Capn Gus Bloodbeard
Well-Known Member
I started writing this...an hour later I realised I wrote an essay. Oh well, read it or don't. I can't even add in a tl;dr to this. In 2 parts though as I've breached the single post character limit.
I could have started with the usual rhetoric of how upsetting it is to see what's happened to this once-proud club, but we all know that, so no point. I STILL remember the night Gumps held aloft the first preseason cup after we took it from Perth (and the Bay 16 fence collapsed). I was almost always in Bay 16 when I still lived on the coast (yet I don't think I'm known to any more than a couple of you), I remember just how many times I left games with a thumping headache from screaming myself horse, jumping, singing, shouting, dancing, and just the adrenaline....and did I say the screaming? - I remember grand finals, and I want to forget grand finals. I still think one of the most thrilling moments was taking the win from the New Zealand Knights in stoppage time one balmy night - might have been season 2? (oh look, despite what I said, I did go on the emotional rhetoric! My point isn't to say that I'm a bigger fan than anybody else on here - just to highlight that I've felt. As have we all. As do we all. Even these days when I might not have the same motivation to watch the games, if nothing else I'll still follow the highlights and the goings-on through the forum. Mariners 'til I die. Nothing will change that, though enthusiasm might wax and wane. People who aren't sports fans don't understand why I still follow the club - and there's nothing rational that really explains it. I just.....know I am I'm sure I am I'm Mariners 'til I die.
I don't have the insights of some of the more learned members on this forum, and perhaps I've gotten some things wrong in this post. Feel free to correct me.
What's seriously worrying is just how silent the club is. I mean, they're lucky CCM fans are not WSW fans - I'm sure they would have torn the head office apart by now.
We need regular engagement from MC. We need regular engagement and communication from @Shaun Mielekamp . Why the silence? What are they hiding? Why aren't they engaging and updating the fan base? When the club is in crisis is when they need to work more closely with the fans - they need to be pulling out all stops to keep us on board - and communication is cheap. Instead the vibe we're getting is 'who gives a flying f**k about the fans?'. (FWIW it may be that MC has restrictions on his active engagement as part of the contract he has with the club - but if that's possible, then let us know when we're calling out for him to show he gives a shit)
Problem with that is a bit of a catch-22 - we're well past communication. We've been lied to about the salary cap (surely by now we have to be well under the salary floor - a promise at the start of the season to pay the cap should carry through the entire season). We were lied to about Nisbet. We were lied to about our January signings. This is the first season our club has been actively dishonest to the fans. The club is treating the fans with contempt. But it also treats players with contempt - Pain, Nisbet, Hiariej, Millar......the way our club is treating fans and players coupled with the culture of incompetence points to a really, really toxic and inept management culture. You don't treat so many players this badly, f**k up so many recruitings and re-signings, actively lie to players and fans about those, fail to recognise and re-sign so much talent, without there being some major, major problems. Also, was anybody held accountable for the dead email debacle around Millar? Anything changed? Amateur stuff - why was there not a process in place?
Which is why I've realised that while we've all been crying out the last 5 years for more money, new coach, new keeper, new striker, etc etc - we've all missed the mark. The club appears to have been rotting from the inside.
And who is at the helm of all this? MC is only one part of the picture - he isn't involved in a lot of the day-to-day of the club - and he's not going anywhere. Let's forget about him.
Shaun Mielekamp. The off-field stuff, the management of the day-to-day, is his domain. And from where I'm sitting, this club looks rotten. Would his position be tenable anywhere else after so many disasters and inexplicable screwups under his watch? Absolutely not. When any organisation is this badly broken, the CEO has to go. SM needs to be held accountable, and he needs to go. Now, I know that we don't know the exact details of who is responsible for what, but we know that SM has been involved in a lot. Wasn't he and MC the ones recruiting MM? Who decided that a coach who had no idea about the state of the league or the club could get us out of our hole? Is that the same person who has previously decided that unproven coaches could get us out of our hole? Where's the responsibility for that?
Mike Phelan needs to piss right off. He adds absolutely nothing of value. Clearly, our football department as a whole is an absolute disaster. So if he is the head of the football dept, then it's his responsibility. The number of disasters the football dept has had is ridiculous. The CoE - what value is that bringing to the club? Plenty of clubs have a CoE or are developing one - simply having one no longer separates us from the league. What's happening with it? What does the CCM HAL team get out of it? I'm sure every other club with one actually has pristine turf on theirs, whereas I heard on here that our HAL team can't even train on there it's so bad. How is that allowed to happen? The CoE needs to be, among other things, a showpiece for the club. It needs to BE the club brand in facility form (though I suppose having a field that's unusable is a perfect representation of how trash our brand currently is). It needs to looks perfect to start with. Who wants to go to a centre that looks like Umina Oval at round 20 of the CCF comp? He. Needs. To. Go. That, and the fact that he's supposed to be the head while working full time in another country is just sick joke. Who the hell decided that was a good idea? Fire that person too. I'm assuming that SM was heavily involved there?
