Sydney FC must create geographical identity

As many problems as our club may have, I don't see why it's Sydney FC's move when Central Coast Mariners are the team ridiculously trying to claim a region which isn't even in the Central Coast as a cost-cutting exercise. Yes, that's right: The North Shore of SYDNEY is not the Central Coast, it's, surprise surprise, Sydney. I don't care if a few CC residents were Northern Spirit fans, that does not give them automatic right to the North Shore. Also, can I just point out that North Sydney Oval is basically the lowest part of the North Shore and near Sydney CBD and nowhere near the Central Coast? "Oh but the North Shore is closer to the Central Coast". The North Shore is the area in between Sydney's CBD and the Central Coast, and it's about an hour drive along it. Some of it is closer to the CC, some of it is right next to Sydney's city centre. "Oh, but Mariners have a relationship with Gladesville-Hornsby". So does Sydney FC. So do WSW, in fact. Mariners can scout for players in the area but it would make absolutely ZERO sense for the CENTRAL COAST Mariners to play in a part of Sydney, including the team they hope to get back in the W-league. -Born and raised in the North Shore and proud member of Sydney FC.

This. But if Mariners are serious about playing a match a season in Northern Sydney, they're almost better off trying to get something happening. Possibly even taking a ground for example Chatswood Oval, and putting temporary seating in one game a year and bring it to ~12k if possible. Unfortunately there's not much option so NS Oval for now. It would be great to see a Central Coast v SFC match at a North Sydney ground in the next 5-10 years, you would quite easily pack the place out and it would be a big money earner for both clubs. Long term, there NEEDS to be a Northern Sydney team separate to Mariners or SFC, and a South-West team in Campbelltown which is a massive growth trend area and will double population size soon with a very decent stadium already there. Problem facing a North Sydney team isn't if there will be support, but where wil lthey play out of. Because if a North Sydney club targetted directly the Beaches, lower North Shore, Gladesville, all the way over to Meadowbank up to Hornsby across to Frenchs Forest and based themselves at maybe St Leonards or Chatswood, they would draw 10k absolutely no worries and then would have 3 direct rivals. Would be brilliant for the league imo, but first a ground is needed!

Very true, people don't realise that even just Northern Sydney if you isolated it would be in the top 10 cities in the country population wise, from memory we're around 700k up here if you include everything from Honrsby to Castle Hill down the harbour and over to Manly. That's a big market that is definately split, with North of Normanhurst area so Hornsby, Berowra, Turramurra is Mariners turf, and Epping down SFC turf, with everything West of the train line WSW area past Epping.

My bad I thought it was 84, that's when it began, you're right there. Still by then it will be 30+ !

AZ, I have to disagree on your opinion on where western sydney ends.Western Sydney is an official area of sydney with official boundaries.Western Sydney's official border starts at Bankstown council,Aurburn Council,Centenery Drive-Roberts Road is the border.The WSW GM John Tsatsimas publicly stated that their engagement/Catchment area starts at the Bankstown Football association and this almost mirrors western Sydney's official boundaries. In respects to the inner west,SFC is heavily aligned to the CDSFA(Canterbury district soccer football association-covers the inner west) and I can't see how Shannon Cole doing a weekly article in the news limited owned inner west courier overrides this.A large proportion of SFC member come from the inner west. In respects to inner west wanderers,they're your true bandwagoners and claiming an area of sydney that contradicts western Sydney's official boundaries,WSW's own policy and are doing so to suit themselves. I know a few that live inbetween a clubs that was given $3K by SFC last week,another club that SFC visits twice a year and clubs that SFC have supported for years but claim they support WSW due to what they do for the community but would never live in the west themselves ????????

I'll be at the Mariners North Sydney Oval game Mid. I think it's an excellent idea if done only once possibly twice per season.

Believe it or not the SFS was built in 1988 so it's only 25 years old. I agree though it could do with a face lift.

Exactly, if we keep doing this we will be in no worries whatsoever. We've got several MASSIVE games per year in the Derby and Big Blue, plus Central Coast visit and Brisbane usually is a big game too. We'll be fine, we're nearly at 10,500 members, if anyone said that soon we'd have 10,500 members for a football club playing not in the Western suburbs core area (ie. Marconi, Sydney United, Olympic etc areas) a few years ago they'd be laughed down the street.

Just add the simple S and it just seems so much less plastic and stupid. SFC, simple. Done! Not a big deal but as an SFC supporter it gets a bit irritating when people just put FC, my sister does it and I yell at her for it!

