Prediction Dr Sonja Hood AM

[King Corey]

This. His time at West Coast was basically a bunch of weird pick swaps, an okay 2016 and 2017 draft and a shitful 2018 draft. He wasn't behind the 2018 success. I reckon maybe 3-4 of his pick ups were in that 2018 grand final side.

I don't know why but feel like the image below might tell us how WC get up and firing every 10 years.



ps: kudos to Adam & WC for not even attempting to hide their blatant soft cap dodging

 

[Groucho]

I don't know why but feel like the image below might tell us how WC get up and firing every 10 years.

View attachment 2548739

ps: kudos to Adam & WC for not even attempting to hide their blatant soft cap dodging

Bloody hell! Remember ,some time in the ‘90’s ,Simmo, Belly and Kent Kingsley started some sort of IT business and I recall one player suggesting Simmo must be chief coffee maker. Seems to have kicked on ok

 

[Passmore]

Essendon I believe

Impressive.

 

[Harris 10]

I don't know why but feel like the image below might tell us how WC get up and firing every 10 years.

View attachment 2548739

ps: kudos to Adam & WC for not even attempting to hide their blatant soft cap dodging

4 Hungry Jack's franchises.....LOL

 

[gokangas]

4 Hungry Jack's franchises LOL

The coaches are better at Hungry Jacks.

 

[rickety]

Bloody hell! Remember ,some time in the ‘90’s ,Simmo, Belly and Kent Kingsley started some sort of IT business and I recall one player suggesting Simmo must be chief coffee maker. Seems to have kicked on ok

Iirc had a fake grass business too

 

[tales129]

Iirc had a fake grass business too

Narni grima likes this

 

[Mixed Results]

Where’s Daniel McPherson currently employed?

I missed this earlier, but he is currently the GM for Essendon.

 

[Sphynx]

We’re no longer making losses and nor in debt. Half the club has had ultimate success and seriously broken records, while the other half has been embarrassingly bad.

I find it hard to believe the issue is at the top. Focus should continue to be on the men’s department and the players.

I can comfortably say that it’s not a coincidence that two first gamers have already been named for round 1. The trash is being cleaned out.

Let’s be clear. “Accounting” profits.

Also, not all debt is “bad”

We are a long way from where we were financially 20 years ago.

However, there’s been a certain level of passiveness (like the rest of the football club tbh) for at least the last 5-10 years.

We can turn profit as much as we like, its great for the papers and 99% of our members swallow the kool aid. Unless you read the other clubs financial reports, you have no idea how far behind we actually are.

We have virtually no assets, our commercial turnover is 30-40% of some rival clubs and it’s only a matter of time before that is able to be translated to the football department. We have been lucky so far.

I don’t ever want to move from Arden St, but not even the largest clubs in this league are undertaking $50-$100m capital investments completely on their own at the moment. These are training bases they own in their entirety. The land, the capital value of the building etc. We have been hanging out for the decision of local government about a training ground upgrade for the last 6 years, to a co-occupied public oval. That seems dead in the water, because they torpedoed that $12 billion dollar hospital over the road.

If some other clubs ran our overheads etc they’d be reporting $20-$30m profits each year.

I’m proud of where we are and what we have overcome, however, that was years ago. As far as I can see we have done nothing proactive since other than selling off our supporter base (and members/stakeholders) in person viewing opportunities..

The cynic in me thinks with Sonja’s background we opted for the “social” community support path in terms of our long term commercial strategy. A bird with two stones solution. Part of it, I’m sure, because we thought it would leverage political influence.x public grants, funding and upgrades to Arden St. you have to say that strategy has been a failure to this point. Arden St’s investment is lagging behind pretty much every other Melbourne training ground in the last decade for clubs who took traditional commercial strategy in the same time frame.

Clubs in this league own bars, hotels, gym chains, industrial property as alternative revenue streams.

We need to be more aggressive given our relative revenue. What have we invested in? The Huddle? That’s good, has it benefited the club commercially in anyway? Possibly with sponsorship. Certainly not with political lobbying. There’s social benefits obviously, however a club like ours who was on life support 20 years ago is in zero position to prioritize social schemes without major commercial benefits.

There’s absolutely nothing to be celebrating in our financials. Certainly not a book profit on some of the lowest turnover in the entire league with little to no alternative revenue investment. All you are admitting is you make less and spend far less than your opponents, which is getting year on year worse because they also make money from other things other than AFL distributions. Awesome…

 

[Spud11]

A letter from club president Dr Sonja Hood AM

Club president Dr Sonja Hood AM writes to members and supporters ahead of Round 1

www.nmfc.com.au

 

[Devski]

Strong message. Nowhere to hide now.

