When you hear terms like “if nothing else” and “bottomless pit” creep into the CEO’s vernacular, it’s understandable why the club’s fans held up banners mocking over 300 days since their last win. If you’re one of the rusted-on that so fondly remembers the golden era, at some point you either have to laugh or cry.

An excruciated Matt Simon fronted the media after Central Coast threw away a 1-0 lead to lose 5-2 to Sydney FC in January, their eleventh match without a win.

"Nothing's changed," Simon said. "People are going to talk about how we started and the red card but it's not good enough, it's unacceptable.

“I don't know what the club's situation is on bringing new players in, obviously something has to change sooner or later or things are going to keep going the same."

The same breeding ground that bore fruit to Socceroos Michael Beauchamp, Alex Wilkinson, Danny Vukovic, Oliver Bozanic, Mile Jedinak, Bernie Ibini, Mustafa Amini, Tom Rogic, Mat Ryan and Trent Sainsbury over just six years has barely flowered since Rogic’s departure in 2013.

Yet Mielekamp insisted that their decline in youth development isn’t a sign that the Mariners have lost touch and are fostering an unhealthy culture.

“The A-league landscape changes every year,” he said.

“We don’t know what next year’s going to look like, Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers change locations, they have to move around and lose some of their aspects – the landscape changes every year.

“Does it mean that we can’t be dynamic and innovative in our approach? Absolutely not, it’s what we’re here to do.

"Every time the A-league evolves, it creates new opportunities – we have the ability to create the opportunity for young players who can’t get the game time in other clubs because they’re sitting behind big marquees – with every change, there are new opportunities.

“If you look back at our history, we’ve been able to develop young players and have been successful. Still to this day, whenever the Socceroos play all the ex-Mariners get together, they take a photo and they send it back to the club with a lot of pride. The secret for us is that players who go on to bigger and better things after the Mariners have embraced Central Coast as a region and it’s allowed them to perform their best.

“The culture and academy in our first team is the recipe for success. It’s not an easy exercise, there’s no opportunity for mistakes, but I have every confidence that we’ll continue to take the right steps forward.”

Deans echoes that it all starts with community, but believes Mielekamp and Charlesworth have taken the wrong approach.

“All our promising youth sign for other clubs,” he says.

“The Mariners used to be known as the ‘community club’. That was only possible while the fans felt they had access to the coach and the team, to the extent that the team felt part of the community and the fans felt part of the team. That’s what we’ve lost.