will join.

A number here have worked hard and assumed positions of responsibility within the fever and chosen to do so for love of the club. By doing so they have appeared on TV, had articles written about them, made podcasts, appeared in TV adverts, secured a profile and earnt the respect of others.

It would take that person to lead any meaningful protest and change.

Look at the government. Everyone knew that Labour was fudgeed last year. The polls told them that. Our club is similarly fudgeed at the moment - the crowds and viewer numbers tell you that. 

Did Joe Bloggs initiate the change? 

Yes, In a way he did by saying no in the polls.

Did Joe Bloggs make the meaningful change? 

No it had to be done by the elite within the party whom had worked their way to that position.

Bottom line, if Patrick chose to lead the protest it would work 

Remove the "self" from the issue and look at the bigger picture. Think of the kids that may want to watch the Nix in 20 years time.

LG, if you're on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media, make sure you tag the Nix official accounts. Take photos, tell them why you're doing it. If you're not on any social media, find a mate who does and can post a pic & story for you.

The idea that people would actually do what Patrick says is hilarious. 

This isn’t the RBB, people wouldn’t blindly follow what a capo tells them to do. They certainly wouldn’t blindly do what Patrick tells them to do!

I don't know the relevance of the RBB to our issues but I think the majority would not find it hilarious but serious.

I am on Facebook and have said the same stuff on the Supporters page. Seems  I really could do with some heavy weight endorsements with this, but Still I will make a stand alongside Ballane and everyone on this forum and their friends are welcome to join in. The more the merrier. You wont miss the game, the players will hear you from a different part of the ground but a point will have been made!

I love the Nix but every season in recent years, has been a season of let downs and shaftings. Let's make a change and a difference, even if it means we only get each others respect. I certainly have nothing to lose by doing this.

Good on ya LG. 

think I will be chanting ‘O wellington’ and ‘Welly oh’ as much as possible during the 90 minutes next game day!

Phoenix, you are AWFUL. 

But I like you

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3erkYB1oTvs

If instead of showing bare-chested Patrick beating a drum SKY TV shows a footage of LG peeing into a wetsuit our ratings may go up.

I wish we had a pmsl button.  That is so funny. 

Something I'm a little irked about is hearing the coach talking about I've got to do this and that and before him Ernie introducing academies etc - why on earth is the club depending on the coach to set the direction of the club? Isnt that an organisational/governance thing? I accept that the coach is going to have a fair amount of influence and should be getting the players he wants but it just seems like no one is actually running the club or following an obvious strategy.

In answer to the original question, I believe that the main problem is that the club don’t give a FUCK about the fans, no matter where they are based. To take two games to Auckland in under a month is ridiculous, & for one of those games to be the final game of the season, just goes to show how Little Respect the club has for its long suffering fan base. 

I didn’t buy a season ticket this year, because it was my personal protest against the club taking games away from Wellington, it looks as though there will be a lot of others that won’t bother with season tickets next season, & probably a lot that won’t go to games. 

I shall be in Auckland in March, & I will be protesting, once again, about the Traveling Circus, I shall be protesting about Huawei calling the shots, & I will be protesting about Welnix. 

This club is, I’m sorry to say, FUCKED. 

I think doing it without clearly explaining the reasoning behind it to the fans honestly is really pretty appalling.  Yes, decisions have to be made but to not come out and explain what those are (and why the change had to come 4 weeks before the end of the season) is really just diabolical

Just retweet the A-League tweet about the move for a start, it's not hard.

you underestimate yourself there Patrick. For many outside of the YF zone you are known as the crazy dude that wears the white suit and bangs the drum. Whether you like it or not you'd get a lot more by in to a protest if you were leading or at least a prominent figure in it than your ordinary fan

Of course you'd have to want to protest in the first place :-)

Surely an email to season ticket holders who have paid for a game they now won't get to see?

Can we have a protest about Patrick not leading a protest?

They have a membership database.  The BARE MINIMUM I would expect would be for an email to go out to the members simultaneously with the press release to the media advising members of the change.  And it wouldn't take much to do if they gave one flying fudge.

"Pied" in the sense that people would throw pies at him

He prefers sausage rolls

The talk of leaders of protest requires a rethink as there are no leaders and protests should be an individual decision which could result in a new branch of supporters coming into existence, possibly called the Yellow Fever Faction. 

The two groups could be summed up as:

The Yellow Fever (YF) : has engaged and continues to promote support with in a series of chants, tifos, pub crawls, congas, away trips as well as many hassles with security over the course of two decades.Their activity peaked in the 2009-2010 season, which ended in a incident of reported daylight robbery that became known as the "Hand of Payne".

