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Kangas time up in the nations Capital?

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Sco

Sco

Cancelled
Mar 14, 2002
1,633
51
Melbourne
AFL Club
North Melbourne
We've been playing home games in Canberra for 8 years now and we can't get a solid supporter base in Canberra, how OR why is there more support for Sydney when we play in Canberra against the swans??

Surely the locals should be supporting us as WE are the ones to take the initiative and play in our nations capital in the first place!!

Is it time to pack up and head to Carrara?
 
Sco said:
We've been playing home games in Canberra for 8 years now and we can't get a solid supporter base in Canberra, how OR why is there more support for Sydney when we play in Canberra against the swans??

Surely the locals should be supporting us as WE are the ones to take the initiative and play in our nations capital in the first place!!

Is it time to pack up and head to Carrara?
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There'll be more Brisbane fans there, its a geographical thing. Sydney fans only had to drive 2 hours down the road (or so they said on TV). Anyway the fact that it was a record crowd yesterday at manuka should indicate to our guys in charge that canberra is the way to go.
 
grEEk_rOO said:
There'll be more Brisbane fans there, its a geographical thing. Sydney fans only had to drive 2 hours down the road (or so they said on TV).
Click to expand...
Doubtful, I've been to 2 games at Carrara this year (one involving Hawthorn, the other Collingwood) and both times Brisbane has been outnumbered.

Most Victorian clubs have more members on the Gold Coast then Brisbane do, I dare say there would be alot more Kangaroo fans in SEQ then there are in Canberra.
 

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Sco said:
Is it time to pack up and head to Carrara?
Click to expand...

or if you want to re-phrase that question....

As Duffmiester said 'Money is money' ..... SHOW DUFF the money!! :p
 
I think most of those Sydney supporters were from Sydney, whenever we play the Swans there it's always a massive Swans crowd. They like the road trip I am told.

We're doing okay in Canberra.
 
1) Close to Sydney - easy drive down the highway, as mentioned before.

2) This is purely theory, but let's see how my logic goes: Canberra has a very transient population given the Government work. You would imagine that ex-Melbourne and ex-Sydney people make up the majority of the public service, say two-thirds (with other states/cities making up the remainder). Given population numbers, you would imagine that the amount of ex-Sydney people in the government service would be more than the amount of ex-Melbourne people (say 60:40). Divide the ex-Sydney public servants by one team, and divide the ex-Melbourne public servants by 11 teams.

I think it barely matters where we go, we'll always be outnumbered in supporters because we have such a small base to begin with. That said, I think we've made some good inroads into Canberra amongst those who's old alliances weren't that strong. I think it will be tough to replicate that on the GC.
 
I seem to recall that the locals on the Gold Coast never turned up in great numbers when they had a team up there full time. What makes anyone think that we could do any better up there playing 2 or 3 times a season?
 
MagooTheRoo said:
I seem to recall that the locals on the Gold Coast never turned up in great numbers when they had a team up there full time. What makes anyone think that we could do any better up there playing 2 or 3 times a season?
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Those in favour of GC would argue it's a different time now, and to some extant they would be right. The population of GC has grown considerably since then. If you count everything from just over the border in Nthn NSW up to where the top end of the GC meets the outskirts of greater Brisbane, then the population is probably double what it was in 87.
Also, Carrara was out in the middle of nowhere, and they called the team "Brisbane" and then played them on the Gold Coast. Stupid.

But I still think your point is a good one to make, and quite right. Personally, I can't help but think that Carrara is still a dog of a ground, poorly located and any attempt to revive it is laughable, given what the AFL did to Waverley. As for the bit about the team on the Gold Coast calling itself something else........ :rolleyes:
 
Gold Coast is a bit like an elephant graveyard where people go to die and play pokies, it is why Southport do well.

They should be looking to invest in funeral parlors rather than a football team, there would be more money in it for them.

GC let the Bears die and they were a GC side. I can't imagine we would have remotely close the amount of support they had, despite the change in times.
 

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I've said it before. We need to properly commit to an area (I prefer Canberra), and develop a support base there. I'm talking 20-25 year commitment and plan to develop the area as our own. Get the AFL, the government, maybe Ainslie and the club together and map out a plan on how we are going to make Canberra a Roo town. The money side of things has to be a secondary consideration and this is where we need to AFL and the ACT govenrment (if possible) to make as big a commitment to Canberra as we would be prepared to make.

It won't happen overnight, and everyone will need to show a bit of patience in terms of how quick the growth is but it will reap rewards.

At the moment if I was a kid in Canberra I'd be reluctant to get too attached to the Roos knowing full well that they could go elsewhere at any time, but if there was a commitment I think you'd find people coming on board in numbers.

I know it's easier said than done, and the decision makers at the club by necessity have to think short term just in order to ensure our survival but IMO it's longer term strategic thinking like this that will enable the club to thrive rather than just survive.
 
I'll say what I've said before, and I'm in agreement with Moomba.
It will take time, probably 20 years or more, to develop a following in Canberra. Rugby and rugby league had completely taken over before the Roos arrived, and we will have to wait until the first set of primary school kids hit their mid 20s to see whether or not the club has rebuilt a footy following and built a Kangaroo following form more or less a zero base.

On the Gold Coast it would be the same thing, except much, much harder. There may be more Vics living onm the gold coast, but they all have their own club already and have shown they will not turn up to even a couple of games as neutrals. Plus, in 20 years many of the Vics will be dead and we'd be relying on a new generation of oldies to convert.
Canberra does have a problem with the transient nature of the population, so supporters won might leave the city (and perhaps the club), but that's also true of the GC where they go from Sydney/Melbourne to dead (an exaggeration, but the bulk of the population growth in SE Qld are retirees who aren't going to change their football habits).

