What's really wrong with the Wellington Phoenix?

Not long then huh? Actually, the team did turn up, but they didn't play. 

Now, on a serious note. Two articles and yes, I know it is stuff but reading some of the comments. They say a lot of what "neutral" supporters, not people on here are seeing and saying....Article 1

Burn all the bridges.

People from outside of Wellington probably shouldn't be telling those who turn up to games what to do, or not to do.

With crowds around the 5k mark it would be safe to assume that people living in Welly don't turn up. 

I just think telling people what they should do and getting angry at them for not rocking the boat is crap. Maybe the elite just don't think protesting will work? 

Its down to personal choice isn't it? I'm not a huge advocate of protest myself, mainly because I can't be fudged. But historically quite a lot of important change has come about because of protest so it can't be written off.

So the communications guy should go help the first team? Or are you saying sack anyone not related to the on field product? You can have individuals in a company doing their own thing which doesn't impact on the stuff that other people do.

So why bag other people for not protesting when you can't be bothered yourself? 

Those pushing the "Fever elite kiss Welnix's butt" theory have certainly not been watching what, for example, patrick or 2ndBest have been saying on Twitter. It's far from Pollyanna sweetness-and-light.

It seems like they could have done with his communication skills on the field last night. He might be the missing link between winning and losing.

I was one earlier in this thread calling for the Elite to start protesting as well but realise can't tell others what to do. I agree with Dolores that they haven't been kissing Phoenix arse on Twitter and have been calling a spade and spade as far as club is concerned. 

I see LG has done a protest thread now, so hopefully some momentum can be built from that. 

Why would you think I don't like anyone? I don't know most people on here.

I'm just saying initiatives are exclusive, pursuing one doesn't mean another suffers. And if you get a good team on the pitch then you want the other parts of the organisation already primed and running so that you can exploit it.

I doubt anyone thought, "let's spend a whole lot of money on a re-brand and not put any effort into the team." Instead they no doubt thought "new era, new team, it's going to be successful, let's rebrand and be ready for that success."

It's not a zero sum game, you can work on improving everything outside of the on field performance while also working to improve the on field performances without either negatively impacting the others.

As you have termed them "the Elite", I invite them all to come along and join me/us in a peaceful protest. It would be appreciated, however I do endorse the idea that it is up to the individual to make their own choice. The more the merrier though!

Ryan, have a close look at your previous posts

You brought up the communications guy having a beard and short hair, as some sort of redeeming quality. For fudges sake how is that relevant to anything?

The bottom line is that this guy if he is the marketing manager or communications manager, only claim to fame is being on a podcast ran by the fever two years ago (no doubt he was invited on in any case).

Apparently he knows his football, well I know my football but that doesn't make me a marketing manager for a football club.

If a marketing or communications manager is anonymous and no one knows his name then he is dong squat all.

One of the first such managers, I even recall his first name - John (why because he was communicating and doing the job)

My point is that this club is dying and along with the players/coach someone needs to look at both the back and front office.

You get the front office in order, then it usually works out in the back.

didnt we have "thundersticks" as our marketing lady for a while? she was pretty good at getting us the team noticed for a short while.

When did I ever say anything was a redeeming quality? I said I assumed that he was the guy because he talked about a hipster club and he had a hipster beard. If anything it was a slight piss take and absolutely no judgement for or against was offered.

What I did say is that the Phoenix are doing a bloody good job on the social media front this year, their twitter banter is top notch and they do a lot of things that they didn't used to do with live streaming. And I thought the re-brand was excellent. The fact is that the Phoenix are trying to align themselves with what is stereotypically Wellington, which makes sense. I also like the fact that we now have the best beer in the league and probably the best food and if the game is crap then that's at least something.

I said nothing about the football, just that people were singling that guy out and I wanted to simply say all the good things that I've seen from the Phoenix since he joined.

His beard is marvelous though...

Not sure what people expect from a communication manager. I don't think the club has to much money to spend, you could easily spend marquee salary for some AD's on TV and you would gain 100 more people in the stadium. Fans then would complain that they spent all money on fancy TV spots than on better players.

