Searle getting nervous

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I'd like to see all the major sporting teams on the Gold Coast getting together with GCCC to promote a bit of all the GC teams.

Joint TV campaigns urging GC residents to get behind "our" teams.
Players/officials from each of the codes/sports supporting their so-called rivals to generate huge support in GC sport. All sporting clubs and Gold Coast in general could thrive on it.

It probably sounds a bit lame but something along these lines...
"We love Gold Coast and we love our sport. Let's show the rest of Australia some of that Gold Coast pride and support the great sportsmen and women who are repsresenting our great city"

Like I said, my effort is a bit lame but I'm sure someone in GC publicity could come up with something much better
 
not silly at all, but all sports want to dominate, they dont really want to be friends with eachother...when all 3 footy codes will have fans following all 3
 
gostk86 said:
not silly at all, but all sports want to dominate, they dont really want to be friends with eachother...
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Really, all clubs should really just want to be successful in their own right.

An arrangement where GCFC and the titans could arrange it so that they would play home games in alternate weeks would benefit all parties. A product like a dual membership could be sold.

However I doubt fatboy searle would let that happen. Not much point teaming up with Mineralogy soccer club, they don't have any fans anyway.
 

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I like the idea of dual membership and trying to get games on separate weeks. Even different days on the same weekend would be ok if opposite weeks couldn't work.

My thoughts weren't restricted to the football codes though, basketball and other sports could all be involved. It's all about GC pride. Get the people behind ALL teams involved in the Gold Coast.
 
Does anyone know if the AFL ever really considered Toowoomba because I find that really difficult to believe? Gold Coast and Tassie are definites, Darwin is too small but Toowoomba is a very working family(in Mcgraths words from the article) town than elite.
 
sausageroll said:
I like the idea of dual membership and trying to get games on separate weeks. Even different days on the same weekend would be ok if opposite weeks couldn't work.

My thoughts weren't restricted to the football codes though, basketball and other sports could all be involved. It's all about GC pride. Get the people behind ALL teams involved in the Gold Coast.
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totally agree..there is good support for all sports on gold coast, they will all do well, which is a far cry from 1998
 
Anthony_ said:
Funny if you read over at morons unlimited he is the NRL saviour. :eek:
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he actually could be..

Titans are one of the best run clubs in Australian Sport..new center of Excellence and his ideas ie: Commission and All star games are something fans are liking...
 
This thread is a real blast from the past! So interesting to read the perceptions within the Gold Coast community back in 2009. After two years in the NRL, the Titans were on their way to a top 3 finish that year, the Blaze had just made the finals in their first ever NBL season and Gold Coast United had been granted entry into the A-League so there was a lot going on back then. There was certainly a level of arrogance from former Titans CEO Michael Searle at the time but he was also clearly really nervous about the juggernaut that the AFL could create.

I was in school at the time but I remember back then you had Searle coming out and regularly making ridiculous statements about how superior rugby league was to Aussie rules and how the AFL won't last if they set up base here because it's rugby league heartland etc but I guess the really disappointing part was league fans felt empowered to also say the same things on the back of what he would say. They hitched their wagon on the back of this guy because it seemed like the Titans were doing everything right at the time which made it more difficult to be a footy fan on the GC (particularly at school). In the end it turned out that Searle was a complete crook that almost killed the Titans for good and was exposed later when it all came crashing down for the Titans but I do wonder how much damage he did to our brand within the Gold Coast community before we were even up and going.

gostk86 said:
Titans are one of the best run clubs in Australian Sport.
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Amazing to read a comment like this knowing that it was announced just a few years later that the Titans were in $35 million debt. Perception and reality can be two VERY different things sometimes.
 
Blast from the past alright.
I worked at a business at Nerang at the time and would read The Bulletin cover to cover every day to fill in time.
This guys rubbish would be all over the paper, along with 10 pages of incredibly boring NRL articles.
Completely forgot he even existed, which was probably a good thing.
 
raymond35 said:
Blast from the past alright.
I worked at a business at Nerang at the time and would read The Bulletin cover to cover every day to fill in time.
This guys rubbish would be all over the paper, along with 10 pages of incredibly boring NRL articles.
Completely forgot he even existed, which was probably a good thing.
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The local media really did give him a lot of time on the mic, didn't they? As the old saying goes - give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves and Searle certainly did that.

