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Bex

Well-Known Member
And Fossie is supposed to be the subject matter expert on professionalism is he???
 

go you yellow

Well-Known Member
Softly, softly suits Graham Arnold's ancient Central Coast Mariners

Graham Arnold's Central Coast Mariners have been forced to fight for every glimmer of recognition. Picture: Mark Scott Source: The Daily Telegraph

GRAHAM Arnold's Central Coast Mariners have been the flag-bearers for Australian club soccer for almost three seasons.
Beaten grand finalists in 2010-11, preliminary finalists in 2011-12, top of the A-League table since virtually the start of this season and on the way to another Premiers Plate and maybe a long-overdue championship, the Mariners should be lauded for what they have achieved.
Yet while Alessandro Del Piero, Melbourne Victory and the stunning emergence of Western Sydney Wanderers have captured the imagination of fans and the media, the boys from NSW's central coast have been forced to fight for every glimmer of recognition.
These days, the Mariners are more likely to make the news because of untimely player departures, such as Tom Rogic's transfer, and continuing financial issues (which could see them lose one of their major sponsors) rather than for all the good things they are doing on the park under Arnold's passionate and expert guidance.
But the club seems to revel in flying under the radar. The players are a tight-knit group that feeds off team spirit and Arnold's us-against-them philosophy.
According to classy left back Josh Rose, the lack of recognition is not an issue.
"We don't mind. We are happy to leave the headlines to the others," Rose said as he prepared for tonight's top-of-the-table match against Adelaide United at Bluetongue Stadium.
"At the end of the day, the objective is to get to the finals and perform well. If we do that, people will start to talk about us.
"We just need to keep doing what we are doing. We have to stay consistent and turn it on when we get to the finals.
"But, really, we are not thinking about finals football. We have a tough game against Adelaide."
Rose, who has played all 17 games for the Mariners this season and is one of their key weapons, rejected suggestions the loss of players midway through a season was a major concern.
Last season, Matt Simon and Rostyn Griffiths left the Mariners for Asian clubs and only recently Rogic signed with Scottish giant Celtic, while Bernie Ibini is also likely to head overseas.
"That stuff is like water off a duck's back," Rose said. "We work to a team structure, it's about the team, not individuals.
"Yeah, Tom is a big loss for us. He created so much and we all saw how good he is with the ball. But there are players ready to take the step up. It's a great opportunity for someone else to come in and make the spot their own."
by: Ray Gatt
Who is the major sponsor at risk ? Any ideas ? Energy Australia is already out of the picture with Chris Hartcher pulling the plug on corporate suites / sponsorships last year.
 

midfielder

Well-Known Member
Who is the major sponsor at risk ? Any ideas ? Energy Australia is already out of the picture with Chris Hartcher pulling the plug on corporate suites / sponsorships last year.

LOL talk about get it wrong within days of the article the lost sponsor re signed ... it was our current sponsor Master Foods as the parent company P Meats [who own master foods] is owned by one of the directors of WSW and it was believed he would pull his sponsorship...
 

go you yellow

Well-Known Member
LOL talk about get it wrong within days of the article the lost sponsor re signed ... it was our current sponsor Master Foods as the parent company P Meats [who own master foods] is owned by one of the directors of WSW and it was believed he would pull his sponsorship...
Must have been Primo. Masterfoods is owned by the Mars family.
 

Gratis

Well-Known Member
" But with years of football still ahead of him Griffiths, 24, says he’ll never replicate the camaraderie he enjoyed during two seasons with the Central Coast Mariners.
“I’ll never forget that time in my football and I think I’ll probably never play for a football club like that again,” he told au.fourfourtwo.com.
“Everyone is first and foremost mates. I went back to the Central Coast in December and joined in with the boys in training and it was just like I’d never been away.
“The boys there are great, they’ve got a good coach in Arnie and it’s just brilliant. I keep in touch with them regularly and every now and then smash them a bit on Twitter.
“I’ve seen a lot of football clubs now and although I’m only turning 25 this year I know enough about football to know that was probably a one-off time to be honest.”
It’s a big call for someone who spent six years with Blackburn Rovers and has played against the likes of Nicholas Anelka and Didier Drogba in the CSL. "

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/262594,rostyn-griffiths-13m-and-not-even-a-signed-shirt.aspx
 

midfielder

Well-Known Member
Put this on the Roar a couple of days ago ... just sharing not sure whether to put it on this thread or the COE .. http://www.theroar.com.au/2013/02/09/mariners-centre-of-excellence-dream-comes-true/

A massive foundation stone has just been laid on the Central Coast with a school of football excellence established for kids from years 5 to 10.