All they do is try to get some free press, social media, send the boys to schools. I bet those business deals they can make at the Auckland game are bigger than giving free tickets to the last game avoiding the spoon game. Free tickets a free for them, too. This is business reality.

I think the Cahill bash of the A-League, lazy no pressure under the team mates, has a lot of truth. Players think they work really really hard, but in fact they are only the best kids from Palmerston (no offence here) and this it. Broich played in the A-League because it was an easy job for him, he loved the lifestyle in Aussie.

Respectfully, just because you haven't heard of him doesn't make him shark at his job. I trust the Phoenix to have employed the best person for the job more than I trust your opinion on backroom staffers.

hows the club and trust working for you at the moment Patrick?

As for "invisible" behind the scenes work, remind me to mention that to my boss in my next annual review

your reference to "invisible work" is my point, no one seems to be accountable in the front office. 

Someone needs to go through that organisation with a fine tooth comb and figure out what people are doing, starting from the CEO to the receptionist

We are cleaning out players, it is worth a look at the front office to determine if that needs a clean as well.

If invisible work is really there then it can be acknowledged and actually added to someone's responsibilities. In the meantime talking about it is a nonsense and a bit rich

The coach and his revolving door player policy need to go how on earth did the phoenix employ him!!!!!!

Pretty much the only time we have had decent players is when Terry .S was in charge!

Na the coach is  dictatorial and has arevolving door policy players are contracted and leave why? Now even KRISHNA WANTS TO GO 

Where the hell have you popped up from..

Please go back there. How many more "Darije is shark" posts can you do..

Lots of negative multis mushrooming. 

Could be some new people who are fed up too.

The Phoenix & The Yellow Fever are both following the same downward trend. 

Neither seem to give a FUDGE about the supporters, & haven’t for the last couple of years!

More interested in getting trendy & PC, rather than being a down to earth, mediocre football club, & a down to earth football supporters group, who call the referee a COD, when he FUDGES up, & we call the players SHARK, when they play like Sunday pub team players (& that is being harsh on Sunday pub players!)

Protests should be made, let Welnix know that we are FUDGED off, I presume that NZ Dave has been passing on the concerns of the supporters? 

How much marketing is “Rich” going to do for the game this weekend?

Probably as much as every other weekend- FUDGE ALL !

It will be a pleasure to join LG in whatever protest he wishes to make at the weekend. 

balloons

A long time supporter and reader of the forum here.

What prompted me to post is Kiwi Hatters earlier post.

These days my wife’s got me by the balls, so I don’t go out much, but one day I‘ll have to have a chat to Dave (aka Hard News) about what changed towards the end of that season with Ernie where we were top for a while. He is certain to know!

Sometime that season we got found out tactically, but something also happened where there was a drop in passion amongst the players, and we never recovered. The back office had already been stagnating, most likely to a marketer being asked to step up, but something also changed in the supporters. One indicator is the pod. Listening to Dave, Smithy, Boxy and Dale was like having a drinking session with Ozzy and Lemmy; now it’s more like having one with Michael Jackson and Boy George.

Anyway, we now attend games as three generations (my old man, myself and my son), but I have been buying my season tickets at the last minute for the last few seasons, because I am not sure why I bother anymore.

Actually, the biggest thing is not seeing the PASSION in the players.

Here are some observations, if anyone is interested, particularly the Phoenix management:

1. I would drink my own urine for a week if we won the league (i.e. I don’t give a flying fudge what beer is on offer at the stadium).

2. I would stand bare feet in cow shark in a paddock to see MY team WIN at HOME in WELLINGTON (i.e. loosing at home should be a rare occasion, and if so one of those fabled losses, not a meek surrender. Also, the stadium is least of our worries right now and has always been. As long as it is in Wellington, I'm fine with a  paddock.).

3. I want to see players sooner come off the field on a stretcher than as a looser (i.e. often I feel that we show more passion playing social league football/futsal/indoor that our players do playing for OUR team).

4. If times are bare and we have to field severely limited players, I want to see OUR severely limited players who make up for lack of skill with heart, not some Aussies or imports who don’t care.

