With the end of footy season 2019 some clubs may be interested in the experience I have had in the past 56 years of amateur footy. One of these stems from the time I played for Carlisle when we were an ‘A’ grade amateur club.
Looking back in retrospect we should have done things differently because our relegation to ‘B’ grade started a ‘slippery slope’ that finished up a couple of seasons later in ‘D’ grade, the position we entered the amateur competition 28 years earlier!
The following season we had to borrow money to field two sides in the competition, down from four sides including colts.
The questions my old club ignored over that period included requirements like its mission, objectives, strategy formulation and implementation and control. To add to this there was no ‘urgency’ to do anything differently this included: recruitment, training and development of younger players, coaching and committed match play.
Some of the problems we encountered through relegation and lack of ‘urgent action’ included:
- Key players leaving the club because they want to play at a higher level.
- Players who left because they wanted to play in a premiership side.
- Failure to encourage new young players because they didn’t want to play in a ‘losing club’ and they had heard our training was lousy.
- Mistakes made in inducting mercenaries who did not train and didn’t perform for the money they were paid then left the following season.
- Loss of supporters and sponsors.
- Failure to lobby the Amateur association to prevent four other sides becoming established in our catchment area.
- Maintenance of the social and financial position of the club.
When considering this dilemma there was one principal missing that may have altered the direction of the club and that was the lack of a clear objective and mission.
The objectives should have been clear to everyone who had anything to do with the planning or executions of operations.
In looking back the clear objective of the club should have been to fight its way back into ‘A’ grade because it became a ‘B’ grade club without direction or purpose.
This page is dedicated to Reeces Event Hire, 506 Guildford Road Bayswater, WA 6076 Telephone: (08) 9378 4711
https://reeces.com.au