Some years ago, I needed to make a choice between which one of the new Sydney FC and Central Coast Mariners teams I would support. I lived in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney. Gosford was about 50 minutes by car, plus say ten minutes to park and walk, so about an hour.Sydney FC, with a 10 minute walk to the train, 20 minutes on the train, 20 minutes to the stadium, was around an hour also.

I choose the Mariners for two reasons. The parents of both my wife and I lived on the coast, and we had a weekender we rented that we planned to move into one day. The other reason was a speech by Lyle Gorman.
The Mariners arrived on the Coast and where mostly main up of Northern Spirit coaches, and key players and the Spirit was my NSL team after my Blacktown Demons went back to state level. The Mariners arrived on the Coast about the same time as the Northern Eagles left and in a rugby league area were initially seen as a club taking advantage of another sports’ misfortunes.I went along with maybe 150 others to listen to what Lyle Gorman had to say.

Essentially why should we support a team in a rugby league heartland with little money? How would we play? How would we compete with capital city teams? How would we get a crowd from a regional centre of around 250, 000 who followed rugby league? Lyle said he planned to build Australia’s biggest and best training academy, a Centre of Football Excellence.

This academy would get the best juniors around the country and by developing them they would help the team play good football, more importantly good football of a high technical quality would in time get crowds, and in time produce players we could sell overseas to help fund the club. We all asked Lyle how, who, why, when will the funding be available. Lyle answered I will make it happen or the club will fail.

Sydney FC had Frank, Dwight, and heaps of money. They were talking up the bling. The Mariners had a dream we all though it had little chance of success. I reasoned the Mariners need help, I will live on the Coast one day, but most of all I love his dream of building a technical centre of football excellence and a football academy to support it.

The announcement of the opening of the football school of excellence on the Coast is music to my ears. To fully understand it, you need to be aware of the Mariners’ academy structure and how the school will fit in.
Coaches employed by the Mariners and working through the COE, coach and design the coaching methods of the Central Coast Association representative teams of all ages, both boys and girls.
Further Mariners appointed and paid coaches also design the coaching methods for the Western NSW Association [roughly 12, 000] rep teams.

In both Associations the Mariners also train the rep coaches. Both Associations have rep teams from U9 to U18, who are coached consistent with Mariners’ methods, and both participate at state level. In addition every Mariners coaching session is open to any coach in both associations. Graham Arnold takes pride in passing on his knowledge to local coaches. The new school has two former Mariners players as head male coaches. The COE and the school are working together and looking to see how this can be expanded.

Now it is reasonable to assume if the kids that go to this school are good they will make the Central Coast Association rep sides where Mariners’ scouts watch every game. We have former coaches in the school passing on information about players.

This means we have laid one of Lyle’s hopes for the COE, that it would have its own school where kids could develop in football and academia.

They will be coached and watched by former Mariners players in association with the COE and play in representative teams.

Any kid who wants a career in football will try to come to this school and try to make the rep teams

As a Mariners supporter, it makes me very proud. And it’s all been done on a shoe string budget.

The COE is under twelve months away from being cash positive.

This is possibly a first for Australian sport, and shows that sport can still have valuable and viable links with the community.
 

timmers

Well-Known Member
http://leopoldmethod.com.au/mariners-in-good-shape-to-be-our-asia-lone-ranger/

Good read, I reckon he is spot on with this observation...

