www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/dec/04/friday-focus-central-coast-mariners-where-entertainment-is-king-for-now
For Tony Walmsley, it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it, although the Mariners coach is under no illusions that such a philosophy can apply forever
More blogposts Topics A-League
Central Coast Mariners Australia sport
‘That formulaic risk averse approach I believe is driven by fear,’ says Central Coast Mariners coach Tony Walmsley. Photograph: Ashley Feder/Getty Images
Jonathan Howcroft
@JPHowcroft
Thursday 3 December 2015 14.30 EST
T ony Walmsley coaches a professional football team in a league without relegation for an owner that chooses not to measure success by points on the ladder. But for the giant inflatable sauce bottles at his workplace Walmsley could be forgiven for thinking he’s in managerial nirvana.
Central Coast Mariners chairman, Mike Charlesworth, has concluded that A-League success alone does not provide a compelling business case for his club’s existence. Instead Walmsley has been tasked with drawing fans through the gate and beefing up the price of his fledgling stock by playing relentlessly attacking, attractive football, even if the scoreboard threatens to turn ugly, like it did on Thursday night.
Cashflow troubles have dogged the Mariners in recent years despite a premiership in 2011-2012 and a championship the following season. “Losing one to two million dollars a year isn’t a sustainable model, however successful we are on the pitch, so we need to do things differently,” Charlesworth told SBS recently. He is
reported to have invested more than $15m in the club since he took over in 2013.
We’re walking a fine line between something that could be fantastic but it could go really pear-shaped
But can a football club prosper when winning football matches is no longer its modus operandi? Walmsley is staking his reputation on a positive answer.
“When I first came in as technical director it was to align the football department to the commercial objectives of the club,” Walmsley told Guardian Australia. “The club’s losing money, how does the football team help? The answer is twofold. One is to play a style of football people want to watch. Not only do we get them through the gates but we get them off their seats. The other one is to expose young players to the demands of the A-League and put them in the shop window and sell them.”
There have been positive early signs with Central Coast Stadium crowds bucking the competition trend and showing a slight year-on-year improvement (excluding organised boycotts). The attacking mindset has led to a Mariners goal in every match but one that Walmsley has overseen as head coach. And if rumours are to be believed, playmaker Anthony Caceres might soon be the first Mariner from this crop to learn his market value.
“At the moment we’re walking a fine line between something that could be fantastic but it could go really pear-shaped,” says the ebullient Mancunian with a grin. “But it’s great, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
That fine line is narrowing by the week with round nine heralding another defeat, the Mariners’ sixth in eight games. Walmsley has not tasted victory since the opening round of the season, but sticking to the script he’s not letting the poor results get him down.
“All I can say at the moment is the feedback from our supporters is ‘this is fantastic, keep going, we love the way you’re going about it’. That’s the litmus test for me. If in 10 weeks time we’re still on one win there’ll be a different set of questions but the measure for me will be the point where you have to make a decision – do we stick to this approach or don’t we? Sitting here right now, if I don’t stick to that philosophy I’ve let everyone down. We’re not that far away.”
The hypothesis, that the spectacle is of greater intrinsic value to the spectator than the outcome, is alluring, and the A-League, with no trapdoor to a lower division, provides excellent laboratory conditions for Mariners fans to prove it.
It raises many points for further discussion however. Chief amongst them, what constitutes “a style of football people want to watch?” Is there a specific national or regional accent to attractive football? How important are the personalities involved? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, are Gosford locals more attractive than imports? Is a celebrity marquee necessary to pump prime the operation?
Perhaps most pertinently of all, the Mariners’ approach squares up against the Australian sporting mantra, described in the FFA National Curriculum as “winning at all costs”.
Josep Gombau was not well served by this psyche in his first season in charge of Adelaide United: “In professional football I understand results are important but in this league, without relegation, what happens if a team invests one year to be strong for next season?” Adelaide finished sixth on the ladder in 2013-14, but the following year reached the A-League semi-finals and picked up the inaugural FFA Cup, all while playing some of the most absorbing football in the country. The early months of Gombau’s reign however were dogged by negative publicity and a reluctance from the football community that the new coach should be afforded an uncompetitive season as he laid his foundations.
Walmsley has so far escaped such opprobrium but with poor results piling up the experiment is likely to come under severe scrutiny eventually. His hand hasn’t been improved by off-field distractions either. The negative publicity following the removal of the popular Liam Reddy from the squad and then the furore around leaked tactics leading to demands for players’
phone records will have done little to endear fans to a project that requires a leap of faith on their part.
“The supporters are the people that we are performing for. If we’re an entertainment business then the customer is vital. Whether that’s through the stadium or through the TV audience. There’s nowhere to hide. I don’t see myself having to make apologies to the fans for not having a real go at what we’re trying to do,” Walmsley said.
The most obvious characteristic of Walmsley’s side that should buy him time is youth. Against Melbourne City in round three the senior member of the back four was just 22. “We have a philosophy to give youth a chance,” Walmsley asserts proudly. “We had very significant financial restraints coming into this season. We’re operating over a million dollars less than the season before. So you’re either getting players coming to the end in that market or young players. It’s part of the fun, part of the challenge.”
It is also hard not to admire the balls to the wall style of play. In most matches this season only Nick Montgomery has been charged with stemming the tide in midfield. Around him his team-mates are encouraged to attack as often and as quickly as possible. With flying wingers and a gung-ho approach in transition, there’s more than a hint of Sir Alex Ferguson’s early 90s Manchester United.
“I’m a United fan lifelong so to have come through the Fergie era, and even before, attacking intent was always there to see,” Walmsley explained. “Being at Old Trafford and getting the hairs on the back of your neck, that ‘go for it’ mentality, is where most of my influence would have come from. I’m a coach that wants an aesthetic looking team. I’m not stimulated by dour, purely results-driven football. I’m driven by excitement and entertainment.”
More on this topic
Slick Melbourne City put five past Central Coast Mariners in A-League
Strategically the experiment might be rooted in cold fiscal pragmatism but when Walmsley gets on a roll the rhetoric is persuasive, romantic even. “I’ve always had the pictures in my head. I didn’t make it as a player but I still had the pictures in my head. As you go through and unravel those pictures for other people, some people have better pictures than you. We say to our players all the time, ‘play the pass we don’t see’. There are no shackles here, you can be the player you want to be. We also want you to be the player other people want you to become.”
Walmsley’s enthusiasm for his freedom at the Mariners is matched by his frustration at the restraints on coaches elsewhere within his industry. “That formulaic risk averse approach I believe is driven by fear. ‘I don’t want to lose my job, I don’t want to lose the game, I don’t want to concede a goal,’ it’s driven by fear. I don’t have that at all. I don’t know if that’s inherent, I don’t know if I learned to be like that but I don’t go into every training session or every game thinking the owner’s going to be on the phone. We’re asking the players to express themselves so we can’t be any different. We have to back that up and live on the edge ourselves.”
Thursday’s reverse to Melbourne City leaves the Mariners in eighth place on the A-League ladder, seven points away from the finals. “Not making the finals will be of importance to me, the staff, the players, the supporters, we want to make the finals and we think we can make the finals,” Walmsley states convincingly. “We’ll be disappointed if we don’t. But the owner doesn’t care one bit.”
For as long as the owner’s position remains that way, the Mariners will remain one of the most interesting sporting propositions in the country
