Great post. The Club have done some good things and WH has broadly been a success. But as you say, everything else appears chaotic without great planning and logistical support.
I’m not saying building this to something much, much bigger is easy. And because it’s not commercially delivering an ROI there’s only so many resources they can invest in it.
In the end though, this is white space and blank canvass with obvious growth and low hanging fruit. Seeing evidence of a comprehensive matchday plan and communications strategy could do wonders for growing membership, crowds, creating a hospitality footprint, media coverage etc. And this is exactly what the clubs business partners would love. Maybe if it can, they will have a replacement for AMART banging down the door?.. Hmm.
I feel the main issue is that the Men’s and women’s teams still feel seperate. Seperate memberships, seperate socials. They are both the one club why not promote it as one. The men’s Facebook page has almost 350K followers but no mention of the women’s making finals. Women’s Facebook only 4K followers there’s a huge untapped part of our fan base that we are not engaging with and may not even know of the great achievements the women’s team have made this year.
Whilst Windy hill has been a success this year the infrastructure there is lacking. Whatever happened to the redevelopment announced years ago?
The redevelopment of Windy Hill has apparently been scaled back. I don’t know what is being done now but there’s some things like opposition change rooms etc that need work asap. A compounding issue is the Club hasn’t got strong cash reserves and is probably unwilling to go into debt. It also isn’t generating enormous profits either.
Further, It also probably doesn’t feel like now is a good time to embark on a new major capital works fundraising campaign because the fans won’t be receptive and the club is ‘reading the room’. Then there’s government funding and I’m not across where that’s at, whether govts are receptive to funding support in a cost of living crisis and budget deficits. So in short, we don’t have money, we can’t get money and possibly don’t think it’s time to hit the fans up right now. So, it’s possibly swinging a bit in the breeze…
The initial plan was a cross subsidised $50M reimagined development of the entire precinct that involved moving the social club amongst other big developments. My understanding is the original plans presented a year or so ago have been scaled back significantly. I assume that’s due to costs and potential funding support. The Cricket Ckub nice was just one aspect involved in the planning of the project to ensure alignment of all stakeholders. Either way hopefully everything finds a good solution.
It’s a smaller development than what was made public a year ago.
It’s mainly building costs and supply that is the difference.
You need a good builder to navigate through the lead times and supply issues of material, etc. And there weren’t many a year ago. There’s more now, but the costs are greater too.
Town Planning has been a bit of drag too, but that is always the case.
There is also a fair bit of asbestos out there so that will come with its problems. Just like the Cookson Stand and Gym redevelopment 15 years ago. Will be interesting to see if they are at $50mil. I’d imagine, it’d be less than that, but probably reach that by the time it’s completed.
They’ve had plans to redevelop a lot of things. But covid put a pause on all that. Then the leadership change last year halted things a bit more. The club has now finished their first full year of non-covid affected budgets, forecast and financials. They’ll slowly release the purse strings a bit more across all departments.
Good points. I haven’t yet got any info on the financial result of the Club for 2023. Its membership has come in below expectations, both men and women. There’s an engagement piece along with a trust element stemming from prolonged on field downturn driving these. Still, it’s a shortfall and a bigger piece around regaining trust and engaging fans that’s needed.
Crowds have been strong, although it’s the stadium revenue from crowds thst matters and I believe the redevelopment of Marvel meant hospitality areas weren’t at full operation so how that impacted revenue I’m not sure. Amart I believe is ceasing support, I don’t believe they have a replacement secured or whether they succeed in at the least, cycling the annual contribution. That’s a watch out. I’d say the Windy Hill venue would’ve had a good year. The AFLW would’ve probs my delivered strong new sales so it’s contribution should help. Thst all said, they don’t have a non footy business so until they secure new revenue streams their financial performance is tied to on field which is something we should’ve dealt with years ago… covid, chaos and distraction the main reasons here.
So, the performance of the club as well as costings, funding all likely to contribute to the delivery of whatever the final plan for WH is.
A vaild point, but considering this at the time was just going to be the second game between the sides, and at the time, the Eagles were expected to be flogged, the safest bet was to lean into the jacket waving novelty.
On another note, when the club started an account on Threads, I challenged them after awhile about why we didn’t have our women’s team(s) also on threads, when the other clubs did. They didn’t like being challenged…
VDH, Wales and Clarke nominated for 22 under 22. Gave them all a vote but will be a bit surprised if any crack into the final team looking at the competition