"The fullbacks are the only position of concern, and only because the Mariners rely so much tactically on the ability of Pedj Bojic and Josh Rose to bomb forward. Neither of these players have replacements who can offer the same blend of solidity and penetration. Bojic has been conspicuous by his absence when unavailable this season so it will be interesting to see how Arnold manages these two, and in which matches, if any, he decides to forgo their forward runs for the sake of giving them a rest."
 
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midfielder

Well-Known Member
http://leopoldmethod.com.au/mariners-in-good-shape-to-be-our-asia-lone-ranger/

Good read, I reckon he is spot on with this observation...

"The fullbacks are the only position of concern, and only because the Mariners rely so much tactically on the ability of Pedj Bojic and Josh Rose to bomb forward. Neither of these players have replacements who can offer the same blend of solidity and penetration. Bojic has been conspicuous by his absence when unavailable this season so it will be interesting to see how Arnold manages these two, and in which matches, if any, he decides to forgo their forward runs for the sake of giving them a rest."

The writer Brett if its the same guy used to write on the old forum and we all enjoyed his articles.. years ago he would have worked for a paper ... alas these days those jobs are going... but Brett is a good writer and a huge Mariner fan...
 

Gratis

Well-Known Member
from FFA site -

Central Coast setting the standard

Monday, 25 February 2013 2:15 PM
At full-time at a monsoonal Bluetongue Stadium last weekend, Graham Arnold picked up his brolly and made the effort to walk 50 metres out into the centre of the pitch to shake the hand of referee Strebre Delovski.
That's how pleased he was. That's how good Central Coast Mariners were in putting Melbourne Victory to the sword. For once the notoriously hard-to-please Arnold was feeling generous.
So he should have been. The Mariners were magnificent. But still he couldn't help himself as he faced the press.
Asked if he was happy, he replied: ''Happy? We let in two goals.'' This time, though, he didn't really mean it.
If you know Arnold well enough, you know he was as relaxed as he's ever likely to be. His team hadn't simply passed their biggest test of the season, they'd blitzed it.
The two goals conceded - an own goal from Trent Sainsbury and a clumsy challenge from a pumped-up Mitchell Duke that gifted the visitors a penalty - put an undeserved gloss on the scoreline for a Victory side, which only a fortnight earlier had nursed their own minor premiership ambitions. Those hopes have been smashed.
Ange Postecoglou, who had been rather tetchy after the back-to-back defeats to Adelaide United and Western Sydney Wanderers, was far more philosophical on this occasion. No complaints about the scoreline, and a hint of praise for the opposition. The respect he has for Arnold might be part of that.
Whenever Melbourne Victory lose, there's a tendency to focus on what they did wrong rather than what the opposition did right. That's the aura that comes from being the biggest club in the country. It tends to irk opposing coaches, players, and clubs that they often don't get the credit they feel they deserve.
The Mariners deserve all the recognition from this emphatic display. All of it. Talk about a statement of intent.
Central Coast won every one-on-one contest. Their rotations created havoc. Their energy, and stamina, on a heavy pitch was exceptional.
Tactically, Arnold's decision to have Daniel McBreen playing as a no.10 instead of Mike McGlinchey proved a masterstroke.
McGlinchey exploited the flanks to perfection - grabbing his first-ever hat-trick - while McBreen's superhuman workrate nullified Mark Milligan's influence as the fulcrum of the Victory's passing game. A win-win.
McBreen could even afford to blast a penalty against the crossbar, and with a bit more composure in front of goal the Mariners might have scored a few more.
This, we should remember, in a crunch game against a close challenger, blended with the added pressure of knowing the Wanderers had just jumped past them into top spot. Ninety minutes later, normal service had resumed.
Certainly long-time Mariners fans were purring in appreciation. Over eight seasons of the Hyundai A-League, no club has won more games than Central Coast. But it's taken a while for the performances to catch up to the results. The quality of football now being produced is as good as any I've seen - and that includes Brisbane Roar at their peak.
The Mariners, of course, have done all this on a shoestring budget. From the grand final starting XI of two years ago - four players (Alex Wilkinson, Rostyn Griffiths, Mustafa Amini and Matt Simon) - have left, and another, Adam Kwasnik, has been barely sighted because of injury.
For a club with limited resources to not only cover those losses, but improve on them, says a lot about the quality of coaching, the attitude of the players, and benchmarks that are being set.
All that will, of course, be put to the test again this weekend. Western Sydney are coming to town for the first time, and bringing thousands of their noisy fans with them. Bluetongue Stadium might even be sold out.
If you subscribe to the media hype, all the momentum is falling behind the Wanderers, who have won their last seven. Even Phil Rothfield in Sydney's Daily Telegraph has jumped on the bandwagon.
Truth is, the Mariners are used to working on the fringes. In fact they feed off it.
But there are a couple of salient points to consider ahead of what could be a Premier's Plate decider. The Mariners have already gone to Parramatta twice this season, and returned home with four points from six. And no team has scored more goals this season and conceded less.
Central Coast are not at the top of the table by default. They're there because they've earned it. The price of that success is about to unfold as the Mariners deal with the twin challenges of the business end of the Hyundai A-League season, and the group phase of the Asian Champions League.
It's going to be hectic, and tough, and exhausting. Cue the doubters. The Mariners, after all, have played in three grand finals and lost them all. And they've never made it to the knockout stage of the ACL.
But that's then. This is now. There's a different vibe around the dressing room these days. A lot more swagger, and a bit more chill. And that includes Arnold.
Other coaches have long known how good the Mariners are. Just think how many of their players you'd like in your team. What's changed is that the Mariners are starting to learn how to believe in themselves.
How far have they come? A long way, as far as I'm concerned. And we don't have to wait long to find out.
 

