Agree, which goes towards my first point about comparing membership numbers being a bit of a mugs game. From the revenue and expense figures, I'd guess maybe North's numbers are affected by 4 game Tassie members which are cheaper for both the member and the club, and perhaps North is able to somehow get more value out of Melbourne based members compared to the Bulldogs? Impossible to know without more detail, and then you look at the Saints figure which is also reported differently.
Spot on!
Melbourne are not ‘mid-tier’ they have very similar supporter base to Saints, Dogs, Kangas but all are still massive on Australian and world level.
What happened with Seaford?
A billion and a half. You forgot to count China
The western suburbs were and might still be the fastest growing region in Australia. Huge potential for the Bulldogs to expand, and they are growing, but I feel if they'd managed to sustain their success from 2016 they'd start to overtake North and St Kilda, while they're on the same level.
Yeah the western suburbs of Melbourne is a huge area and growing fast. Many kids of migrants who don't have a family team will choose the Dogs. It will definitely help compared to St Kilda and North. Having lived in Footscray, the Bulldogs imo are the last Melbourne club that feels really tied to an area, it's part of the identity of Footscray and the inner west in particular. After the 2016 gf they painted everything red white and blue, a lot of street art etc.
Yes, I agree with you that Geelong would probably be the winner of that one. St Kilda need to address similar positions to Geelong in the future.
Honestly, why would the Saints trade their 23-24 yo key forward for a 31 yo forward, who if you give any credence to his social media posting, is very happy at the Cattery.
Even more odd, as most comments on this thread suggest Saints should bottom out, not go all in. Cameron, in the very low chance he'd want out, would be only wanted by a team going for a cup in the next 1-2 years.
My take
For me - it feels like Saints have already tried the idea of topping up & pushing via trade, but they just didn't have the right cattle to make a concerted finals push. It's probably not a bad idea to top up on the high end of the draft for a few and restock. Good year this year as well for midfielders - which is precisely what they need.
They have some good young talent (despite some patchy form from Pou and Caminiti - but Owens is super exciting), and as long as they keep a few seasoned heads, should avoid the complete ass falling out like North. They just desperately need to rejeuvanate that midfield, it feels very one-dimensional and slow.
Maybe they could look to trade one or two valuable older heads to top up hard - but I'd personally hate to see them lose Sinc or Marshall, as they are fabric of the club players and genuinely compete hard.
With ABS SA4 defined zones
You need to be cautious about paying future salaries. You need to make sure it's for players of good character who will stay at the club and the deal needs to be long enough / they're young enough that they are still playing well by the time you start to get a discount from them.
St Kilda were brawling with Kingston Council over Moorabbin, so they signed a deal with Frankston Council for a 50 year lease at Seaford for negligible rent. Within 8 years they moved back to Moorabbin because the players and staff didn't like travelling that far, but also because the locals who used to watch them train stopped turning up, and the media never turned up out there either. Perhaps the player complaints were temporary, but it coincided with an unravelling of their grand final side, a cultural decline and a big increase in debt. So you could say they went back to Moorabbin in an attempt to fix their culture and engage with their fanbase better.
www.austadiums.com
Obviously we need to add in football club to the census.
I agree, however the president cannot put his head in the sand. He needs to lead from the front and understand why his business is not performing, and if that's hearing messages he doesn't like, too bad.
There was an article in the Age I think awhile back, no longer available, that showed the suburbs with most members for each club. Since it was totals and not % of supporters, however, it skewed to the bigger clubs. It was about 10 years ago but clear geographical patterns emerged. Bulldogs and Saints were most localised, Pies and Tigers least.
