gerry atric wrote:
I think if we are searching for reasons like financial help the AFL has given to North and Port to justify our current lowly position, we are never going to go anywhere. How about asking how we managed to go from the greatest club, the best off field and on field to the mediocrity we have become? Totally from our own bad decisions. Failure to understand drafting. It has been in for almost 30 years and we are still close to the worst club at it. Not understanding the importance of supporters, taking them for granted and losing membership. Lack of young supporters. Shocking financial decisions. Forget whinging about what Port gets from the AFL. The Hawks were going to become Melbourne 15 years or so ago. Now they are the AFL powerhouse. What are we doing about getting to there? Port are certainly way ahead of us as a club and so are more than half the league. Lets learn from those doing better, and think of our own ideas instead of trying to copy others. Lets become great again by being smarter, not the moribund old dinosaur we have been. Be patient, draft really well, develop players, connect with supporters. Our long term future is at stake. If we are ordinary for long enough we will never get out of it. The time is now for a genuine detailed five year plan with substance across the whole club that will make us successful again. For 15 years now we seem to have been rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Great post!
One thing that has caught my eye is that all the teams with biggest memberships 50k+ (Pies, Adelaide, Port, WCE, Haw, Ess, Rich) have one of 2 things in common.
They have one team town status (Adelaide, WCE) or the have huge media representation, i.e Eddie, Kochie and Kennett* as Presidents or Watson, Robbo, Bartlett, Molloy etc
I think that we may be giving too much credit to the administrations of these clubs and we need to also focus our efforts in utilising the carlton supporters in media to help push the message.
Think about it as the speed kills campaign, statistics show that the reduction in road toll doesn't reflect the message, yet if you repeat the message often enough people buy into it.
So the question is how to we tap into our media personalities to take an active role in promoting the club which grows their popularity which in turn will grow ours?