Gratis

Well-Known Member
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/f...rowned-champions/story-fndmcfmm-1226614002623

THINK of the big A-League stories this year and you might have Alessandro Del Piero joining Sydney FC at the top of the list.

The Western Sydney Wanderers' fairytale run would be up there, too.

Drill down a little further and you might hit Shinji Ono's arrival, Emile Heskey's signing at Newcastle or Ange Postecoglou's terrific first year at Melbourne Victory.

The Central Coast Mariners will rarely rate a mention even though they created history by becoming the only club to surpass 50 points for three straight seasons.

If you measure success on consistency, then you can mount a strong case that the Mariners have been the most successful A-League club.

Still, to cement their legacy, Graham Arnold's team has to win this year's grand final. There are no more excuses, this is their time.

Balancing Asian Champions League with a finals campaign won't be easy, yet I'm expecting the Mariners will finally be crowned champions after three failed shots at a grand final. They would be worthy champions.

The Mariners are a remarkable story in their own right. This is a club without a marquee player - Patrick Zwaanswijk would be as close as you get - and they run on the sniff of an oily rag. Yet every year they punch above their weight.

Spirit, commitment and a sense of togetherness is something you can't buy.

The Mariners have also developed some of the most exciting young talent in the country, from Tommy Rogic, Mustafa Amini to Bernie Ibini, Trent Sainsbury and keeper Mat Ryan, through to this year's young guns Mitchell Duke and Anthony Caceres.

The way Duke and Caceres have burst on to the scene underlines Arnold's strength as a coach. He has always been good at bringing through young players, giving them confidence to back their ability.

Obviously, the Wanderers have momentum and I expect they will make it through to the grand final, too.

What a game that would be between two fairytale teams separated by F3. The buzz in Sydney would be massive.

There is little that can go wrong with the Wanderers' game plan. They will try to suffocate their rivals, play direct and rely on counter-attack. It's a style that has served them well. They are also playing at home.

Underpinning all of their graft is the craft of Shinji Ono. The Japanese star has been brilliant for the league and Western Sydney.

But the Mariners have been through the wringer before. Not only have they lost three grand finals, including the heart-breaker against the Brisbane Roar two years ago on penalties, last year they bowed out on penalties in the preliminary final at home against Perth Glory.

Those losses can send a team one of two ways: it can build up scar tissue to the point where you just fade away or it can harden your resolve.

This is a tough and driven Mariners outfit. They are a team of destiny.
 

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