If this year goes to shit the calls for Clarko and the board to go will be loud, rightly or wrongly.

 

[Flawed Genius]

As clear a line in the sand as one can draw. Looking forward to 6.9.45 vs 17.6.110 and vision of a dejected Roos side sauntering off Marvel at 4:40pm Sunday as a result

 

[Devski]

As clear a line in the sand as one can draw. Looking forward to 6.9.45 vs 17.6.110 and vision of a dejected Roos side sauntering off Marvel at 4:40pm Sunday as a result

You’re missing the glowing write up in the papers of how JHF conquered the hostile environment and foot injury to kick 9 goals despite being defended by PREMIERSHIP DEFENDER CALEB DANIEL

 

[DocSholl]

As clear a line in the sand as one can draw. Looking forward to 6.9.45 vs 17.6.110 and vision of a dejected Roos side sauntering off Marvel at 4:40pm Sunday as a result

Port are a really strong club, Kenny left them in a great position, they've got some really hardened bodies and that's where we want to get to

 

[spicerFanClub]

Let’s be clear. “Accounting” profits.

Also, not all debt is “bad”

We are a long way from where we were financially 20 years ago.

However, there’s been a certain level of passiveness (like the rest of the football club tbh) for at least the last 5-10 years.

We can turn profit as much as we like, its great for the papers and 99% of our members swallow the kool aid. Unless you read the other clubs financial reports, you have no idea how far behind we actually are.

We have virtually no assets, our commercial turnover is 30-40% of some rival clubs and it’s only a matter of time before that is able to be translated to the football department. We have been lucky so far.

I don’t ever want to move from Arden St, but not even the largest clubs in this league are undertaking $50-$100m capital investments completely on their own at the moment. We have been hanging out for the decision of local government about a training ground upgrade for the last 6 years, to a co-occupied public oval. That seems dead in the water, because they torpedoed that $12 billion dollar hospital over the road.

If some other clubs ran our overheads etc they’d be reporting $20-$30m profits each year.

I’m proud of where we are and what we have overcome, however, that was years ago. As far as I can see we have done nothing proactive since other than selling off our supporter base (and members/stakeholders) in person viewing opportunities..

The cynic in me thinks with Sonja’s background we opted for the “social” community support path in terms of our long term commercial strategy. A bird with two stones solution. Part of it, I’m sure, because we thought it would leverage political influence.x public grants, funding and upgrades to Arden St. you have to say that strategy has been a failure to this point. Arden St’s investment is lagging behind pretty much every other Melbourne training ground in the last decade for clubs who took traditional commercial strategy in the same time frame.

Clubs in this league own bars, hotels, gym chains, industrial property as alternative revenue streams.

We need to be more aggressive given our relative revenue. What have we invested in?

There’s absolutely nothing to be celebrating in our financials. Certainly not a book profit on some of the lowest turnover in the entire league with little to no alternative revenue investment. All you are admitting is you make less and spend far less than your opponents and it’s getting year on year worse. Awesome…

Agree with the majority of this and the call around the community path seems right - it was a good call at the time to try to unlock sponsorship and money through a unique competitive advantage but didn't yield what we thought it would (though the B Corp rating would have helped if it wasn't inconceivably bundled with the vote on extending presidency term limits). We need sponsorship avenues that can't be touched by other teams because we don't get the air time or exposure of any other side so the value to sponsors is so low.

Providing context on the Arden precinct, pre-covid and even during COVID the whole precinct including shiny new, dedicated facilities for us was all guns blazing. State government had it as the next big thing alongside the suburban rail loop and airport rail link. We would have been convinced, along with everyone in the industry it would go ahead. The hospital and community Centre pieces of the precinct were priority project with significant demand that would have led it. Then borrowing costs sky rocketed and even the hospital money ran dry. Source: I'm in this industry and was working on a lot of it.

To your point though, we need to find alternatives to facilities. Unfortunately we're stuck in an economic downturn where a government spending $100m on new sporting facilities will not play well, so we're stuffed unless you're west coast that can self fund things / has a whole state government behind you. With Nick Dowling as vice pres, you would expect we're getting good advice on this front though and understand how it works.

