Roar Rookie
Joined March 2015
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Wellington Phoenix, Celtic, and Newcastle United fan. Kiwi living in Scotland, struggling with time-zone issues for the whole a-league season.
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This week, the first part of an interview with A-League chief Damien de Bohun was put up on the A-League's website, discussing a range…
Oh, I don’t want him to lie and say everything’s sorted. Just something along the lines of “Wellington Phoenix are an important club in the league, providing another avenue for Australian and New Zealand players, coaches, and backroom staff to develop. Although we cannot guarantee that the license will be extended, we would like it to be, and have every intention of getting the matter resolved in the next X months.”
Honestly, I have no idea whether NZF is involved in providing support to the Phoenix or not, though my understanding is previous administrations have been less than helpful. But if it’s a problem that FFA have with NZF’s support, why not say that, rather than only talking about attendance figures and TV rights?
We’ve now got to the point where a normal playing contract of two years would take the contract duration past the known lifespan of the club. This kind of uncertainty can only be unsettling to everyone involved, and will certainly not be helping in any way.
Damien de Bohun’s statement on the Phoenix simply not good enough
This would be the Auckland where the New Zealand Knights got average attendances of ~3900 and ~3000 in the 05/06 and 06/07 seasons (respectively)? Even in the Phoenix’s worst season, they attracted about twice that. This season, incidentally, average attendance is around 8500, and increase on last season and the season before.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Auckland is a candidate for expansion at some point in the future (but not the first round of expansion), but to just ditch Wellington because attendance is below average for the league seems a bit capricious.
Damien de Bohun’s statement on the Phoenix simply not good enough
the last time Wellington had home finals, we got 30k+ to both.
The A-League has survived and thrived, let the evolution continue