I don't think it will actually GROW our attendances for the larger games much- but I think it will help the people that go to 5-6 games a year (of which it seems to me we have around 2-3k which if they were going to twice as many games, that's a good 3000 x [$25 ticket + $10 food] x 7 matches = ~$600,000 every season we're missing out on) make it to 12 games a year because it will be so much easier. Then you're looking at improved matchday experience because there will be more bars and restaurants right next to the SFS. I personally like the 20 minute walk, it's quite pleasant and gets you in the mood. Plus I normally like to stop off at 2 or 3 pubs on the way for some beers and lucky gin shots :P But I can see why it would put 10-20% people off going, especially if its late for the kids meaning they'll be walking around at 22:30 or later and especially if its not ideal temperature or possible to rain a bit. We now have a core support of around 14k, that's what we got against Wellington on a Saturday arvo and we got nearly 15k against Newcastle with at least 2k regulars missing due to Stereosonic. I think by the time the new line is opperational we should be looking at a core around 16-17k and then the boost of the train could take it close to 20k.] Another thing, sorry this became and essay, is if SFS was to get a bit of a facelift which it will need as it will be nearly 40 years old soon and definately needs some modifications. Ideally it would be good to see it downsized to around 30k for the club and 5k for stadium members, possibly built from scratch, and with a proper roof and a bit closer to the action seats with better rake. Ideally... We will probably get nothing for a long time, but I think and most would agree with me I hope, SFC should not leave SFS for a long while yet (at least 10-15 years if not much more). It's our home, always has been, its a gorgeous area and it works reasonably well.

Is this really that much of an issue? The tram will aid it no doubt, but Central -> SFS is only about 500m further than Parra Station to the stadium (admittedly with hills).

I can assure that a vast amount North and West Manchester sure ain't middle class, Manchester as a city is North/West united South/East city. The difference is the amount of glory supporters who flock to old trafford from every where else.

http://www.wanderland.com.au/ page 4 is idea of wanderers immediate catchment.

I really think the ADP experience has obviously benefited the A-league, but also has really helped Sydney FC. Not only for these 2 seasons that he's been here, increasing bums on seats and sponsorship, but also now giving them a great springboard into the future. You'd have to think that most of their 10.5k members wont just turn their backs on the club just because ADP leaves. Especially if their doing well on the field. The same goes for their sponsors. What the club needs to do now is work hard on and off the field to not only keep those fans and sponsors but go out and get more. Tony Pignata has been a great catch. He's a great CEO. Sydney FC is perhaps 1 of only 3 clubs in the A-league that can get regular 20k plus crowds along with Victory and Brisbane. Wanderers cant because of the size of Parramatta. So the overall health of Sydney FC is very important for the league as a whole. And this is coming from an avid Victory fan and member.

I think the 'bogans' and 'welfare flogs' are a little bit further west in general. Parramatta and the surrounding districts are not poor, neither particularly poorly educated or nationalistic. The last thing I think of when WSW fans are brought up is bogans. There are quite a few fans of Mediterranean decent or from areas similar, there is a strong contingent also of North-Western fans from up in and around the Hills district as well as a solidified presence in the core CBD and surrounding suburbs of Parramatta ( a generally very multi-cultural area). From Blacktown and beyond (further west) WSW resonates less with the locals. As for ESFC fans, the highest saturation that I know of exist in South Western Sydney. Especially those associated with Marconi and the Italian communities around there (Fairfield-ish). I don't venture the city that often to know though, they might have a solidified core in there too.

