[quote author=kingyfan]
[quote author=The Wheel]
Just up on MSE is Grant's response to fans questions, he pointed out that last Friday was the biggest ever gate for the club, merchandise sales were 6 times that of normal, and corporate bookings were greatly more than that of Brookie.
Whislt I concur with a lot of comments, this is basically another good reason that Brookie has to be redeveloped & redveloped sooner rather than later as the club misses a lot of revenue playing games at Brookie.
Whislt the fans were not as passionate last Friday night, I did enjoy the event & the better seating in GA area of the ground.
Having said that - Brookie must always be home however I find it hard to argue with the club when it takes 1/2 games away to maximise revenue (& thereofe buy better players etc etc) when they cannot get the same benefits at an outdated sporting ground like Brookie.
Who bought the merchandise? Central coast fans? They wouldn't have had any two headed beanies and six finger gloves left as they sold out of those at Parra stadium?
The financial problems that the club has endured over the past few years are solely the result of lack of foresight and planning by past management of both the football club and leagues club.
The ground and the leagues club should have both been redeveloped back in the eighties when manly was awash with money and had better connections at Warringah council. This would have substantially reduced the effect of superleague.
Obviously football is a business these days and any well run business is going to maxmise income and profits. Therefore if we cannot get funds to redevelop brookie then we will probably see more games go the the central coast in the future.
Maybe if this continues to be sucessful then the club may one day relocate to the central coast permantly. !pray:
[/quote]Simplistic KF.
SuperLeage sent Manly broke and we came out of that period as desperately lucky to survive. It still rankles me that Dogs, Panthers and Sharks sold out on other Sydney clubs by taking their thrirty pieces of silver and selling out the other clubs. They get propped up by News and stay stand alone when all other clubs had to do it tough to stay alive.
Brookie will be redeveloped and what happened with the Beagles must never ever ever be allowed to happen again. Lest we forget.
[/quote]
My arguement is that the club should have been in a better financial position to cope with superleague. If it was run properly over they past 25 years then they would never had to merge with norths.
The club still has millions of dollars in debt and they have never paid off the debt when they renovated the club to put the gym in many years ago. They also spent $3m on a car park just prior to superleague. Why would anyone spend that sort of money on a car park that it not going to produce any more income?
Over the years the club has sold off numerous assets at fire sale prices when in fact these assets should have been developed when the club had money so as to provide an ongoing income stream.
Very few people realise just how close the club came in the early nineties to being closed down as they struggled to pay pokie tax. Imagine of the club lost its pokies.
Instead of leasing out the victor st car park for 99 years to Travellodge for a one off payment just to keep the club afloat this land should have been developed years ago with an underground car park and a mix of commercial and residential income producing properties in top.
The existing multi level car park should been developed in the same way
with an underground car park and even a car yard on top. These sort of investments would have provided substantial ongoing income which the club could have used to help develop the club and the oval.
In the eighties the leagues club had at one stage from memory some $20m in cash. Now it has more than $8m in debt. Superleague didn't take $28m from the club. Bad management was also partially responsible as they thought that the good times would never end..
