Let's spend the money on...

[roopy]

The no-brainer is a high profile coach.
Stone was employed because he was the best cheap option, but a proven, high profile coach for half a million extra is the obvious first step to improving the team and attracting quality players.

Second - our own state of the art training facilities - hopefully in the new grandstand or within walking distance.

A new and cutting edge junior development scheme that makes paid and well trained coaches available to spend time with all elite juniors in the Hunter region. I think that means jobs for about 10 ex-players at least. Guys like Kurt Hancock who is doing so well with our Mathews team.

Scholarships to League schools like Farrar for our best under 18 players from the Hunter region - or even better would be to turn one of the Newcastle private schools into the equal of Farrar by employing a quality coach for the school and sending our best school age players there on scholarship.

Funding for local sides to put there best players onto full time contracts so they can put in the time to get themselves up to as near NRL standard as they can, in the hope we pick up a few local guys a year.

After football training for retiring or dropped players. Players will be keener to sign if we offer a life after footy - and that is not a salary cap thing.

 

[perverse]

... here i was about to blow it on booze and hookers.

the first place i would dump a sh*tload of cash is our front of office. things like not being able to get a membership online, get a media team happening, better merch, etc. basically completely overhaul the publicly facing entity of our club. i like a lot of your ideas too, roops, but the front office would be my immediate concern first day on the job.

 

[roopy]

3rd party deals will be an interesting area.

We have seen Souths get a third party deal for Inglis with a west Australian mining guy who wants to use him as a role model for west australian aboriginals. That is basically bullsh*t - it's just a mate of Holmes a court slinging some money the way of his mates footy team.

Tinkler has a lot of rich mates who would be interested in 'you scratch my back, i'll scratch your's' type deals. So a lot of our top players might find themselves doing third party deals with horse racing groups. Kurt Gidley sponsered by the well known footy fan, Prince Ali bin liner.

 

[macavity]

I say we sign Shaquille O'Neill as the first 7'2, 350lb backrower.

He is like 40 now.... still be a better signing than Carl Webb, just don't ask him to make free throws.

 

[Tom155]

on the scholarship thing are you talking about the same kind of arrangement like west tigers-keebra park have?

 

[macavity]

... here i was about to blow it on booze and hookers.

the first place i would dump a sh*tload of cash is our front of office. things like not being able to get a membership online, get a media team happening, better merch, etc. basically completely overhaul the publicly facing entity of our club. i like a lot of your ideas too, roops, but the front office would be my immediate concern first day on the job.

agreed.

on the hookers, that is. spend the rest on pingers.

i know this fat bloke....

 

[roopy]

on the scholarship thing are you talking about the same kind of arrangement like west tigers-keebra park have?

A lot of teams send kids to Farrar - which is just out of the Knights area, so we should do it too.
I'm not sure that giving kids the chance at a great education is the best way to get them to follow a career in footy, but it is the right thing to do for the kids.

 

[aqua_duck]

Wouldn't Hunter Sports High or even St Francis Xavier be a better option than a school in tamworth?

 

[macavity]

HSH gets all the Windale kids. If we want the next Danny Wicks, send the kids there.... :sarcasm:

St Frannies probably has more users, but less dealers..... and the girls bang like dunny doors. Send the boys there.

 

[Alex28]

Wouldn't Hunter Sports High or even St Francis Xavier be a better option than a school in tamworth?

Do some googling on how good the league program is at Farrer.

I think you will find the Broncos do a fair bit of scouting out of there already.

 

[Serc]

Second - our own state of the art training facilities

Someone correct me if I'm wrong...but I'm pretty sure that we have invested in some pretty quality facilities and systems in the last couple of years. Was one of the big things that Smithy did wasn't it?

 

[Alex28]

Don't we have outstanding facilities through the connection with Wests?

Maybe we can do a bit of tweaking here and there, but we don't need to rebuild what we already have...

 

[roopy]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong...but I'm pretty sure that we have invested in some pretty quality facilities and systems in the last couple of years. Was one of the big things that Smithy did wasn't it?

My understanding is we have a good deal to use facilities that belong to Wests - but maybe we have our own now - don't know where we would have found the money to build them in recent years.

 

[Pika]

We use the facilities at Balance Mayfield.

We have access to the sporting field, glass house (for video and meetings etc), also in this building is strapping and physio tables as well as storage.

Ice baths are in the pool area and are available to the Public but the cost is huge so you rarely see anyone but the knights in there.

Knights use the high performance gym downstairs. Same as ice baths, open to the public but so expensive noone uses them.

All owned by Wests. All as good as anything in the NRL. Exception being Tigers and Coast, who have an altitude room to use (these things are great).

We have ice baths now in the change rooms at the stadium and there is certainly room for shared Jets/Knights gym at the stadium.

 

[Elephant Hunter]

The big advantage with all these things both front office and the training facilities would be a shared cost and benefit with the Jets. We could also be the first club to get real benefit out of cross training and cross promoting codes at a junior level. You might find some of the Jets rejects work out better in league and the reverse. Tinkler group could invest some big money into these facilities and staff and get an all year round benefit given the A-League and NRL seasons only slightly overlap

 

[perverse]

i would expect that over the 10 years of ownership if/when Tinkler buys us we would end up with a combined Jets/Knights training facility, owned by Tinkler Group naturally. it would make financial sense, and no doubt Tinkler himself could profit massively from it.

don't kid yourselves, this isn't charity. owning both major sporting teams in this town is going to make this man a lot of money, too.

 

[Gene Krupa]

Hookers and beer.

 

[roopy]

If we spend the money on hookers and beer for opposition teams, that could be a winning strategy.

 

[Jobdog]

i would expect that over the 10 years of ownership if/when Tinkler buys us we would end up with a combined Jets/Knights training facility, owned by Tinkler Group naturally. it would make financial sense, and no doubt Tinkler himself could profit massively from it.

don't kid yourselves, this isn't charity. owning both major sporting teams in this town is going to make this man a lot of money, too.

12-month season passes ...

 

[perverse]

12-month season passes ...

yeah, that isn't where the bulk of his profit is going to come from in this deal. in fact, all the money from all ticketing will probably go straight back into club operations - as it should. ticket money is dead set chicken feed in comparison to other ways he can extract profit from the situation.

if he can increase membership sales, including combined membership to both clubs, then that's great... but it's not going to massively inflate his personal bottom line on its own.