Just for clarification, what does "self funded" mean? Does this mean there are no sponsors, and all costs associated with the club are paid for out of the direct pockets of the squad & self-manned committee and have no business ties? Because if that's the case, would that mean rego for each player is astronomically high? Obviously whatever it is, it's working because the boys are happy to self-fund the club. I'm just asking this because I know there is a huge push for all clubs in Newcastle to lower their rego fees, and no clubs seem to easily be able to achieve this without business sponsors chipping in.

Genuine question - what relationship does Azzuri have with the juniors? Are the two split up into Senior & Junior clubs or is it one club? Are funds shared between the two? Is it a healthy relationship or an us vs them? When it comes to maintenance of the field and facilities, lodging requests and applications for the club, grants, all that stuff is it a combined effort on all of these things or do the two handle things seperately?

I have to agree with MonkeyK above - all clubs need to have a long hard look at themselves and compare the meteoric rise that Azzuri have been able to achieve in such a small timeframe, and compare it to what they have achieved in a lot longer time. The fact that Azzuri were able to completely bypass the entire Zone League 2 competition basically deems all ZL2 teams as defunct. Hopefully some of those clubs have a graveyard near by, so they can die with minimum amount of fuss.