Quote Slugger McBatt="Slugger McBatt"I can understand the financial reality of moving if Belle Vue is unsustainable, as the choice is no Trinity as unsustainable or a Trinity for another couple of years elsewhere.
If he used the line again about do the people of Wakefield want a super league club or not, he needs to drop it. It's fan-blaming. The obligation is not on the Wakefield club to keep the club going by paying a lot of hard-earned cash on dire performances but on the Wakefield club to give the people of Wakefield something they want to watch.
He needs a decent coach and he needs a marketing person. End of. Carter sells the club badly by not selling it, and turning it into some kind of hair shirt, that we must all hand over cash to watch tripe, and if we don't, it's all our fault. That isn't how businesses who sell a product operate.'"
Therein lies the problem of having an accountant running the daily business of a sports club. Sport business is not the same as any other business, you cannot run a Pro sports club in the same way you run a call centre or a sandwich shop.
The dynamics are so different and attention has to be paid to marketing and promotion in a way accountants don't appreciate. Strategies for the sale of the product cannot be approached in the same way you sell fork lift trucks to the warehouse industry. You cannot treat the customers like any other customer, supporters have a lifelong emotional involvement with the club and feel a level of ownership and entitlement that customers in every day business don't have.
I'm not having a pop at MC here, he was the right man at the right time and did a superb job but now need to build on that or the club will die anyway, despite his efforts. If the money isn't there then, despite running a small squad already, we need one less player in favour of a better administration staff/marketing/promotions/strategist person.
The 3 year deal to Webster is a prime example of the nativity of the new owners, there simply was no justification or need to give Webster, an untried Coach, a 3 year deal. Now we have the issue of knowing he is out of his depth, lost the dressing room, damned by his own words and seen as the problem by the fans and some very knowledgable people yet we can't remove him because we can't afford to pay his remaining two and half years off!