The Yellow Fever Faction (YFF)  : no details of existence, organisation or members currently known 

These groups are thought to be generational in foundation :

- the "first generation" : consisted of founders of YF, joined in 2007, when the Phoenix rose from the ashes of the Auckland based Knights/Kingz ;

- the "second generation", joined in 2010 and remained in YF,  after the some of the first generation became jaundiced

- the "third or Dome generation":  aka YFF, which is believed to have emerged late in the 2017/2018 season after a guerrilla operation by Welnix moved the last game of the season to Auckland. This group is assumed to operate on a 3-fan cell basis

YFF song is rumoured to be "there's a faction too much friction"

The uncomfirmed motto of YFF could be, "First Rule of the YFF is..."

Ticketek have now emailed out details of the change\refund anyway. And they have to admit that sales for the game are now handled by Ticketmaster, lol.

Meanwhile waiting for the email from the Phoenix

If Patrick drums we're leaving the Zone :-) 

What's the problem we're trying to solve? Phoenix needs to be a viable multi-year business proposition, but instead it appears to take action on a year on year basis (sometimes month on month)

Repeatable success only guarantees high crowds, not reliable crowds. Especially in Wellington where support is fickle no matter what the sport. Reliable crowds is by creating an association and loyalty to the club. Taking that sentiment that you all feel on here for the Phoenix and finding a way of getting everyone to have it. I have no idea how by the way. My approach follows a path of effectively brain washing my children, forcing them to go to games and repeatedly buying season passes no matter how much I whine and gripe about it. But not everyone wants to spend their disposable income that way when it is way to easy to find alternative ways to get to the game when demand (occasionally) rises due to the way tickets are given away, marketed etc depending on the marketing strategy for that week.

The A League wage cap makes it difficult to attract talent. A few years ago, the A League was on the cusp of being the ideal retirement plan and wind-down for ageing (still talented) footballers that didn't want to drop down a league or two in their home country, but then MLS (and then China) pretty much took that mantle. The A League is now further down the pecking order, and Wellington (the City, not the Phoenix) will struggle to look compelling or attractive to a professional footballer whose personal drivers are more about how they live off the field and the perceived lifestyle that Australia can offer, than what they occasionally do on the field.

I love Wellington, I love the Phoenix. But I am wondering whether a New Zealand professional football club can survive in Wellington, at least when it doesn't have a football ground that is suitable for the way Wellingtonians follow teams and attend sporting events.

So, the question comes back to, which is the problem we're solving? Is it having the Phoenix survive for ever as a Wellington club, or as a club representing NZ? I'd rather have both, but the current lack of stadium choices, plus trying to compete with an Australia as a destination for a footballer and their family, combined with the lack of wide-spread local loyalty, makes the latter more achievable than the former. 

I don't buy this whole arguement about not being able to attract professional footballers to Wellington the city. There are plenty of shark-holes that have professional teams stocked with professional players in this world. Its not like they are expected to move here forever.

Wellington is repeatedly ranked as one of the best cities in the world but taste is individual, there's obviously the joke about Smeltz and shopping.

agree - players go where they get paid, if undesirable cities were an issue how do Middlesbrough, Grimsby and Luton support professional teams?

Wellington's culture/nightlife wasn't that much of an issue when we had "Terry money"

You're right, there are plenty of dumps in the world that attract players. But they don't have to deal with clubs that have to work within a salary cap. So each club gets to negotiate completely specific terms that are uniquely attractive to that player. Money talks.

Over here, if you're not classed as a marquee player, then you will be impacted by the A League challenges (salary cap divided by number of players on roster... which is around NZ$3m / 23 players) and is the same for every club. So... if you were a professional football player from overseas that is in the middle / twilight of their career, that was being offered a similar sized pay packet by every club in the A League because of the way the wage structure occurs, the differentiator is likely to be things like lifestyle, weather, family etc. That is especially so when these choices are never life choices, they are short-term choices based on the length of a contract, like extended holidays.

I'm not begrudging them those choices, as if I had to change cities / locations etc every few years based on how long my contract goes for, I'd focus on cities and towns that can guarantee a certain lifestyle whilst I'm there.

Perhaps it is flawed, it was a hypothesis not a fact. I'm just streaming.

But... it is interesting that in the last few years we have gone through quite a few non-Kiwi players that haven't really adapted to Wellington. We have had a few, but they are the minority and therefore likely exceptions that prove the rule. 

Wellington is a fantastic city for those of us that are looking to spend our lives here, but a footballer... is a footballer, and whether you believe it or not, they expect a certain lifestyle and status. Whether we think they deserve it is neither here nor there. All I am saying is that if we are trying to attract players, we need to consider all the things that attracts footballers, and what will help us appeal to them over our competitors. If we believe that all players should 'want' to play for the Phoenix, then we are forgetting that it is a transient job that has to have benefits for them. If you don't think it's a hard things for the Phoenix to do, you only need to look at the amount of player turnover we've had.