As for being outnumbered by Swans fans, Canberra isn't far from Wagga; where footy has a following and the Swans are the only team - presumably because of being in NSW. That, and the fact that there are plenty of people from Sydney living in Canberra. As there are from all parts of the country, any game in Canberra ahs its share of Essendon, Collingwood, Adelaide, jumpers in the crowd.

Finally if the club, and the league, desert Canberra they will never win the place back.
 
ACT has undergone a major change of face over the last 20 odd years, it is now mostly occupied by NSWers, while there are people from all over the nation there it has never been that dominated by the NSW influence before. It wasn't rugby taking over, it was people who preferred rugby to AFL moving into the region and the AFL followers leaving that changed the face of the territory.

ACT will be as hard to crack as a second team in Sydney, as hard as the Gold Coast and it has less of an upside in terms of financial reward.

We do not owe Canberra anything. We have given them the opportunity to see AFL football and they should feel fortunate. I feel for the die hards that go to every game and have supported the club but they have to face the harsh economic realities as much as we have had to. It is economics which has caused us to lose 3 games a year. It is economics that has seen them gain 3 for a price. It will be economics if they lose those 3 games.

It is nothing malicious, the club needs to make more money to survive and these three home games we play elsewhere are one of the things we sell to help pay the bills.
 
ACT will be as hard to crack as a second team in Sydney, as hard as the Gold Coast and it has less of an upside in terms of financial reward.

Not so sure about this statement.

Sydney is not natural AFL territory, we just beat them in a Grand Final & we have the word Melbourne in our name (nevermind the Kangaroos rebadging).

ACT has has a strong Aussie Rules tradition, there is no other team playing there regularly so we can gain the loyalty of the young, win over the oldies and perhaps get some others as a preferred second team. Financially the Gold Coast may be offering more, but they also want more.

The more I think about this, the more I reckon it is a no brainer.

Economics means that North Melbourne, like several other clubs, are seeking a broader financial base. But economics is only part of the equation & we should consider the impact on our Canberra Roo fans if we were to up and leave. Sure its not the same as leaving Melbourne, but I think we owe it them to do more than consider them lucky to have had us at all.
 
AFL wants games played in ACT. AFL wants games played in SEQ. Nobody is really talking to them about 2007 other than us. It is a unique opportunity to get creative with the AFL who shovel money by the truckload into those states each year.

Here is my proposal:

We play 2 games in Manuka, guaranteed against interstate teams plus one pre-season game. One H&A game is against Sydney. The other to be one of Port, Crows, Freo or Eagles.

We play 2 games at Carrara, guaranteed against interstate teams plus a practice match/pre-season game. One H&A game is against Brisbane. The other to be one of Port, Crows, Freo or Eagles.

Club issues a standard 11 game membership ticket and 4 away games played at TD or MCG are allocated as paid home games.

We get a guaranteed $500k per game underwritten by the AFL given we are developing a market we do not expect to remain in long-term so the AFL can pay part of the cost of development that some other club will benefit from long-term.

Club does that for 3 years, makes a bundle of cash, we get to see the boys play here against local sides, the dud no atmopshere games are sent packing and we work on building a 30k+ membership base.

We PAID and developed Friday night football, the multi-million dollar market was paid for by us and Collingwood & Essendon are reaping that reward. It is time we get paid for developing a market we are not going to exploit, because when the time comes we will be playing our 11 games from Melbourne.
 

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Were any of these people that are saying Canberra is a lost hope actually there at the game on Sunday?

I assure all of you, that Canberrans do support the Roos and they were there in numbers on Sunday, you just couldn’t see them as they were all in the covered area on the other side of the ground.

Canberra is coming along nicely. 1500 Canberrans are now members of the NMFC. That’s 1500 supporters that never existed 5 years ago that are now North supporters.

We must remember that the crowd was mostly made up of Swans band-wagoners. No shi*t, but I actually heard Swans supporters asking about how to tell the difference between a goal and a point, as well as thinking that a pack on the ground was actually a scrum being formed.

Anyways there is Canberran support and the people I talked too were very interested in the Roos and wether they played games in Canberra. I actually saw just as many people wearing North Melbourne scarves at the Raiders game as there were Raiders fans decked out in Raiders gear.

And to those that think Canberra is a lost cause, try saying that to the kids of the Roos academy. I spoke to some 12 y.o who said he thought it was very good that the Roos are giving him a chance to train with the Kanga’s players and to play against people from the Swans academy.

If we go to Carrara a lot of footy fans will turn up, but now of them will ever convert themselves to being North Melbourne supporters. We will not increase our supporter base up there.
 
I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that we can walk into any town and just expect people to turn up just to watch whatever teams are playing. The cost of going to the footy is too high to attract large numbers of neutral supporters. Melbourne based supporters are really lucky to have the MCG and TD where they can usually get good seats at general admission prices. Once you add reserved seating to the cost of entry it gets too expensive to regularly take the family to games where you don't care much about the outcome.

We need to establish REAL supporters who will come back repeatedly. Moving base every few years to get a few extra bucks isn't going to do this. If we are going to turn to the Gold Coast in favour of Canberra the the financial rewards must be significantly higher, (double or more).
 

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Kangas time up in the nations Capital?

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