Our aversion to debt could also be from a fear of being moved to Tassie etc. and trying to avoid a scenario where the AFL pressure was too great to resist. Personally I don't see any advantage to the AFL to move us or wind us up - why give up that revenue and those fans. And before anyone bangs on about how we're a burden to the AFL, while we get more distribution than others, context is important - we only get ~1-2% more of the distribution pool than the big clubs so it's not us draining the pool and feels pretty reasonable given we don't get any marquee slots or the extra revenue the MCG brings.

 

[Sphynx]

Agree with the majority of this and the call around the community path seems right - it was a good call at the time to try to unlock sponsorship and money through a unique competitive advantage but didn't yield what we thought it would (though the B Corp rating would have helped if it wasn't inconceivably bundled with the vote on extending presidency term limits). We need sponsorship avenues that can't be touched by other teams because we don't get the air time or exposure of any other side so the value to sponsors is so low.

Providing context on the Arden precinct, pre-covid and even during COVID the whole precinct including shiny new, dedicated facilities for us was all guns blazing. State government had it as the next big thing alongside the suburban rail loop and airport rail link. We would have been convinced, along with everyone in the industry it would go ahead. The hospital and community Centre pieces of the precinct were priority project with significant demand that would have led it. Then borrowing costs sky rocketed and even the hospital money ran dry. Source: I'm in this industry and was working on a lot of it.

To your point though, we need to find alternatives to facilities. Unfortunately we're stuck in an economic downturn where a government spending $100m on new sporting facilities will not play well, so we're stuffed unless you're west coast that can self fund things / has a whole state government behind you. With Nick Dowling as vice pres, you would expect we're getting good advice on this front though and understand how it works.

Our aversion to debt could also be from a fear of being moved to Tassie etc. and trying to avoid a scenario where the AFL pressure was too great to resist. Personally I don't see any advantage to the AFL to move us or wind us up - why give up that revenue and those fans. And before anyone bangs on about how we're a burden to the AFL, while we get more distribution than others, context is important - we only get ~1-2% more of the distribution pool than the big clubs so it's not us draining the pool and feels pretty reasonable given we don't get any marquee slots or the extra revenue the MCG brings.

TBH, the fact that we operate out of public oval,
whose capital upgrades are generally injected via public funds should be an operational advantage to an extent. Not having to do a generational cap raise and spend $50-$100m is a good thing.

If we had other assets….

That there lies the problems. Whilst we don’t have the operational burden that Hawthorn will have for the next 20 years paying for Dingley or Essendon for Tullamarine, we also have zero underlying security to try and grow.

The last 10 years has seen the rise of cryptocurrencys, digital platforms, AI, record property increases and global markets. We can’t operate like other football clubs.

We made a social stand on poker machines, that’s good. I agree with it. But from a commercial standpoint point did we get the return on investment for that position? Was there another avenue with those assets?

Our strategy seems to have been to target minor sponsorship opportunities and present from a B corp position with our cap in hand to public funding initiatives. I think our sponsorship has grown steadily. Nothing earth shattering as far as I am aware. It’s debatable if this has moved the needle at all above CPI in that time.

Then we’ve just whored out our product away from the stakeholders/voting members of the organization.

Nothing else? Our only facilities for the last 5+ years are seemingly operational overdrafts.

 

[Flawed Genius]

Port are a really strong club, Kenny left them in a great position, they've got some really hardened bodies and that's where we want to get to

We've been really impressed with the development of the team and the group of young fellas this off season but ultimately it proves there's no substitute for game experience, we know we've got some hard work ahead of us

 

[justroyal]

Liked in until

‘We don't expect the journey from here to be easy. But we do expect to see a team that reflects the grit and the determination of its members, and that makes you proud to wear the royal blue and white.’

Seems like that has been recycled

 

[spicerFanClub]

TBH, the fact that we operate out of public oval,
whose capital upgrades are generally injected via public funds should be an operational advantage to an extent. Not having to do a generational cap raise and spend $50-$100m is a good thing.

If we had other assets….

That there lies the problems. Whilst we don’t have the operational burden that Hawthorn will have for the next 20 years paying for Dingley or Essendon for Tullamarine, we also have zero underlying security to try and grow.

The last 10 years has seen the rise of cryptocurrencys, digital platforms, AI, record property increases and global markets. We can’t operate like other football clubs.

We made a social stand on poker machines, that’s good. I agree with it. But from a commercial standpoint point did we get the return on investment for that position? Was there another avenue with those assets?

