Originally Posted by
hausmann
The reprisals against Barcelona came because it was a symbol of the people and their independence from the beginning. There would have been no "Franco and all that" if the people didn't use it as a focal point for their culture. I'm not saying we are exactly like that, but I am saying we have a unique independent spirit in a country where everything begins and ends with capital cities. I'm not saying we should be the the "Barcelona of the A-league". I'm saying we should celebrate our uniqueness the way they do because they have done it better than anyone. The fact is that people on here do when they talk about Reg Date, Kb United etc. and buy the E&C strip. People get it.
Also I'm not saying we should not think about being the little guy. Exact opposite. We are the little guy, as a city. But we can have a big club in a small city. Mariners will always be a small club. We don't have to be. Look at Green Bay packers. Huge, successful club in a very small population. What I said is we need to be outward looking. We at least need to be a lot of people's second favourite team so that multi national sponsors see that sponsoring us will get some traction in big markets. We need to look beyond the hunter because it's obvious that our big industries don't give a shit about sponsoring football teams. We don't produce anything here that needs a commercial profile, which is part of the struggle I'm talking about. Sydney won't give us our own container port because they say that their statistics show that most containers don't travel more than 40kms from the port. Exactly, that's why we need one. So that we can have our own industries again. Everything is sucked into Sydney. We used to produce our own beer, bread, textiles etc. Arnotts originally came from Morpeth. All those big commercial industries are gone. Yet even new small ones like Bluetongue won't sponsor local clubs. Nib send a lot of their sponsorship money elsewhere. And I think the main reason for this is because our clubs, knights and jets, have always settled for mediocrity and show themselves to be unprofessional and untrustworthy. This is why strong leadership is necessary.
You might say you hate the underdog story but it is a universal theme that people find attractive in all forms of theatre. I hate it when it is used as cliche in the media, an excuse for mediocrity or flash in the pan success. In the A-league, with its salary cap, there is no excuse for assembling an underdog squad. But that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about living it. being a small city that has a big culture, a big club and that is the best club in the league but that still feels the humility of the small city it represents. David wasn't just the underdog, he became probably the greatest ruler of that small nation.
