It went ahead. The Storm representatives were Frank Stanton and Brendan (forget his surname, the marketing manager for the Storm).
Frank was introduced as the Storm CEO and he made the point of stating that he is the interim CEO. They were available for about 45 minutes worth of questioning. But we got the same old questions with one notable exception. There was no question about whether the Storm would remain in Melbourne. Frank jumped on that topic in his opening comments to avoid any of those questions.
Questions were raised about the crowd sizes, ticketing prices, membership packages, access to the social club for guests of members, possible upgrade to OP, media coverage of the Storm in general and of Storm games in particular, social/leagues club.
The answers were fairly stock standard compared with previous years, so if you've attended one forum then you pretty much know the answers.
Membership package was revamped this year to try and address some of the concerns raised in a forum last year. Crowd sizes: were being looked at to see what, if anything, could be done. Any ideas then email or ring the Storm office. Pricing: nothing likely to change there.
Access to social club for guests of members: the Storm's view was that the social club and access to the players after the game was a privilege earned by members parting with their dollars to support the club. Permanent social/leagues club: nothing likely to happen on this in a hurry but they are looking at possible options.
Coverage of Storm games on TV/radio: TV - well what can I say? Channel NEIN :evil: Keep ringing them up. Radio: when the Storm heard about SEN they were *VERY* quickly onto them to give us coverage, including calling the games. SEN won't call the game probably because they fear that if they call NRL then the AFL will ostracise them for it and SEN want's to cover AFL when the radio rights are available. But Storm is getting some support, ie Craig Bellamy has a weekly spot on Friday mornings for 30 minutes or so sometime between 10:30am and 12pm, as does Kirk Reynoldson on Tuesdays after 11:20pm, and Matt Geyer does tipping on Thursday or Friday afternoons (I'm not sure which it is as I've heard conflicting opinions).
One suggestion made was to get community radio to call or rebroadcast 2GB's coverage of the games. It will be looked into, but don't hold your breath.
They were the main questions and responses from what I can recall. Anyone else remember something else feel free to add it.