Our strategy seems to have been to target minor sponsorship opportunities and present from a B corp position with our cap in hand to public funding initiatives. I think our sponsorship has grown steadily. Nothing earth shattering as far as I am aware. It’s debatable if this has moved the needle at all above CPI in that time.

Then we’ve just whored out our product away from the stakeholders/voting members of the organization.

Nothing else? Our only facilities for the last 5+ years are seemingly operational overdrafts.

Interestingly it seemed like over that last few years a lot of clubs were exiting investments that fell outside those aligned with sporting. Commercially the early exit from pokies and venues has caused long term pain - most other clubs held on for another decade and got a lot of funding from it. They were then able to use the underlying revenue to have a higher risk appetite - our risk appetite the whole time has been effectively zero because one really bad financial decision could see the club forced to take an AFL offer to relocate.

I see the only way out of this as slow, incremental gains over a number of years, assuming that's coupled with similar on field gains. With Tassie now commited and risk of us moving removed, hopefully it's upwards from here.

 

[Krakouer Bonar]

No mention of "Yay, the Girls" or "The Huddle continues to do wonderful things"......

Sounds like some cards have been laid down.

 

[Sphynx]

Interestingly it seemed like over that last few years a lot of clubs were exiting investments that fell outside those aligned with sporting. Commercially the early exit from pokies and venues has caused long term pain - most other clubs held on for another decade and got a lot of funding from it. They were then able to use the underlying revenue to have a higher risk appetite - our risk appetite the whole time has been effectively zero because one really bad financial decision could see the club forced to take an AFL offer to relocate.

I see the only way out of this as slow, incremental gains over a number of years, assuming that's coupled with similar on field gains. With Tassie now commited and risk of us moving removed, hopefully it's upwards from here.

I personally think they have been sitting there rabbiting “stable” “secure” and waiting for the commercial uplift that comes with a contending team to give them more flexibility.

Which was a logical strategy 5/6 years ago.

But this uplift has never come, because the side remains horrible.

The problem is, they also provide the governance and oversight to that same football department and its performance. They have been passive and watched it stagnate.


They can’t complain and now it’s likely it will be viewed as them being completely passive both commercially and with the football department. Complete inaction leading to failure.

Thank christ they have the womens program to divert the narrative. Without it, without the impact they have also had on sponsorship etc, god knows what we'd be looking at. Nowhere to hide, would be the best description. This board is seemingly using the women's program at every opportunity to deflect their failures with the rest of the football club and without sounding disrespectful, THE most important part of the football club from a commercial standpoint.

 

[King Corey]

Decent comms.

Now over to the football contingent to release us from ineptitude Groundhog Day on Sunday.

 

[Sphynx]

Decent comms.

Now over to the football contingent to release us from ineptitude Groundhog Day on Sunday.

Interesting contrast with Clarkson public messaging.

His has been a regurgitation of the same stuff for 2 years. "Takes time" "Can come quickly" "Dont want to put a number on it"

He's mentioned vaguely of aiming to "play finals", but nowhere near as blunt and "now or never" as that statement by Hood.

I'd love to know what the boards message to the entire football department is at the moment.

 

[shinboner magic]

Interesting contrast with Clarkson public messaging.

His has been a regurgitation of the same stuff for 2 years. "Takes time" "Can come quickly" "Dont want to put a number on it"

He's mentioned vaguely of aiming to "play finals", but nowhere near as blunt and "now or never" as that statement by Hood.

I'd love to know what the boards message to the entire football department is at the moment.

Clarko likes to protect the players but there comes a time when they need ti be taken to task for their performances.

As you stated we have a lot of senior players now - we’re not a bunch of kids anymore

 

[Horace]

Clarko likes to protect the players but there comes a time when they need ti be taken to task for their performances.

As you stated we have a lot of senior players now - we’re not a bunch of kids anymore

We have the fourth youngest list in the AFL. However, our average games played at 72.1, is starting to get to the level where performances should better match that demographic.

West Coast	23.5 years	54.1	1st
Essendon	23.7 years	59.6	2nd
Richmond	23.7 years	58.7	3rd
North Melbourne	24.1 years	72.0	4th
Gold Coast	24.1 years	63.9	5th

Of course both of those figures need to be viewed in the context of our recruiting of Darling and Parker. Both over 30 and both have played over 300 games, obviously distorting those figures a little.

If their ages and games played are taken out of those figures, the average age comes down to 23.64 and the average games played to 60.12. And we would still rank 4th in both categories, although I cant be bothered analysing the other 4 clubs if their two oldest players were taken out.