Media Coverage Overall

Its not a theory if you listen to those that run sports it is an actual... termed the "Match Day Experience""'  by sports heads, they say ease of getting to and from, cover from the weather, screens, access to reasonable quality food and drinks, rest rooms etc...

The AFL have lead the charge on this and play all their games in excellent stadiums, RL play mainly in very good stadiums as do most of teh A-League teams. AU have the worst in Australia mainly because of a lack of cover from the weather .... 

I recall reading about two or three years ago that the Nix's had excellent crowds for a NZ team...

Tis quite sad the stadium spoken about earlier in the year did not get past the talking stage ...

This should not allow sporting bodies to get away with poor match time scheduling and PG and the Nix's seem to be the two A-League teams affected the most with poor match times...  

It's not a football thing though its all sports in NZ. A dozen years ago the Canes would sell out the stadium on a regular basis and the lions probably half filled it.

The North Island vs South Island cricket game this weekend had literally more players on the pitch than in the crowd.

For a country that is supposed to be mad about sports we are really apathetic for anything non all blacks. The sustainability of professional sport in NZ itself must be at risk. I definitely don't know how the domestic cricket and first two teirs of rugby can be pro.

The new bar at the stadium is pretty good with founders beer on tap and fairly nice food - it's also not that busy compared to the crap downstairs so it can't be the food. In Scotland they get better crowds to football from similar sized centres and they only serve pies and bovril.

Below the centrally-contracted players, cricket is really semi-professional. The retainers for most domestic players are somewhere between ten and twenty thousand a year, I believe. A player who plays pretty much every game over the course of the summer might double that in match fees. There are also only 12 contracts handed out by each province, so several players only earn match fees. The reason they even get that much money is because most, if not all of it, comes from the TV revenue NZC collects from Blackcaps games and ICC tournaments. Aren't Super Rugby salaries basically also paid for out of All Blacks revenue?

In the end, professionalism (to whatever degree) is sustainable because the national teams make the governing bodies a lot of money, and to keep the national teams at that level, they're willing to basically pay every player at the top domestic level. Because the All Blacks are the biggest draw card in world rugby, and NZC has gone along with the Australian, English, and Indian takeover of the ICC, paying players probably isn't going to be a big problem in the near future.

A few possible factors spring to mind regarding the overall decline in crowd numbers in NZ sport over the last couple of decades. This is all just my speculation, and some of them overlap with each other:

- more people shifting to different cities, leading to a decline of born-and-bred locals who feel a connection to local teams

- increased income inequality hurting the demographics that used to attend. Just because mean incomes or even median incomes have risen in line with inflation doesn't mean that the relative disposable income has stayed the same for most people. I think young families with kids and couples with or without kids are especially relatively worse off than their equivalents 20 years ago. Even if they aren't saving for a house they're more likely to be on fixed-term or contract work for instance.

- increased globalisation means local sports are competing with global sports brands like the IPL, EPL, or NBA. Also more people get news off the internet, rather than newspapers or tv, which means that people can choose what to follow more. Back in the day, you could only really follow the sports that mainstream NZ media followed unless you put in a fair amount of effort to follow something else (or had Sky at least)

- rugby turning professional and the subsequent "branding" of the All Blacks completely changed the relationship of many NZers to rugby. In order to squeeze money out of it, rugby has been pushed out to encompass the whole calender year almost. With a relatively small player pool, the games get repetitive. Fans prioritise ABs and don't bother as much with the rest.  Also, because the media focus so much on rugby and it's pretty much year round, cricket has suffered from a decline in exposure over the summer months.  Theres no gap in the rugby schedule for other sports to get a look in. Even in December/January there's analysis and predictions etc

- the feedback loop of less people attending, so less people talking about it, so less people attending, so less people talking about it.... 

Might think of some more later

but the same factors apply to other countries. How do the crowds in hurling or Gaelic football hold up?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c...

I really hate it when rugby hacks think they know something about football.

"4 Bad luck, but ...

Sad to see young Louis Fenton suffer another shoulder injury, during the Wellington Phoenix's A-League win over Western Sydney. But Ernie Merrick's experiment of turning the attacking midfielder into a right-sided defender was failing. Fenton's lack of defensive nous was continually exposed. Worse still, it forced the excellent right-side defender Manny Muscat to be exposed as inadequate on the left."

Just goes to show that there are a lot of idiots in MSM that somehow manage to operate a keyboard. Amazing they don't electrocute themselves when turning the fucking PC on.

Any comments section so you can ask for examples of failure or inadequacy?

Is that not written by All White Sam Malcolmson?

Correct. Yet another example of the over-saturation of 1982 All Whites in the football media these days.

Tey must have corrected it. It was originally attributed to Scotty Stevenson. I actually did a doubt take and went 'huh? How is this clown talking about football?'

After the attribution was corrected though your initial reaction proved to be still correct.

so people don't think Fenton has defensive deficiencies?

Well Manny certainly wasn't "inadequate" on the left.

Also it's not about deficiencies, it's "is Fenton at RB failing?"  I don't think it was last Friday.

I don't think he is failing as such but he does have things to work on. 

I guess for most of us, we view most fullbacks in a certain way and the way they should play and its clear from his playing brief he has been given, that he is not playing in that traditional manner. It would not surprise me with the way he has told to play, that Sigmund and Lia have been told to be mindful of providing him extra cover for the counter.

I agree with JV. He (Fenton) is quite far from being a complete "finished product" as a defender.  In addition, his relative physical 'frailty' for want of a better word was badly exposed last weekend. Not his fault that the bloke fell on him, but being prone to such shoulder injury (on the opposite side of the previously munted side) may prove a long-term liability to this otherwise promising player.

