Hello everyone,
I hope you all enjoyed the post yesterday focusing on Parramatta's ongoing coaching debacle. As I mentioned, this week I'll be doing a serious of posts trying to work out why I have found it a little bit harder to support the Eels this year.
Today I am focusing on management.
I don't like to be clichéd, but there seems to be no more appropriate saying than this to start my post with and no more appropriate man when you think about the lack of success the Eels have had since 1986. Jack Gibson famously said 'winning starts in the front office.' When you consider this, it is no wonder that Parramatta have been struggling in recent seasons.
'Losing is a disease' seems a statement extremely relevant to Parramatta at the moment. Losing is a disease which festers and which absolutely infects every part of a club. Losing puts pressure on management, the coach and the players. If a team loses for long enough it can become ingrained. Members start having second thoughts about continuing support and crowd numbers begin to decline. When crowd numbers begin to decline, revenue suffers. When revenue suffers, the club suffers.
Losing also creates a dangerous and demanding mentality amongst fans, especially when they begin to demand instant results. Whenever a change is made at a club, be it at a coaching, player or management level, fans often demand and often expect instant results and are extremely impatient when it comes to seeing their football field perform on the field. I feel that fan pressure has also had a part to play in the merry-go-round of coaches we have had in the past few years and fan appeasement has certainly been a reason for the merry-go-round of CEO's Parramatta have had in recent years. Directors of a football club need to hold someone accountable when their team isn't performing. At Parramatta, it seems that every group possible has been made accountable except the players (until Ricky's announcement earlier this year).
In recent weeks, there have been a number of changes at a management level. Bob Bentley has been dismissed. You can read more about that here. Bentley was summarily dismissed following a board meeting on that Saturday. Since then, Peter McEvoy has been installed as interim CEO. Bentley's position is not the only one that has changed. You can read about Ken Edwards resigning from the club here and here. Edwards resignation was certainly a shock.
I could have this post turn into a discussion about these men and their suitability for the job, but the fact that we have had such a merry-go-round of people in crucial positions suggests to me that there is something more than just capability which is leading to such high turn around at a management level.
There seems to be an ongoing and continuing power struggle between any old board and the new board which comes in to replace them. Whenever we have had a new board installed, they come with promises about the positive direction the club will take under them. Unfortunately, all we have seen so far is a continuation of the bickering and in-fighting which has certainly contributed to Parramatta's lack of success over recent seasons. Similar to our issues with coaching, whenever new individuals are bought in, there is always a period of reshuffling and rebuilding as the new person seeks to implement their ideas and their methods as well as separating themselves from the previous regime. By getting rid of Bentley and Edwards, any 'rebuilding' that had happened under them has essentially been demolished, yet again. It means that Parramatta needs to start again and more patience will be required from fans because there is no long term solution in place, instead focusing on immediate results rather than trying to build for the future.
Again, this is problematic - it is frustrating for fans who love the club so much and it is frustrating from fans to hear the same old story, over and over again. Unless the board learns to work together and sort out their differences, this will only plunge the club into greater difficulties - including downing player morale and ensuring that no other player would want to come play for the basket case that is currently my club.
Instead of Parramatta being a Club for someone to control or to exercise control over, we should all be looking to make our club better and stronger. It should not be about which 'ticket' of individuals is better. No one is the enemy. It should be which individuals have the expertise and the love for our club to make it great again. I know very closely members of the Spagnolo camp and also members of the Sharp camp. They are all fantastic leaders, individuals, have great passion for the Club and the ability to help our Club rise to greater heights. However, at the moment, none of this is shining through because it is clearly one faction against the other.
Tomorrow's blog will be on making the members feel loved and appreciated and how the Club isn't really doing this at the moment.
Love,
@LadiesWhoLeague
No comments:
Post a Comment