The board needs an entire clearout. Going back to the toxicity and culture of incompetence - the board are responsible for processes, compliance, policies, structures, governance. From where I'm sitting, they're not leading the ship at all. There's 2 new members, I don't care if they stay - they're not responsible for anything - but every single board member needs to be held accountable for the ongoing sabotage of this once-proud club. Of course, MC is the chairman so this goes back to him being responsible. As the owner and the chairman he's responsible for this disaster - and an overseas, disinterested owner and chairman isn't good enough. We need both to be highly active right now. But, he's not going to leave until he can return a profit on investment - and right now the club is worth about 2 overripe mangoes.
On that note, who is on the board? According to the website, there are only 2 board members - MC and Kathryn Duncan. Who else? Why are they a secret?
Sharon Baxter - Operations Manager - her Linkedin shows as being responsible for Events, Community, Membership & Ticketing as well as Corporate & Hospitality. From those responsibilities I can't see anything she needs to be strung up for - although some on here have reported a lack of community engagement. It seems like accountability for the $60 memberships would fall on her so she needs to realise how offensive that was to paying members. Aside from that I'm not aware of any particular concern with her portfolio
I only named her specifically because I took 'operations manager' to have a broader reach, but then I checked her LinkedIn to see what she is responsible for. The rest of the management team seem to have specific tasks not related to the problem areas. Of course, if they are part of the culture of incompetence and toxicity then it goes without saying that they need to go - and sometimes the only way to change a culture is to cull a number of people - because often by the time a bad culture has set in, you can't point the finger at any individual.
Football department. Nick Montgomery - Being a previous fan favourite player doesn't mean he deserves the assistant coach job - especially as he seems to have come into that with no real coaching experience. BUT, it's impossible to know how much he is responsible for - perhaps he's just as culpable as MM, perhaps MM doesn't really give him any autonomy or decision making capacity at all. Who knows. It might still be worth keeping somebody connected to what the club used to stand for
Ray Junna - I don't know enough about his involvement or responsibilities, but if we want a full football cleanout...
Matt Nash - he's been our goalkeeping coach through our period of our worst even goalkeepers. His record of failure speaks for itself. Sure, maybe the argument could be made that he's being given duds, but I'm not seeing those duds improving. He needs to go.
The rest, probably fine. Though again, why is our fitness and conditioning coach not listed? Why is the information on this page not kept up to date?
Again, more amateur crap.
But going back to the silence - I'm with others - silence coupled with the fact that we are showing zero interest in signings and zero interest in member communication - we seem to have zero interest in next season.
And that's terrifying.
And when a number of fans are saying this, @Shaun Mielekamp and Mike Charlesworth need to come out and talk to us. I mean, at this point, their word is mud, but they need to try anyway. Nothing but f**king crickets from those two. Not good enough.
I could have started with the usual rhetoric of how upsetting it is to see what's happened to this once-proud club, but we all know that, so no point. I STILL remember the night Gumps held aloft the first preseason cup after we took it from Perth (and the Bay 16 fence collapsed). I was almost always in Bay 16 when I still lived on the coast (yet I don't think I'm known to any more than a couple of you), I remember just how many times I left games with a thumping headache from screaming myself horse, jumping, singing, shouting, dancing, and just the adrenaline....and did I say the screaming? - I remember grand finals, and I want to forget grand finals. I still think one of the most thrilling moments was taking the win from the New Zealand Knights in stoppage time one balmy night - might have been season 2? (oh look, despite what I said, I did go on the emotional rhetoric! My point isn't to say that I'm a bigger fan than anybody else on here - just to highlight that I've felt. As have we all. As do we all. Even these days when I might not have the same motivation to watch the games, if nothing else I'll still follow the highlights and the goings-on through the forum. Mariners 'til I die. Nothing will change that, though enthusiasm might wax and wane. People who aren't sports fans don't understand why I still follow the club - and there's nothing rational that really explains it. I just.....know I am I'm sure I am I'm Mariners 'til I die.
I don't have the insights of some of the more learned members on this forum, and perhaps I've gotten some things wrong in this post. Feel free to correct me.
What's seriously worrying is just how silent the club is. I mean, they're lucky CCM fans are not WSW fans - I'm sure they would have torn the head office apart by now.
We need regular engagement from MC. We need regular engagement and communication from @Shaun Mielekamp . Why the silence? What are they hiding? Why aren't they engaging and updating the fan base? When the club is in crisis is when they need to work more closely with the fans - they need to be pulling out all stops to keep us on board - and communication is cheap. Instead the vibe we're getting is 'who gives a flying f**k about the fans?'. (FWIW it may be that MC has restrictions on his active engagement as part of the contract he has with the club - but if that's possible, then let us know when we're calling out for him to show he gives a shit)
Problem with that is a bit of a catch-22 - we're well past communication. We've been lied to about the salary cap (surely by now we have to be well under the salary floor - a promise at the start of the season to pay the cap should carry through the entire season). We were lied to about Nisbet. We were lied to about our January signings. This is the first season our club has been actively dishonest to the fans. The club is treating the fans with contempt. But it also treats players with contempt - Pain, Nisbet, Hiariej, Millar......the way our club is treating fans and players coupled with the culture of incompetence points to a really, really toxic and inept management culture. You don't treat so many players this badly, f**k up so many recruitings and re-signings, actively lie to players and fans about those, fail to recognise and re-sign so much talent, without there being some major, major problems. Also, was anybody held accountable for the dead email debacle around Millar? Anything changed? Amateur stuff - why was there not a process in place?