I think [and that's always a worry] this is a decent read about Ch 10 mainly, but also 7 & 9 regarding future sports broadcasts and their value and talks about internet TV and steaming by the major networks ... for those interested in such things a reasonable read..

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/media-and...

In the NZ Herald today, aftermath of the ACFC exploits, they write that there were 100,000 clicks on the match updates on their site yesterday, "more than the All Blacks. So we have an audience..."
Yes and if the media actually wrote more articles on football they might actually connect with that audience.

Yeah, pretty amazing: "it was one of the website's top five most popular sports story of the year."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c...

"Quality football is popular in NZ

Nzherald.co.nz's live blog of the game had over 100 thousand page views. In other words, it was one of the website's top five most popular sports story of the year, more viewed than our most read All Blacks story. The footballing audience is out there."

I think its people supporting "New Zealand" and New Zealand doing well vs being a supporter of "Football" so I am not sure the audience is there. Hence why I call them all bandwagoners. Get on for the good times and get off the bad times. You can also sum it up with the chant 'where were you when we were shark'

"Herald football journalist Steven Holloway lists four things we learned from Auckland City's incredible run at the FIFA Club World Cup."

#5 NZers only click when we're winning (especially against the odds)

#pluckyunderdogs

Its a fair article by Holloway. 

There is no doubt of the class of Ramon and his tactical ability. I did advocate him for a shared AW role with Emblen. I think that while he is good for NZ football, he needs to produce that with NZ footballers and I think the fact that he does not have many shows that the style he wants to play, can't be produced by Kiwis at that level or he would have more faith in them. 7 non NZ eligible players starting and I think another 3 on the bench. 

Holloway is right that the back 4 is quality. Billen looks better there than in midfield cause he only has to play one way and his pace is not exposed as much, but in an A League, thats your 4 imports (its 5 this year but next is 4). You then have to gas Tavano, Kim, Tade, Dordevic, Moriera and Issa.... I think if you replace them with NZ/Aussies of lessor quality, can he get them to produce the same football? That import quota would not get out of first gear in the HAL. To compare apples with apples, you need it to be on the same playing field. You can argue that the Phoenix have their imports and the mix for Kiwis (Moss, Fenton/Doyle, Sigmund and McGlinchey are the 4 Kiwis usually starting) is not flash but if you want to make the comparison fair, you have to start on a level playing field from a squad quota perspective. That would make it interesting.

Awaits some stupid rant from BM...

Also, I hate to be the one that says it but there's only so much you can read into a handful of games in a few days on the other side of the planet. ACFC were a duffed penalty or two away from being knocked out by the Moroccan champs. San Lorenzo's coach admitted they were under prepared. ACFC played good football and had a great run against the odds but they also got dicked 4-0 by TeeDubs a few weeks ago and I don't recall any articles about how Matt Calcott is the saviour of New Zealand football.

Well done ACFC for playing with heart and not being overawed by the occasion, and for showing that you can go into games as the underdog and still play your own game. I'm not trying to belittle their acheivement. But I also think it would be easy for the kiwi media to read more into this than is actually there.

Edit: I really want to emphasize that I think ACFC were awesome and it was great to see, and it's a great result for football in this country as a whole. I'm aware that this sounds like I'm being a but of a dick but I just think it's a perspective on the games which needs to be considered

... but only interested in parting with $$ to watch winners, which we know from the Nix getting bumper crowds at Westpac only after they've made the play-offs. Chicken and egg.

ACFC 0 Uzbekistan 0 ...

^ We were that day.

The biggest learning point from this is and I think trumps every single argument on what ever side of the coin you live on is that ACFC have the ability to stand up and perform. Like most sides, they are going to lose some games and when they left, no one expected them to get that far. It showed that in the Presidents Cup, against wherethefudgeistan and teams at CWC, they can stand up and perform and know how to turn it on. They will win this ASBP with really only having to put in 3-4 really good performances. Can they play at that high sustained level across x amount of games or are they are 3-4 week team? Do they need to play to that level against Southern, WaiBOP, Wanderers? (the answer is they probably play within themselves I would suspect) That's something we don't know but you can't deny they can turn it on when they need to.

^ So what you're really saying is that to get a proper perspective on ACFC's achievement they would have to

1) replicate their CWC run every year

or/and

2) have thrashed rather than merely beaten the teams they did beat

or/and 

3) skipped past San Lorenzo and to then meet/beat R Madrid in the final

and/or

4) beat Cruz Azul (soundly) to avoid dreaded 4th place

plus (for good measure)

5) beat Japan (soundly) on Jan 4th.

- this in answer to Conan T

Yup, for me the refusal to be overawed by the occasion is the most impressive thing about ACFC. Not the style of football or even the results they've achieved.

Just to stoke the fire a bit more, ACFC almost didn't make it out of the group stage of the OFC Champions League.

Football is all about results IMO.

But they did. Results are wot matter. Westpac would be full if the Nix ground out win after win after win... if the AW's ground out win after win after win...

All of Argentina will.

The CWC is a strange tournament that, because of its structure, probably features only 2 at most of the top 100 club sides in the world.  But it is what it is and can be a nice little earner.  In the context of what they had to face, ACFC did extremely well and we can be justifiably proud of them. In fact this year, their on the pitch performances were so much better in my view than when they mischievously claimed the title of '5th best club side in the world' a few years back. That was the most satisfying aspect.

But as a benchmark,you can drive a bus through the credibility of the tournament as a way of 'ranking' teams and in this regard, getting back to topic, we can be thankful for a relatively naive press.  But I'm not going to take them to task.  Every bit of attention helps.