Why the future of Central Coast Mariners might have to be in Sydney

Central Coast Mariners will host Melbourne Victory at North Sydney Oval on Friday, and in February they’ll play their first ever game at Brookvale Oval in Manly. Unpopular or not, the Mariners are slowly creeping into the northern suburbs of Sydney.

Back in 2002, the Professional Footballers Association recommended the new national competition comprise three Sydney teams. One from the west, one from the south and one from the north. In the ensuing madness to set up the A-League, the west was ignored, Sydney FC were given the impossible task of appealing to an entire city, and a sweetheart deal between former FFA chief executive John O’Neill and the former owner of Central Coast Stadium John Singleton left us with the Central Coast Mariners.

The Mariners have always punched above their weight, and for a few seasons they were a prime example of how a small club should be run. The culture was right, the team was good and the locals were happy. Not so anymore. The average crowd at Central Coast Stadium this season is just 7,619, and since the departure of Graham Arnold the team has gone backwards.

But more importantly, the owner Mike Charlesworth has gradually chipped away at the Mariners’ raison d’etre in search of greener pastures closer to Sydney. Relations with the local football community are fractured, and people from North Sydney have been appointed to the board. Duncan Tweed, for example, is the CEO of the Northern Suburbs Football Association, which is comprised of clubs from Lane Cove, Pymble, Gordon, Wahroonga, St Ives and other white collar areas along the Pacific Highway.

In November, the Mariners announced a partnership with Northbridge FC to run the North Shore Mariners Academy. Northbridge are the quiet achievers of the NSW State League – relatively wealthy, well-run and one of the biggest association clubs in the country. The club draws from a blue-ribbon catchment area, where the streets are clean and people drive their children to private schools in Range Rovers. Middle class, overwhelmingly white, with a disposable income and increasingly worried about potential head injuries to little Lachlan from rugby union, these parents are A-League gold. Sure it’s a rugby area, but football is booming in these parts, and with the administration of rugby union in complete disarray, there has never been a better time for the A-League to capitalise.

Last season, when Charlesworth first took a game to North Sydney Oval, he was bullish in his approach. “We are looking to build our supporter base in an area of roughly one million people,” he said. “How many games we play in Gosford or North Sydney in the future is down to some degree to the attitude of the councils.”

Here, Charlesworth is telling half the story. Former Mariners coach Lawrie McKinna is the mayor of Central Coast, and the Mariners already get a decent deal at Central Coast Stadium. McKinna, by the way, has just walked away as an ambassador to the club, a sign of the anger towards Charlesworth’s plans.

But it’s not really about the owner or about the stadium. It’s about the market. There are more people in Sydney’s northern suburbs and more potential for blue-chip sponsorship. The club is promoting a party atmosphere for Friday’s game with a spring in Charlesworth’s step rarely seen in Gosford.

For all the criticism of Charlesworth, the Central Coast was never much of a growth market in the first place. The entire population is just over 300,000, roughly the size of Blacktown. Nobody, of course, is suggesting we set up an A-League club in Blacktown. Indeed the PFA model recommended each A-League club have a support base – not population – of around 250,000 people.

Youth unemployment on the Central Coast hovers around 30%, and while the locals cry out for a better deal, they’re invaded by Sydney yuppies who go there to sun themselves at Pearl Beach, while the blue-collar workers from the western suburbs move there to retire in air-conditioned apartments in Umina. The prospect of sharing games between Sydney and Central Coast will not please anybody.

No other football code has permanently set up shop on the Central Coast, and for a while it appeared to be soccer’s advantage. Perhaps the other codes knew something different. Like all sports, the A-League runs on TV money, and the next TV rights deal will decide where the expansion clubs are based. As Charlesworth has pointed out, Sydney is by far the biggest TV market, and while the gate might not improve dramatically at North Sydney or Brookvale, Foxtel will likely be happier with a team in the northern suburbs of Sydney than on the Central Coast.

There is an argument in favour of boutique clubs, similar to the ones in European leagues. But the A-League is not like the rest of the world. It is a high-capital, growth-oriented franchise model without deep roots and sentimental histories or traditions to trade upon. Right now there are just 10 teams in the A-League – nine Australian teams when you exclude Wellington Phoenix. Those teams need to be sustainable and as FFA chief executive David Gallop says, they need to fish where the fish are. Even at its very best, having a team on the Central Coast still offers little to the rest of the competition in terms of TV viewers, sponsorship and growth potential.

It is often said that the Central Coast Mariners are the little team that could. Now, it’s dawning on us that something must be done about the little team that never should have been.