Sydney Blue wrote:
Give us one example where the off field is mediocre - other than no one called me or my membership cap is not the same quality as last year
We said we'd make 50,000 members and we haven't.
In itself not a crime, but if we're making bold predictions on and off the field—and I applaud the club for doing so—then we need to find out why the goals haven't been met. Similarly, making bold claims like that, showing ambition is a bit like the saying "Never ask a question you don't know the answer to." The point being if you're going to stick your neck out, using the 50K membership as an example, then you need to be fairly certain you're going to reach/surpass that mark, otherwise you open yourself up to claims of mediocrity.
From what I can see there were no real new ideas in regards to membership growth. I realise I'm out of the bubble by not being in Melbourne, but we never seem to be as visible as other clubs with our membership campaigns. Moreover, if making a claim about a membership target is not met and there are reports of basic things like the lack of follow up phone calls not being made to lapsed members then you're right, that's not mediocre, that's just plain incompetent.
To be fair the club has made good/welcome improvements in reaching out to members through Facebook, YouTube and twitter, but again they're not particularly innovative concepts.
At board level the gap between the top and the membership seems to be increasing. To me that's pretty mediocre.
The board has often said it needs to reduce its numbers. Instead it's growing/treading water and mostly without membership endorsement. To me that's pretty mediocre.
It's true on a general trend things are on the improve (off-field) but we used to be a power house club. We're nowhere near being a power house/leading club off the field. From what I can tell we're mostly relying on/expecting our history to make us a power house again. That's off the back of the worst 10 years on field the club has endured. To me that's pretty mediocre.