Which is why I've realised that while we've all been crying out the last 5 years for more money, new coach, new keeper, new striker, etc etc - we've all missed the mark. The club appears to have been rotting from the inside.
And who is at the helm of all this? MC is only one part of the picture - he isn't involved in a lot of the day-to-day of the club - and he's not going anywhere. Let's forget about him.
Shaun Mielekamp. The off-field stuff, the management of the day-to-day, is his domain. And from where I'm sitting, this club looks rotten. Would his position be tenable anywhere else after so many disasters and inexplicable screwups under his watch? Absolutely not. When any organisation is this badly broken, the CEO has to go. SM needs to be held accountable, and he needs to go. Now, I know that we don't know the exact details of who is responsible for what, but we know that SM has been involved in a lot. Wasn't he and MC the ones recruiting MM? Who decided that a coach who had no idea about the state of the league or the club could get us out of our hole? Is that the same person who has previously decided that unproven coaches could get us out of our hole? Where's the responsibility for that?
Mike Phelan needs to piss right off. He adds absolutely nothing of value. Clearly, our football department as a whole is an absolute disaster. So if he is the head of the football dept, then it's his responsibility. The number of disasters the football dept has had is ridiculous. The CoE - what value is that bringing to the club? Plenty of clubs have a CoE or are developing one - simply having one no longer separates us from the league. What's happening with it? What does the CCM HAL team get out of it? I'm sure every other club with one actually has pristine turf on theirs, whereas I heard on here that our HAL team can't even train on there it's so bad. How is that allowed to happen? The CoE needs to be, among other things, a showpiece for the club. It needs to BE the club brand in facility form (though I suppose having a field that's unusable is a perfect representation of how trash our brand currently is). It needs to looks perfect to start with. Who wants to go to a centre that looks like Umina Oval at round 20 of the CCF comp? He. Needs. To. Go. That, and the fact that he's supposed to be the head while working full time in another country is just sick joke. Who the hell decided that was a good idea? Fire that person too. I'm assuming that SM was heavily involved there?
The board needs an entire clearout. Going back to the toxicity and culture of incompetence - the board are responsible for processes, compliance, policies, structures, governance. From where I'm sitting, they're not leading the ship at all. There's 2 new members, I don't care if they stay - they're not responsible for anything - but every single board member needs to be held accountable for the ongoing sabotage of this once-proud club. Of course, MC is the chairman so this goes back to him being responsible. As the owner and the chairman he's responsible for this disaster - and an overseas, disinterested owner and chairman isn't good enough. We need both to be highly active right now. But, he's not going to leave until he can return a profit on investment - and right now the club is worth about 2 overripe mangoes.
On that note, who is on the board? According to the website, there are only 2 board members - MC and Kathryn Duncan. Who else? Why are they a secret?
Sharon Baxter - Operations Manager - her Linkedin shows as being responsible for Events, Community, Membership & Ticketing as well as Corporate & Hospitality. From those responsibilities I can't see anything she needs to be strung up for - although some on here have reported a lack of community engagement. It seems like accountability for the $60 memberships would fall on her so she needs to realise how offensive that was to paying members. Aside from that I'm not aware of any particular concern with her portfolio
I only named her specifically because I took 'operations manager' to have a broader reach, but then I checked her LinkedIn to see what she is responsible for. The rest of the management team seem to have specific tasks not related to the problem areas. Of course, if they are part of the culture of incompetence and toxicity then it goes without saying that they need to go - and sometimes the only way to change a culture is to cull a number of people - because often by the time a bad culture has set in, you can't point the finger at any individual.
Football department. Nick Montgomery - Being a previous fan favourite player doesn't mean he deserves the assistant coach job - especially as he seems to have come into that with no real coaching experience. BUT, it's impossible to know how much he is responsible for - perhaps he's just as culpable as MM, perhaps MM doesn't really give him any autonomy or decision making capacity at all. Who knows. It might still be worth keeping somebody connected to what the club used to stand for
Ray Junna - I don't know enough about his involvement or responsibilities, but if we want a full football cleanout...
Matt Nash - he's been our goalkeeping coach through our period of our worst even goalkeepers. His record of failure speaks for itself. Sure, maybe the argument could be made that he's being given duds, but I'm not seeing those duds improving. He needs to go.
The rest, probably fine. Though again, why is our fitness and conditioning coach not listed? Why is the information on this page not kept up to date?
Again, more amateur crap.
But going back to the silence - I'm with others - silence coupled with the fact that we are showing zero interest in signings and zero interest in member communication - we seem to have zero interest in next season.
And that's terrifying.
And when a number of fans are saying this, @Shaun Mielekamp and Mike Charlesworth need to come out and talk to us. I mean, at this point, their word is mud, but they need to try anyway. Nothing but f**king crickets from those two. Not good enough.