Re the move to NSO .... will not happen.. The Yellow army interviewed our acting GM on some key issues and is on their weekly podcast ..https://soundcloud.com/yellowarmypodcast ... the interview around 33 min's Regarding North Sydney???? We always have a community round every year, and rather than going to Bathurst or Dubbo or Canberra, it seemed much more sensible to go within driving distance of the Central Coast, which is our home and remaining our home. We have no intention of going to North Sydney for any more than one, maximum two games next season or any other season. I'd like to reiterate that we are the Central Coast Mariners, not the North Sydney Mariners and we are based on the Central Coast, we have the Center of Excellence on the Central Coast and our owner Mike Charlesworth has invested heavily on the Central Coast. Obviously want every game to be a success, we want all the fans and members to support us and the team in every game that we play, and the one in North Sydney is no exception. The idea behind it is really to do with the fans that we have on the North Shore coming more often to the Central Coast. We're about to announce some new directors and our directors are from the Central Coast, and one director is from the Northern Suburbs Football Association. So it's really important to us that those directors know about football, those directors know about grass roots football, and those directors are about the Central Coast, and bringing the games and the players to play on the Central Coast. A fan boycott of the game????? If there are 5,000, if there are 10,000, if there are 15,000 which is capacity for North Sydney, it won't make any difference to what we're doing next year, but will make a difference is that our team and the boys want to feel supported, I think that's what it's all about. For the fans that don't want to go, that's a shame, I hope you change your mind and I hope you come and support the team. A little bit of a target for Bluetongue games???? 10-15 thousand, 10-12 thousand every game at Bluetongue would be fantastic, not just for the economics, but also for the support. I've been going for years, way before I came to work for the Mariners and I've never had so much fun to be honest; with the band, and the pirate, and the cannon, and the admiral, and people are much more vocal, and it's really good fun now. It is a commercial reality that we have to make it sustainable, and everybody knows that last year the club was in a lot of trouble, and the person that came and sorted out all that trouble was Mike Charlesworth, if it wasn't for thim we wouldn't have a club right now. So he isn't the baddie here, he's the goodie, and we're just trying to look at all the ways that we can posibly find, to make it sustainable, but to make it sustainable as the Central Coast Mariners. Poor crowd on Friday ???? If you look at the last round every club had a poor showing. I don't know if it's horrendous timing of the year or it didn't rain everywhere; you can't build a business model based on the weather. You could blame it on a miserable Friday Night in Gosford after a lot of our fans are likely to be commuters, are they likely to come out? I don't know. There's a lot of our members that didn't come last Friday. It could just be busy before Christmas, who knows, everyone could have a completely different reason. Back on North Sydney???? We're going to North Sydney for this one game, there's a possibility, slim, possibility that we might go for two games. There isn't any likelihood that we could go for any more than that because of the state of the stadium, and we wouldn't be permitted to. I don't understand where it came from, but the only thing I can think of as to why is because North Sydney Council are looking to redevelop that stadium. If you look at the minutes and the agendas which are a matter of public record for North Sydney Council, you will see that they are planning to redevelop the stadium, and they're planning to redevelop it for all sport, football is sort of an afterthought really. It's really going to be redeveloped for all the other sports, but of course they want to include the ability to be A-League ready. We're talking years and years and even if they did build something amazing, it wouldn't be as good as Bluetongue, it's nightmare parking, it's difficult to get there, it's not something that we'd do more than once or twice. It's certainly winding up a lot of Sydney fans, which is always entertaining, and I think it would be fun to give it to them at the game this week, to say that even people who live within 8 miles of Sydney don't want to go and watch Sydney, they want to come and watch the Champions play. And that's really what it's about for us at North Sydney; it's about taking the Champions to North Sydney, to give them a bit of football like they used to have with Northern Spirit in that ground, just for a bit of fun, just for a one off because we couldn't play at Bluetongue, because of Carols by Candlelight. About difficulties the club face, and how they communicate them with fans???? It's harder to find sponsors that want to invest what other clubs get, but it's not impossible. We could do a whole lot more and we are going to, and it just takes time to turn these things around and I'm already starting to do that. In terms of being transparent, I don't know if any of the club have come on to do a podcast before but as you know I only met you last week and here I am on a podcast. I'm really open and I want to be very clear that anything I know I will share, because this is our team together. We can't do it without you and you can't do it without us. It has to be a team, just like on the pitch. And finally, stadium rights ???? We are talking with council who have decided to run it themselves, which is great, because we think they're probably the best people to do that, we just don't know what their proposal is going to be, and the lease for the current person runs out in February so we're looking forward to working with council to secure our games at Bluetongue. The ball is in their court somewhat; we're waiting to discuss and to look at their business plan and hope that we fit into that really strongly, and I'm sure we will because they're a great supporter of ours, and both Gosford and Wyong councils are very important to us but Gosford in particular because of the stadium. Council asked for an expression of interest, which we put one in, so we said yes we'd like to run it and we'd like to run it like this, and so did a couple of other people, and when council got those expressions of interest they reviewed them and decided that they really would rather be more specific about what they were looking for. So the second stage is that they asked for a tender, where they could specifically ask we want you to deliver x-y-z, and we want you to pay for this-that and the other. When we looked at that we felt that those terms were too high and too expensive so we didn't put in a tender. So the confusion comes in yes we put in an expression of interest, no we didn't put in a tender, because we felt we couldn't meet those costs that council wanted to achieve. There was one tender and it was what we term non-conforming; so they said they'd like to run it so basically what they did is they repeated what they said in their expression of interest I imagine, and council decided they weren't able to accept that, so they went to the market and no one in the market, no one in Australia, or anywhere else, could meet the terms that they requested. My understanding is from the minutes of their council meetings, is that they decided to write their own business plan and run it, which we're really excited about because we know what a strong supporter council is of the Mariners and of the Central Coast and we think it could be great.

Just concentrate on playing good football, after all, it is just a football club. Instil good values at the club and work to take Australian football forward, promoting and developing local players. The rest will sort itself out. It is very heartening that SFC is doing so well in the A-league, NYL and the W-league.

In larger city's such as Sydney I always thought basing the A-League, W-League and NYL sides in different locations as good way to pickup general support for the club. Moving around playing at different venues each home match makes it much harder. But say SFC plays out from Moore Park, and say the W-League team play permanently out of somewhere like Cronulla and NYL side plays out in Manly so fans who can't necessarily make it to Moore Park always have the option of supporting the club closer to home

where's my FC nickname comment? what was wrong with it?

The biggest positive for Sydney FC isn't claiming "territory" like a dog pissing on a lampost, but solving the SFS access issue. A tramline from the city stations will do wonders for Sydney FC attendances and growth potential.