It feels like the local coverage is more balanced these days and I would also add that the arrogance a lot of GC league fans had back then has essentially dissipated after they got faced with the mortality of their own club. They were humbled and I think as a city we're all better for it tbh.

Less Michael Searles / Clive Palmers and more Mark Evans going forward, please!
 

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MarcLocksCrustySock said:
The general sentiment towards footy has changed incredibly since I moved here in 2015/16. Night and day. Used to prepare for an argument every time and now people are either in to it or curious mostly.
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I’ve lived in Queensland on and off for 50+ years and attitudes have definitely changed. It was always referred to as aerial ping pong or GAYFL when I was growing up. Nowadays the respect is there. Even diehard league supporters cannot argue AFL is by far the dominant football code in Australia. campaigner coming out openly admitting AFL footballers were the far superior athletes didn’t hurt either.
 
As a non Australian that knows only the basics of rugby, I am a little shocked that the AFL had that reputation at one point here. I would've gladly played footy in school had that been an option. Instead I had to play soccer and get asked why I don't play baseball like a real man.

On Nokia 6.1 using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
Brad Jordan said:
As a non Australian that knows only the basics of rugby, I am a little shocked that the AFL had that reputation at one point here. I would've gladly played footy in school had that been an option. Instead I had to play soccer and get asked why I don't play baseball like a real man.
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It goes back to colonial rivalries over 150 years ago. Back in the late 1800s, footy was the most popular sport in Queensland and the Greater Public Schools association in Brisbane essentially cut the sport's legs from underneath by outlawing footy at the school level (they still don't allow it to this day) and instead adopted rugby union as their number 1 sport. Rugby league didn't exist at the time so it was essentially rugby union vs footy, which was known as Victorian rules football at the time, and the colony of Queensland felt at the time that a sport that reference a separate state was not in the best interests of their colony so they adopted rugby union by one vote.

It wasn't long after this that a lot of the best footy players in Queensland started converting to rugby union and rugby union quickly became the most popular sport in Queensland before the turn of the century. Then rugby league came along in the early 1900s and that really took off because it represented the working class as opposed to the elitists that represented rugby union. So footy took a distant back seat in Queensland between the 1900-1970 period and the rugby codes as well as cricket continued to go from strength to strength and deepen their roots within the Queensland community. Since the Queenslanders had chosen to align themselves with New South Wales by adopting the rugby codes as their preferred sport/s, the NSW vs Victorian colonial rivalry spilt into Queensland to some degree and the Queenslanders also developed a level of disdain for footy as it was seen as a foreign code that was inferior to their own. The Gold Coast was really just a small coastal town at the time so of course it followed suit to big brother Brisbane up the road.

So then you fast forward to the 80s, 90s and 00s when the AFL started taking Queensland seriously as an expansion market but the disdain towards the sport in Queensland was really wide spread at that point and the Brisbane Bears really copped it while the Brisbane Broncos were glorified. It wasn't until the Brisbane Lions starting winning premierships in the early 2000s that your average Queensland even started to consider watching footy at all. Then in the late 2000s the Lions became uncompetitive again and the sport suffered massively and we haven't really helped at all since our inception. Only just recently with the re-emergence of the Lions have Queenslanders started taking notice of the sport once again. So that's a really quick rundown of the history here and as someone who went to school in Queensland I can tell you the disdain for our sport back then was very real. It felt like I heard the word 'gAyFL' every second day back then meanwhile the Queensland State of Origin (rugby league) side kept winning year after year and people were soooo invested in that it was ridiculous. I do think AFL gets more respect these days and I'm sure that has a lot to do with the Lions being ultra competitive once again but I'd really like to see what the landscape would look like if both Queensland AFL teams were playing finals in the same year!
 
Brad Jordan said:
As a non Australian that knows only the basics of rugby, I am a little shocked that the AFL had that reputation at one point here. I would've gladly played footy in school had that been an option. Instead I had to play soccer and get asked why I don't play baseball like a real man.

On Nokia 6.1 using BigFooty.com mobile app
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Nothing wrong with baseball.....Growing up in Qld, in the 50's-60's. League and soccer were the only winter sports avail in Public Schools, but my older brother introduced me to baseball in '61, and I got to represent QLd at U16 level in '62 and the Qld seniors in '71......coached Qld U13 Peewees from 78-81, and finished my playing career in '82.....except to return for the World Master Games in '94............ah! the good ole days :):):)
 
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