The Manawatu team from the current National League no longer exists. Wellington United was insolvent when The Nix stepped in and Lower Hutt has recorded large loses in recent years.
Stop Out's problems were mainly financial as they had being paying players and when the money ran out players left in droves. Probably similar to how players are now leaving Lower Hutt after the pokie money dried up with the demise of their pub.
If you go on line and look at the performance of various Wellington clubs, it is not healthy.
Oh sorry didn't realise you were talking about Youngheart Manawatu, which was a team created solely for the National League, when NZF punted them so they could put the U20 team in they did play youth league for a couple of years but it was a team not a club
I'm involved in Wellington United and know the club wasn't insolvent when the Nix stepped in, I have no idea about Lower Hutt.
From what I understand of what happened at Stop Out in the early 90s was that there was alot of resentment that Lower Hutt City were allowed to take over the mantle of number one Hutt Valley team after the demise of Hutt Valley United. And as I have been told there was a lot of infighting between families at the club which led a lot of people to leave. If it hadn't been for Mr Stop Out, Jim McCreadie, the club would no longer be here. - I do have to acknowledge here that I only have one persons view on this
Anyway none of these examples answer the question which was
"Whatever, can you cite some examples of "clubs who have disappeared" for paying money they didn't have?"
In my original quote I said that there were clubs who disappeared or who came close to disappearing due to spending on players and I have quoted those. Wellington United were insolvent. If you go to the Company's Office and look up Wellington United under Incorporated Societies you will see that before the Nix got involved they had negative equity of around $40k and their current liabilities were well in excess of their current assets which made them insolvent.
If you also look up at Lower Hutt you will see their current financial predicament, they have suffered significant loses in recent seasons once their cash cow went belly up. In the early 90s Stop out were playing big money for Dugdale as coach and players who did not come cheap and who they could not afford.
1 - If Wellington United were insolvent they would no longer exist, yes they were in a bad way financially but it wasn't down to the paying of players
2 - Lower Hutt, I'm not sure what their cash cow that you refer to was so can't really comment
3 - Dugdale never had an association with Stop Out after he got banned for life in 1979. North Wellington helped him get the ban lifted so he was allowed to coach and in the early 90s he was working for the Wanganui FA and Wanganui Athletic, he also had a couple of seasons at Petone before moving to Wellington United for the summer league. Then he moved to Wests and set up the Ole Academy with Dave Wilson and was there until 1999 when he got the NZ job.
I'm not sure who the Stop Out coach was in the early 1990s, I wouldn't be surprised though if you were thinking of Fred Goodwin, but that was the late 80s. in the early 90s he spent time in charge at Hutt Valley United and Waterside Karori
In your original quote you said that there were clubs who disappeared or who came close to disappearing due to spending on players
as has been discussed above there are only 2, possibly 3 clubs that we can really say that about (Courier Rangers, Mt Maunganui & Dunedin City), although there have been many clubs that have payed for players but stopped when they realised it wasn't sustainable. A lot more clubs have disappeared due to lack of numbers or willing administrators \ volunteers
and this all deviates from Dolaras original questions which were
a) the question of whether the current level of payer payments in "amateur" football is sustainable financially;
is it sustainable?
the answer is no probably not, or it is as long as a club has someone (or a group) or people willing to bankroll them
b) whether it is legally questionable when pokie funding is involved
Pokie funding is very tightly controlled now that I don't think this is an issue, you won't get money to pay players from pokie funding. You will get money to pay players who are performing coaching duties. What may be questionable is how much you claim to pay a player to do 16 hours of coaching a week.
c) the fact that top women players seem to get virtually none of it.
as others have said it shouldn't really matter on gender, but some of the top women players do get paid, in fact I've heard there is a club in Auckland that is well known for paying players and their top earner last season was female
Insolvent is when your liabilities exceed your assets which was the case with Wellington United. It is all there to see on The Company's Office website.
Dugdale did Coach Stop Out in the early 90s and one of the expensive players he had there was Simon Elliot. Lower Hutt's cash cow was the pokie machines at the Station Village Pub from which they received grants running into several hundreds of thousands a year. The pub went into liquidation about 4 years ago and financially from then on its been all down hill for Lower Hutt
