northernspirit
Well-Known Member
actually its not that uncommon for places not to take amex or diners, i think those have higher merchant fees... i use my work fuel card but that only works at shell servos
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this is bullshit
- Thread starter marinerbhoy
- Start date
marinermick
Well-Known Member
northernspirit said:
yeah, it's annoying as AMEX is my work charge card and when they don't take it I have to shell out my own cash and get reinbursed (process of four weeks)
i don't worry about the 2% surcharge in some places as it is not my money - just glad they take amex and it gives me qanats frequent flyer points
Bex
Well-Known Member
Yeh, I've got the Amex work card as well. Useless as tits on a bull unless you're in the CBD at a restaurant or hotel.
Have been driving to Scumville 4 days a week for the past couple of years with one day in Silverwater. Changed that a couple of months ago to 5 days a week in Sydney. Either way, its a relief to get back to the coast.
Have been driving to Scumville 4 days a week for the past couple of years with one day in Silverwater. Changed that a couple of months ago to 5 days a week in Sydney. Either way, its a relief to get back to the coast.
The fact that so many people put up with commuting for work just highlights how determined Coasties are to stay on the Coast - for the life outside of work. Imagine how p**sed-off they'd be if they had to do it again on a weekend to support their local team at a supposed "home" game.
When you commute, arriving back on the Coast on a friday arvo is one of the best feelings in the world; you work your arse off all week in anticipation of that reward. Knowing you have to get up and go back again on the weekend wrecks your whole weekend, especially when the drive or train down makes it feel like another work day.
When you commute, arriving back on the Coast on a friday arvo is one of the best feelings in the world; you work your arse off all week in anticipation of that reward. Knowing you have to get up and go back again on the weekend wrecks your whole weekend, especially when the drive or train down makes it feel like another work day.
Gotta agree with adz against your points spud - come on mate, this is modern football! Manchester United have more fans in China than in England! Whatever market you can tap is up for the taking.
Any kind of 'official' exclusive zone for promotion is ridiculous. An extreme example but a logical extension of what you are saying would be that I couldn't receive a CCM members kit because that would be tapping into Sydney's market.
The promotion and marketing efforts of any club should only be limited by the appeal of the club and resources they are willing to throw into it.
SNOWMARINER - "I'm glad our management has squashed the rediculous idea of moving a home game for the benifit of people who don't live here."
a) I haven't heard our management squash the idea and b) I'd imagine moving any game would supposedly be for the financial benefit of our club, not for any other reason.
Any kind of 'official' exclusive zone for promotion is ridiculous. An extreme example but a logical extension of what you are saying would be that I couldn't receive a CCM members kit because that would be tapping into Sydney's market.
The promotion and marketing efforts of any club should only be limited by the appeal of the club and resources they are willing to throw into it.
SNOWMARINER - "I'm glad our management has squashed the rediculous idea of moving a home game for the benifit of people who don't live here."
a) I haven't heard our management squash the idea and b) I'd imagine moving any game would supposedly be for the financial benefit of our club, not for any other reason.
SNOWMARINER
Well-Known Member
brett said:
According to the last report in the express advocate he has said that we will not be moving a home game to Sydney. Saying that he does'nt think marketing the Mariners in Sydney is a good idea.
Althgough I think it's great if Sydney based people support our club moving any home game to anywhere other than BT is nothing short of an insult and one sure to bite the club on the a**.
Do Manchester play home games in China? I think not. Marketing our club in NS is great with increased potential income but moving home games is not.
It's a great drive up the F3 on a weekend during hours that games are played and that's exactly how it should be.
P
Pete
Guest
adz said:
Hey I don't mind one bit if the Mariners have fans all over the place, the more the merrier.
But I tend to draw the line a lot earlier than you, so I suppose you and I will disagree a bit on what should be moved and what should stay at Bluetongue.
As for marketing and promotion, and territory exclusions, well I thought it would have been more prudent of the Central Coast Mariners to devote all their energies towards making the Central Coast region a fortress for them, and have all their home games at Bluetongue to a packed yellow crowd.
It's not so much about not having fans in 'enemy territory' but rather about looking after our own backyard first and ensuring we don't create a precedent that could bite us on the bum severely by having a nibble here and there in the Sydney metro area.
A change of management direction, a marketing strategy and a heap of dollars could very well see all sorts of Sydney FC clinics up here, Sydney weekender packages, stickers and all sorts of light blue marketing hitting the Coast. Try complaining to the FFA after we've had clinics and pre season trials in the Sydney metro area, and a proposed home pre season game vs. Sydney FC at NSO, and the FFA might well ignore any pleas from our club for a 'fair go'. Ditto if Con and his mob (or if he sells out to a switched on consortium) ever get their sh*t together but in a shade of baby sh*t brown.
