During recent years, sporting fortunes in the regional Australian city of Newcastle have nose-dived, particularly at the city’s two major sporting clubs.
The Newcastle Jets have recently claimed their second wooden spoon in the last three seasons in the A-League, and have now failed to make the finals for the last seven seasons in a row.
The fortunes of the Newcastle Knights haven’t been much better, with the proud club claiming the past two wooden spoons in the National Rugby League, and recording statistically one of the worst seasons by a club in professional rugby league history in Australia. They won just a single game, plus had a draw in 2016.
Both clubs have had ownership turmoil during the last five years, mismanaged and wrecked beyond all reasonable comprehension by now former mining and sporting magnate Nathan Tinkler. They have since been taken over by their governing bodies in Australia, Football Federation Australia (FFA) and the National Rugby League (NRL) respectively.
However, despite the Newcastle Jets now being owned since June 2016 by the Ledman Group, which is led by their chief executive officer Martin Lee, the Newcastle Knights are still owned by the NRL. This is despite a number of muted attempts by various different groups, ranging from a potentially-powerful club to a community-focussed bid in the Newcastle region, to buy and own the one town rugby league club that always bleeds red and blue.
However, while it is too early to judge what kind of changes will happen at the Newcastle Jets, owned by the Ledman Group, under their recently-appointed new head coach Ernie Merrick over the next 12 months, it is clear that change at the Newcastle Knights is slow to take effect.
While I think Nathan Brown has done a pretty solid job so far as the head coach of the Newcastle Knights in trying to change their culture, I feel that the attitude of the club, and even of the new recruits to the club over the past two years has been rather downcast, instead of being positive about the present and of the future.
So, the big question that needs to be answered is: Is there a problem with Newcastle’s sporting culture?
Quite possibly.
(AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
However, most things relating to culture in sport, as we have seen in recent weeks and days, are also related to society.
So, is there a problem with the culture in the regional Australian city of Newcastle?
I have lived all of my life to date in the suburb of Beresfield, which is about 22 kilometres away from Newcastle, halfway between Newcastle and Maitland.
I have lived with autism/Aspergers Syndrome all of my life, and I didn’t start talking until I was about four years old.
I went to Beresfield Public School (1999 to 2005), and Francis Greenway High School (2006 to 2011), the closest primary school and high school to where I live.
At Beresfield Public School, I was a school prefect in 2005, and at Francis Greenway High School, I was one of the school’s vice captains in 2011, and was a representative in the School’s Student Representative Council for five of my six years there.
I then went to TAFE NSW/Hunter TAFE in 2012 to complete a Communication and Media Diploma, and then went to The University of Newcastle, where from 2013 to 2015, I completed a Bachelor of Communication, majoring in journalism.
I then decided to stay on another year to do Honours, where I did a thesis on the impact of social media on sports journalism in a regional Australian city, interviewing 11 sports commentators/sports journalists/sports contributors who work in Newcastle across the mediums of television, radio, and print media, receiving an Honours Class II, Division 1.
During my time at the university, I did work placement as a part of my communication degree at 1233 ABC Newcastle, and was an Intern At-Large with them last year as I did my Honours degree, writing a number of sporting-related stories, including some profiles on athletes competing at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
I have seen, and experienced a lot of, and about the regional Australian city of Newcastle, and while I believe it is one of the best places you can live, I feel that, except for the tertiary education institutions that I have been to, as well as primary school, there has been a culture problem that has slowly eroded what had been good about the city.
(AAP Image/Darren Pateman)
In hindsight, I think there has been a culture problem that has infested most of the city, including the two major sporting teams of Newcastle, since at least 2009.
At this time, I was in Year 10 at Francis Greenway High School, and I had a mathematics teacher who had a totally different mantra towards mathematics and what needed to be done to be a successful mathematician.
While I worked as hard as I could under his teaching, our styles of how we saw mathematics clashed. While I believe he could have probably taught me a little bit differently, he exposed a problem culture that has symbolised the success, or lack of success, in Newcastle’s two major sporting teams over this period of time.
The Newcastle Knights have missed the NRL finals in seven of the past 10 seasons, and look set to miss their eighth in 11 years – their fourth-straight year.
During this time, there has been ownership changes, which led to the gullible decision in-hindsight by members of the Knights to install Nathan Tinkler as the club’s new owner, multiple coaching changes, and campaigns led by the public in Newcastle to have a coach who was from the area, which they received in Rick Stone (two stints), and in a caretaking role by Danny Buderus, which failed miserably.
This is despite the other eight coaches in the club’s history having come from areas other than Newcastle, including their two premiership-winning coaches in Malcolm Reilly (England), and Michael Hagan (Queensland).
Most of them were more successful than Stone.
The Newcastle Jets have also had their issues, having missed the A-League finals series in eight of the past nine seasons.
Ownership struggles, coaching changes, and some of the worst business and sporting decisions in the history of Australian sport, including sacking coaches before the season has started, and signing players that were injured, or significantly past their best when they came to the Jets.
This has led to a toxic culture that has engulfed the club, and the club is struggling to get out of the massive hole that they are currently in.
In my view, all of these problems at both the Newcastle Knights and the Newcastle Jets are due to the clubs themselves failing to take on-board new ideas that could evolve and grow the clubs to a whole new level.
Sadly, I believe it is a common symptom is running rife right throughout Newcastle.
A few weeks ago, I told a media organisation in Newcastle a number of ways that I felt they needed to improve their business to be success over a long period of time, and I told them of the possible consequences if they didn’t implement some of my ideas.
The response: it irked them to the point of anger.
Unfortunately, there are a number of businesses around Newcastle, including media organisations and sporting organisations, that are failing to embrace new ideas that can improve the futures of everyone in their industry, but they are just not listening, or seeing the warning signs of danger in their industry, and adapting appropriately to them.
However, the greatest concern I have about the regional Australian city of Newcastle, its businesses and its major sporting teams is the attitude that they are displaying.
The Newcastle Knights and the Newcastle Jets have led the vast majority of Newcastle into a downbeat, downcast, defeatist culture of “this is too hard, life is hard, we can’t do this, we can’t be that, we can’t compete, we can’t be successful”, and have sent this regional Australian city into a toxic culture of woe.
It is simply not good enough, and it goes totally against the positive and optimistic outlook I like to have about the present and the future.
Everyone doesn’t need to be told all the time that life isn’t easy, but in life, I try to live to the motto that anything is achievable, and although I might find doing some things harder than others, I believe that eventually, achieving many of those things will happen.
However, for the Newcastle Knights, Newcastle Jets, the vast majority of Newcastle, and its businesses, achieving success will not happen until this toxic culture is removed.
It is sadly what the vast majority of people outside of Newcastle think of you.
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