5. If you spend time and money to focus on getting on field personnel to achieve the above, rather than discussing beer and food options, cartoonish marketing and dumb rebranding exercise, you will eventually NOT need a marketing department as all you’d have to do is let people know when and on which paddock we are playing and they will come.

I am not happy to see people on the forum turning on other supporters. I know you want to have an avenue to vent at someone, but why turn this forum into a slagging place?

Short answer to the original question: We need to start winning. 

If we don't, we're going to see a lot more of the bollocks conspiracy theories from 'fans' where everyone thinks they know what's wrong with the club. 

I doubt there is any agenda, people are just doing what's natural to them. It's been stated many times that the Fever is nothing more than a loosely aligned group of people. A good chunk of the users on this forum don't even stand in the zone.

The thing is the fan base is not something overly organised or formal, the people who are calling the shots are only calling the shots because they took the initiative and are doing something for the community without asking much in return. It's easy to take pot shots at someone for producing a podcast (and I've enjoyed both Phoenix podcasts), it's much harder to actually go out and do it. But the good thing is because things are so loose around here if there's something you don't like you can pretty easily do something about it.

I can already see people are unhappy about my comments on the podcast.

Just for the record, I know what big balls it takes to do something like publishing a public broadcast, as I've made music records and performed live in my past life.

And, you wouldn't believe what comes with it.

So, a bit of a joke, don't take it too seriously.

The same goes for hyperbole I used to illustrate the point.

What I meant to say is, as someone already paraphrased succinctly, throw all efforts into winning (particularly home) games and we can worry about the beer/stadium/marketing later.

Is the structure not:

Owners - A group of people prepared to burn money to keep football in Wellington.(Not unlimited money as most moaners expect)

Board - a group of people prepared to give their time to keep football Wellington. (I believe some voluntary)

Football Committee - A group of people with a football or managerial knowledge. (Working to get players to accept Wgtn is not the arse of the world)  

General Manager - A Guy trying to be a fire fighter and balance the budget with a smile. (commonly incorrectly refereed to as CEO)

Commercial Manager - Poor guy trying to fund the balance of the non FFA funded costs and balance sponsors desires.

Football Manager - Trying to get a team to the park and back on time and meet the Fox Sport time table.  Keep players in Wgtn.

Communication Manager - Yep that guy - He has Supporters, detractors, press, FFA, and many more to get info for and to.

Operations Coordinator - Getting all things to work out on time and in the right place.

Membership Manager - Yep he has the great job of coordinating things with Ticketeck/TicketMaster and us/you/supporter/detractor.

Community Manager - A person who get players to schools, clubs etc 

Office Staff - Enough said

Volunteers - A Huge group of people who give time to get the games together. ( A group you would not want to switch off with to much anti Nix feeling)

Won't go into: WeeNix - PeweNix - Academy - Under 88 teams -Football Schools - Football fund - Football development fund - 

Edit - Sorry if I missed any group or individual but I am trying to make a living so I can keep supporting The Team!

I hope when the Fever have hui's you attend and make yourself heard. Or do you say nothing and wait for a chance to slag people off on the forum?

If you're unhappy with the direction the fever are taking, volunteer to help out, share your ideas. Calling people who give up their time to try and do things for the fever cods probably isn't going to make them change anything.

With all due respect, two pages of arguments about the marketing guy is a waste of everyone's time.  The club needs (a) a better strategy and (b) better execution of that strategy.

To my mind there are two or three key matters we need to solve going forward which we need to make and then move forward:

(a) Are we going to staff the bulk of our squad with Kiwis or Aussies?  At the start of the season we seemed to be saying no kiwis, and we passed on a number of young kiwis in the states, now we sign Patterson and coach says we need more kiwis.  Make a call.

(b)  Are we serious about developing young players?  If we are why are there better young players at Auckland City and why isn't Singh getting any game time?  If you are serious about developing young players they MUST Be given opportunities in the first team - that becomes a selling point.  On the other hand guys who aren't getting games should be cut to make way - are Rogerson and McGarry really good enough?  If they haven't got a game so far I doubt it.

(c)  How do we get better imports?  We need better foreign players, that is simple.

(b) is obviously linked to (a).  (c) is crucial.