Your idea of promoting away games near to interstate Mariners fans with complementary tickets and membership, is a good one. I don't see that contravening any perceived territory of an opposing team, but I'd think it wrong to believe the Mariners can market themselves by playing a 'home' game in another city, against the other HAL team that 'resides' there, and not think there'd be some payback later on when they want to market northwards into our territory.
And I can recall a similar sort of argument when an EPL club (Man U?) proposed an idea to move one of the EPL games overseas. Their opponents to the proposal (UEFA?) argued that it was OK for EPL clubs to head off overseas and promote the game by exhibition matches and pre season trials, etc. but to actually stage an EPL match in someone else's domain was a bit rich.
dibo
Well-Known Member
you're missing a few things:
-we're already doing very well on the central coast and i don't anticipate that effors to grow and deepen support on the central coast will stop
- why would SFC come to the central coast, a market of 280k where we've already got an overwhelming presence, when they've got a catchment of ~4m that they haven't exactly stripmined for support. they (and any other club for that matter) have got better things to do.
to offer an illustraive example of what i mean: take two neighbouring farmers leasing land in a cooperative, one with a hold on 16 acres, another with one acre. the farmer with the bigger holding cultivates maybe 10% of his own fields, the farmer with the smaller holding cultivates just about the lot. why would the bigger farmer hop over the fence and plant seeds in his neighbour's smaller fields? why on earth would he bother when he could plough some of his own land that presently lies fallow.
meanwhile, if he can't get across all of his land he's hardly going to be that averse to the neighbour planting some seed in his field - he's not using it, it costs him nothing. the small farmer isn't moving house, he's just optimising the use of the available land for maximum output.
the fact that neither the FFA nor SFC have complained so far indicates that while this might be a simplistic analogy, it's also roughly true. the FFA want more football fans, and they don't much care what colour they wear. sfc can't cover their whole patch, the mariners have probably done better than ever expected (crowd growth of 26% then 30% adds weight to my argument). everyone shows a little pragmatism to boost the cause as a whole - without the smallest markets doing well there's no comp for the bigger clubs either.
also applies to the folks up north - they've got twice the territory we do.
interstate fan stuff i agree is a terrific idea.
we're not man u going to bangkok, we're more like tranmere pulling fans from liverpool - they are big enough to look after themselves, and are hardly going to be threatened by us.
-we're already doing very well on the central coast and i don't anticipate that effors to grow and deepen support on the central coast will stop
- why would SFC come to the central coast, a market of 280k where we've already got an overwhelming presence, when they've got a catchment of ~4m that they haven't exactly stripmined for support. they (and any other club for that matter) have got better things to do.
to offer an illustraive example of what i mean: take two neighbouring farmers leasing land in a cooperative, one with a hold on 16 acres, another with one acre. the farmer with the bigger holding cultivates maybe 10% of his own fields, the farmer with the smaller holding cultivates just about the lot. why would the bigger farmer hop over the fence and plant seeds in his neighbour's smaller fields? why on earth would he bother when he could plough some of his own land that presently lies fallow.
meanwhile, if he can't get across all of his land he's hardly going to be that averse to the neighbour planting some seed in his field - he's not using it, it costs him nothing. the small farmer isn't moving house, he's just optimising the use of the available land for maximum output.
the fact that neither the FFA nor SFC have complained so far indicates that while this might be a simplistic analogy, it's also roughly true. the FFA want more football fans, and they don't much care what colour they wear. sfc can't cover their whole patch, the mariners have probably done better than ever expected (crowd growth of 26% then 30% adds weight to my argument). everyone shows a little pragmatism to boost the cause as a whole - without the smallest markets doing well there's no comp for the bigger clubs either.
also applies to the folks up north - they've got twice the territory we do.
interstate fan stuff i agree is a terrific idea.
we're not man u going to bangkok, we're more like tranmere pulling fans from liverpool - they are big enough to look after themselves, and are hardly going to be threatened by us.
See my previous post on the ridiculous notion of geographic exclusivity, but on Sydney FC promoting themselves on the Coast:
Feel free boys!
I'd be more inclined to chuckle than to run off crying to the FFA (which we would have no grounds to do).
For FC to be spending resources pushing themselves up here would be a total waste for them. The CCMFC is squeezing this market for all it's worth. There aren't many untapped football fans left on the Coast and they will struggle to convert many Mariners fans unless we do something to turn people away.
In a way, that is irrelevant to the point. If Sydney want to market up here, they are welcome to.
Another interesting example would be clubs like Liverpool/Everton and Man U/Man City. They are 'generally' spread throughout the cities they are in, right? I could be wrong.
As for the crux of the matter - us 'moving' south - Pete you are right in that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed.
