Dedicated football fans are a bit like puppies: easily pleased.

Although fan forums are full of whinging and moaning, true football fans will stick by their team through good times and bad.  Poor performances, terrible weather conditions, losing key players and changes of management will not deter the diehards from turning up in their team colours week in, week out.

All they really want is a chance to feel part of the team, a sense of belonging that only comes from sitting in the stands every home game.  It's a uniquely wonderful feeling, and one that has become an option to many Australians for the first time with the creation of the A-League.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to turn up and support your team every week when the team itself chooses not to be there.  Clubs who choose to relocate 'home' matches hundreds of kilometres away, as the Mariners did last season, cannot expect supporters to follow them. 

And when the reasons for doing so seem to be less than transparent, it's a recipe for mass fan resentment.  Those who turn up to support their team every week may be loyal, but they are certainly not stupid.  Treat them with disrespect, feed them a load of spin and you may find that next season they simply won't be there. 

Last season the Mariners made an unpopular decision to relocate two 'home' games to Canberra.  Mariners' fans were given no warning that this was going to happen.  Like many others, I was shocked when the A-League draw was released : we were the only fans deprived of two extra home matches plus there was a huge six week gap mid-season.  Unsurprisingly, this caused a measurable downturn in attendances.

At the time the club only made a cursory statement about "pitch problems" and left fans feeling they had been kept in the dark.  As if to offer belated compensation, this year the chairman has sent a letter to Mariners' members forewarning that it's all going to happen again in Season 6. 

This information has prompted outrage from Mariners' fans.  Some have vowed to give up their membership in protest, others have written to the club to voice their anger and ask some difficult questions. But the answers unfortunately remain clouded in mystery.

Surely it's time the club came clean and made a public statement about the situation, giving everyone the facts.  It is no exaggeration to say they are at serious risk of losing credibility from their most loyal supporters over this issue. Here's some questions that need to be answered as soon as possible :

  • Why can't pitch maintenance be done in the off-season ?
  • How come Etihad Stadium can be re-laid in a week for the Grand Final but Bluetongue apparently takes months ?
  • How come other clubs with financial problems (Adelaide, Brisbane) can still afford to have all their home games at home ?
  • How many games will be relocated next season and where ?
  • If games must be relocated, why can't they be played somewhere more accessible (eg Sydney) ?
  • And most of all : Why is there money to build a multi-million dollar Mariners' sporting complex but apparently not enough to have the pitch effectively re-laid at Bluetongue ?

Call me cynical, but I was less than excited to see the club's announcement this week that they had completed the purchase of a 12 hectare site at Tuggerah to build their major football development.  Sure, this is an exciting prospect for the Central Coast and one that has the potential to generate a lot of income for the club.  But what about the fans ?  Are they being given a raw deal so that the club can focus on becoming a viable business venture of the future ? 

As if to add insult to injury, the club apparently believes fans should be happy because we pay less for our membership due to having less home games . They cannot be serious !

Let me spell it out for the CCM management : we're football fans, we want to watch football. Less does not equal more, no matter how much money we save.  And where is the saving when we have to pay the costs of travelling and staying interstate ?

The saddest thing about all this is that the loyalty of the Mariners fanbase used to be the envy of many bigger A-League clubs. Of course the club may well believe that fans are expendable, but they would be wise to take a look at GCU.  Even the most financially viable club needs fan goodwill and commitment if it is to survive. Build all the sporting complexes you want, but rebuilding a decimated fanbase will be a much more difficult task.