Oh and by the way, there’s a Mariners game on Friday night

The Mariners are back at fortress Graham Park (as it will soon be known) this weekend to take on one of the heavyweights of the competition, Melbourne Victory but, as is often the case for Central Coast fans the press this week has centred around other things.

 

The clubs majority shareholder was, earlier this week, reported to be interested in the possibility of moving some (or all) of our games from our home Graham Park (Bluetongue Stadium) to North Sydney Oval.

 

”It’s just difficult, as we all know, building a sustainable model with your club based in a relatively small community like Gosford.”

(Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/central-coast-mariners-eye-more-games-in-sydney-20131125-2y67b.html)

 

I’m not going to use my blog to work through the small print of the why’s and wherefores of whether the Central Coast Mariners can be a viable proposition on the Central Coast except to say this:-

 

I don’t believe Mike Charlesworth has entered the ownership of the Central Coast Mariners with the idea in mind that he would be making his next million from the club, and I do believe the club can be a viable proposition on the Central Coast if everyone works together towards it.

 

What I would like to discuss here is how this feels for those who have grown up, lived or still live here on the Central Coast and are proud to do so.

 

As a small kid, I started my interest in sport playing u6’s soccer for a small club called Woy Woy Roosters. Like every other kid on the coast back in the 70’s, I grew up supporting an NRL football team, because that’s what everyone else did. I would have played the sport but I’m a pretty small guy and I’m sure my parents thought I’d be crushed by the big kids if I dared. My team was/is the St George Dragons and to say the Central Coast was and still is largely a Rugby League town would be an understatement – it was all we had back then and is still massively supported here! With thousands of Coasties (including myself for many years) travelling to the City of Sydney daily for work, it was always a possibility to support a team based in Sydney, but we could never “own” them like a local team.

 

At the same time, I kept an eye on the NSL soccer competition but it seemed to be considered by many around these parts to be the domain of “Sheila’s, Poofters and Wogs”, so my main soccer interest was kept up watching my beloved Liverpool in the English First Division as it was known then or on “The Road to Wembley” and being brought to tears every time my national team, the Socceroos, failed to make the World Cup at the final hurdle. Born in the late 60’s, I was the perfect age to have only the vaguest memories of our Socceroo’s making the World Cup and it’s of minor interest I played my first soccer matches  during the boom in the couple of years directly after our first appearance in the 1974 World Cup.

 

As an adult still living on the Central Coast in the nineties, I was thrilled when I heard the idea that we would have a stadium built for the purpose of housing our own NRL team. At the time, the North Sydney Bears were touted as the probable tenants but after some delays building the stadium in 2000 it opened and a conglomeration of then Manly and North Sydney took residence – The Northern Eagles. I attended some of their matches, and even considered becoming a supporter, but there was confusion about who they represented, and Central Coast residents voted with their feet and failed to jump on the bandwagon. In 2002 the Northern Eagles dissolved, and the NRL made it clear to the people of the Central Coast that we’d had our chance at having our own local team.

 

A few years later, along came the A-League with the proposal of the newly formed Central Coast Mariners and like many others, I looked excitedly at the possibility of having our own team as the national identity my local area needed and wanted. It wasn’t the NRL team I thought we might get, but it was a professional sports team I could call my own. I signed up and many others with the same thinking as me did likewise. The sport itself didn’t matter to me as much as the chance to support a team which represented me – my area, my culture, my history – and do it in a way which identified my home, the place where I have been proud to grow up, proud to buy my own place and bring up my kids.

 

Since then, I’ve lived every on field up, and down served up by my club, and yeah, there have been some tough times – three lost Grand Finals spring to mind, but I’ve seen my team in 4 Grand Finals, win two Premierships, watched my team develop countless young talents and felt proud watching those talents grow as they moved off to far distant places around the world all the while being described as “former Central Coast Mariners”. You only need to look at the current Socceroo’s team to see examples of the proud history we’ve enjoyed in this respect. This year, my club finally made my dreams come true and drew all the attention to my little seaside town for the biggest reason of all. We became the A-League Champions. I was thrilled to be there to see it, but equally I was just proud to see how the team from my home could beat the big city teams and become the envy of fans across the nation.

 

In the last few years though, amid constant financial struggles fans have had to endure rumours of possible moves to Geelong and now to North Sydney. What do you think Central Coast fans like me think about those ideas?

 

Mr Charlesworth said when referring to sustainability on the Central Coast – “So something has got to change and if it doesn’t change there won’t be a Central Coast Mariners, full stop. Finito.”
You know what? For the fans who have lived every minute of our short almost nine year history and been as proud as I have of our local teams achievements, if my team can’t be on the Central Coast and represent the people of the Central Coast, I don’t care because I don’t want them at all! And that, Mr Charlesworth, is what a large number of our fans will also think. I wish you luck with the Mariners – your business investment, your hobby, your toy. While you’re playing with it though, spare a thought for the countless fans with stories like mine, riding every bump and uncertainty your toying serves up. Those fans are your bread and butter, your most loyal supporters and they deserve more respect. They deserve more consideration and genuine involvement and they deserve more honesty, and if they can’t have that? They may just go back to supporting no team, paying no membership fees, and to wishing there was a sporting club (of any type A-League, NRL or otherwise) who can give them their due respect and care about what drives them as much as what drives profit.

 

On Friday night, the Mariners take on Melbourne Victory and as has always been the case in our history, our team plays in ways that represent the feelings of the locals. Tomorrow night they will play with their customary character as they show the fans of the Central Coast that when the chips are down – we always step up.

 

Mariners to win by 1

 

Google+