Should we connect with Sydney-based associations to create recruitment pathways? YES
Should we run clinics in those associations to promote our club to the next generation of fans? YES
Should we market our matches and memberships to the mail/email lists of those associations? YES
Should we play trial fixtures against clubs in those associations to strengthen ties and create more brand awareness? YES
Should we play one Pre-Season Cup fixture at, say, NSO, to put our club in front of those potential fans in a high-quality match? I think we should!
Should we move one A-League fixture to Sydney as a 'marquee' match? NO WAY
Our marketing plan to date has been very Central Coast focussed and we're well ahead of where we could have dreamed of being in terms of getting the Coast behind the team and all that. If reaching the tentacles into northern Sydney if something we need to do now (in an ideal world we could just stay insular 100% Coastie) that is fine but there is one rule: It can never be at the expense of the Central Coast support that has been established.
That's where I draw the line Pete, if you draw it earlier, that's fine of course.
Now, there are hypothetical situations beyond this whereby the club would HAVE to play one match at homebush a season to create a cash windfall that keeps us viable. I'm sure everyone would rather have that sacrifice than lose the club. Extending that thought maybe we'd have to play two matches there a season, or three. Then we get into territory where we draw a new line of 'when is it not worth having a Central Coast club?'.
I believe this is a redundant concept though. By going to homebush, you might get X amount of dollars once, but you are probably going to lose that much or more with the patrons you are either losing or not gaining over the course of a season. The Sydney derbies at Bluetongue have always drawn the big crowds, and it's those newcomers that then come back for more. To lose those matches would stunt our potential growth.
Feel free boys!
I'd be more inclined to chuckle than to run off crying to the FFA (which we would have no grounds to do).
For FC to be spending resources pushing themselves up here would be a total waste for them. The CCMFC is squeezing this market for all it's worth. There aren't many untapped football fans left on the Coast and they will struggle to convert many Mariners fans unless we do something to turn people away.
In a way, that is irrelevant to the point. If Sydney want to market up here, they are welcome to.
Another interesting example would be clubs like Liverpool/Everton and Man U/Man City. They are 'generally' spread throughout the cities they are in, right? I could be wrong.
As for the crux of the matter - us 'moving' south - Pete you are right in that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed.
Should we connect with Sydney-based associations to create recruitment pathways? YES
Should we run clinics in those associations to promote our club to the next generation of fans? YES
Should we market our matches and memberships to the mail/email lists of those associations? YES
Should we play trial fixtures against clubs in those associations to strengthen ties and create more brand awareness? YES
Should we play one Pre-Season Cup fixture at, say, NSO, to put our club in front of those potential fans in a high-quality match? I think we should!
Should we move one A-League fixture to Sydney as a 'marquee' match? NO WAY
Our marketing plan to date has been very Central Coast focussed and we're well ahead of where we could have dreamed of being in terms of getting the Coast behind the team and all that. If reaching the tentacles into northern Sydney if something we need to do now (in an ideal world we could just stay insular 100% Coastie) that is fine but there is one rule: It can never be at the expense of the Central Coast support that has been established.
That's where I draw the line Pete, if you draw it earlier, that's fine of course.
Now, there are hypothetical situations beyond this whereby the club would HAVE to play one match at homebush a season to create a cash windfall that keeps us viable. I'm sure everyone would rather have that sacrifice than lose the club. Extending that thought maybe we'd have to play two matches there a season, or three. Then we get into territory where we draw a new line of 'when is it not worth having a Central Coast club?'.
I believe this is a redundant concept though. By going to homebush, you might get X amount of dollars once, but you are probably going to lose that much or more with the patrons you are either losing or not gaining over the course of a season. The Sydney derbies at Bluetongue have always drawn the big crowds, and it's those newcomers that then come back for more. To lose those matches would stunt our potential growth.
robertdocon
New Member
yeah well said
Bear
Well-Known Member
Sydney FC can do all the promoting they like up here. Scum as well. Whenever I walk into a rebel on the coast, I always grab the FC and Scum merch sitting near the Mariners gear and "distribute" it around the store in various places anyway *cough under shelfs and in the bottom of golf bags cough* 
P
Pete
Guest
Given the last 2 posts from Brett and Dibo and my last as well, I'd say I can't add anymore other than to say I tend to disagree with them fundamentally on the issue of what a franchise entitles you to (ie: geographic exclusion), and a possible assumption by them that Sydney FC's bumbling management will remain as is and/or couldn't be bothered with our area.
The debate has been done to death I reckon, and I won't budge from my own view and I guess Dibo and Brett won't from theirs.
But going back to the original reason for this thread, has there been anything official from the club about a proposed Homebush home game, or are we all going to have to wait for the members' packages and see if there's any info in those?
The debate has been done to death I reckon, and I won't budge from my own view and I guess Dibo and Brett won't from theirs.
But going back to the original reason for this thread, has there been anything official from the club about a proposed Homebush home game, or are we all going to have to wait for the members' packages and see if there's any info in those?
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