I would like to make a point here about the possibility of Daniel coming to Parramatta.
Firstly Stagger and a few others have noted several times that the club has never paid out an underperforming coach. Surely that is true of Brian Smith when in his underperforming years 2003 and 2004 the weight of his contract was 3 years and 2 years respectively. In 2006 we had announced a new coach, while Gould has said we should have paid out the coach and gotten Hagan in quick smart. Even as I have had Tyler Durden suggest to me do a straight coach swap as soon as Newcastle settled on Smith, the thing that keeps running around my mind in that little game is Nathan Brown. We can argue his good or bad points as a coach but in all reality, he was told he would not be the coach for 2009 and has still shaped and molded the Dragons into the top 8. There is also the counter argument of Graham Murray who felt powerless to control his club after being told he was a dead man walking. Personally I don't think Brian was powerless at this club, I think his departure was a calculated move that was executed to maximum effect.
But how does this relate to Michael Hagan and Daniel Anderson. Firstly Hagan’s contract is only a year to pay out which makes the precedents a little less relevant. The rest, well here is hoping that Denis has learned his lesson, if there are as stated at the end of this year, possible extension talks with the coach. So that in effect does the same thing to Michael Hagan as we did to Brian Smith. Will the club do this again and face the possible consequences? Now I know that is a very divisive question. Some will believe the club will do the same thing again as Fitzy is just Money hungry and doesn't care for the Football. Others will hope that Fitzy will pull a different reign this time. I am quite sure that the temperament of the club would not be in favor of keeping Michael on past 2009. I think well in advance of the poor showing against the Rabbitohs when I came on board that there were divisions of opinion in the minds of those that matter. While we as fans hung on for dear life, hoping the team would fire I get the Idea that some people were not as comfortable as they could be with the plans for 2009.
One of both mine and Staggers sources is a poster on this message board. He has stated that the whole problem with getting the new coach is a Matter of costs. Not will we pay out the contract but can we afford to pay out the contract. Now we will have posters from here to tomorrow tell us that living of gambling is wrong, and that we need to find new revenue streams and that is all well and dandy, but let as face the facts right now. We as a football club are reliant on the Leagues club for our funding. This has been told to us multiple times at the Football Club AGM. If people feel we have missed the boat that is great we can debate that till the cows come home but let us look at the situations right now. While the financial report numbers I posted on the club are true and we did lose 2 million dollars after the leagues club funded all NRL operations, I would not say we are absolutely skint. I would say we are tightening our belts sure, but I do not think we are at deaths door. Not by a long shot.
As I stated a paragraph above, I am quite sure that the People that matter were not happy well in advance of when most of the whispers about Anderson Broke out into the main stream. This year has been a disappointment in terms of the things that people on this board talk about. The Fans. Now I am well on record as saying I believe a majority of Parramatta fans are fickle, It is just to which degree their fickleness runs. I would say most on this board would range from the demanding to the accepting in terms of fickleness, but I also think there are those, not on this board who didn't even turn up this year. After our dodgy start, we have never had even a thought of having a sold out stadium. We have had years when we have started poor but the effort has been there and things have started to click, then we get a good local derby or a Sunday game and we would have been looking at Advisories on Wednesday before the match of no free tickets but not this year. The press build up has seen our fans expect the Eels to play with the same record as the Melbourne Storm, and when the players didn't look to be close to that, the most demanding fans of our club, stayed away in their droves. These are the people whose hearts and minds we needed to capture and our sides’ performances have been unable to do that. It is even now starting to lose the hearts and minds of even the most accepting Parramatta fan.
Now if the fans are truly the life blood of the league, which we are all told, they are. We have the least amounts of actual spend but to capture our ancillary spend, Sponsors and TV networks alike will through money at the club, and the league. If our club truly understands this, then things might happen regardless of the financial constraints.
But then again I have been called gullible about this club before.
I think that with this subject, I have said enough.
