hello from perth

perth glory fan · 23-06-2004, 11:52

hey people i live in Perth Western Australia and as you have probably gathered im a Perth Glory fan i have been supporting them since their third season which was 1998 and have been to just about every home game sinve then

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Heres some info about our club

Perth Glory's eight seasons in the National Soccer League demonstrated a powerful combination of skill, passion, commitment, marketing and broad management ability.

It's a Saturday night at Members Equity Stadium, over 14,000 fanatical supporters baying for opposition blood in the cauldron atmosphere, die-hards in the Shed punching the air and screaming in unison the now familiar 'Come on Glory! Come on Glory!' and you could be forgiven for thinking that soccer in Australia is a relatively simple and straightforward affair. Just a question perhaps, of filling seats, keeping the sponsors happy and making sure that the ball hits the back of the opposition net at regular intervals.

Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth! The remarkable success of Perth Glory in the National Soccer League - local attendance figures vying with many European first and second division clubs and unprecedented media attention - belies a club whose continued survival depends on many outside factors which are not within its direct control.
Soccer is a sport which is deeply troubled and divided throughout Australia. The roots of the problems lie at the roots of the game itself, with control and voting powers held at State level while the National League is powerless to assert itself and equally powerless to effect urgently needed change.

Soccer in the Blood

As Club Chairman, Nick Tana is representative of a dedicated team of business people whose passion for soccer and belief in professionalism has made Perth Glory happen. Without them, there would be no club, no opportunity for thousands of West Australians to follow the game they have discovered to be in their blood, no opportunity to see yet another West Australian team assert its individualism in a national code.

The major teams in the National League were originally owned by State Leagues and they have come forward to join the national competition. However, the structure has not changed at all, since the voting rights and bulk of the power is still with the State Federations. The focal point of soccer in Australia, the National League teams, are not able to
control what is happening. It means that for every single change to take place, you have got to go through Soccer Australia with the State Federations having 74 per cent of the total vote. If you want to make a major change to the benefit of the national game, it could be to the detriment of the State teams, and then you have to face tremendous
resistance because they see it as negative for them despite the fact that it might be positive for soccer as a whole. State Federations are protective of their local clubs, which tend to be ethnic in origin and, in effect, community-based sport in the Eastern States is controlling a game which needs to become more commercially oriented and professional in order to flourish. This makes building a soccer team very hazardous and uncertain as a business venture.

There are some major hurdles to overcome for this particular part of the code to match the heights of what is being achieved overseas. Two things have to happen: other clubs like Glory in the East need to be prepared to take a gamble on change, and more fundamentally, the people who hold the power now - the State community clubs - have to allow change to happen. This means constitutional change which they have to vote in.

The other teams in the League are in a similar position to Perth Glory for different reasons. They want to see control vested in a national body, but the majorities are still social clubs rather than structured commercial enterprises. Even if the necessary constitutional changes happen, they face additional problems, because for the most part, they are not commercially driven.

Marketing Focus

An important part of the club focus was marketing to potential corporate sponsors. The sports sponsorship market is very crowded in WA and it is essential to create a big brand impression to attract sponsors who could really help the club to grow.

In terms of marketing, it is important that the right conditions exist in WA for soccer to prosper and thrive. Many immigrants have always, in their hearts, supported a soccer team from their home country. Since 30 per cent of the population was born outside the State, there is a huge statistic that says soccer is in the blood of the people.

Until now, it has been divided and cut up into such small particles (local ethnic clubs) that it had no focus and did not really exist. Perth Glory happens to be the one uniting force to make it succeed, and while those conditions exist in the other States to much the same extent, Perth Glory is the first club to make it happen, because it has been driven from the top as a fully commercial venture. The management in the club had faith that it could happen, despite the unpromising precedents of previous failed attempts in Western Australia.

As far as Perth Glory is concerned, it is a marketing success story and that is reflected in the type of meetings which the directors held in the club's formative years. The club continues to place far more emphasis on marketing meetings. The other clubs are more preoccupied with players' committee meetings and finance meetings, but for us this is definitely a marketing-driven exercise. The challenge was to get the supporters through the door and the club's’s original target was 3000 to 4000 per game.

Objectives

The club aimed to achieve the following objectives in the first few seasons.

To create the perception of Perth Glory as a major new sporting club with mainstream support from both the corporate community and general public. To position Perth Glory as a contemporary Australian club. To popularise soccer in Western Australia. To provide a point of difference to attract non soccer people.

Strategies - The club name and logo

It was important to create a name and logo with no ethnic overtones and which symbolised the rebirth of soccer in WA. The club was positioned as a contemporary Australian club focused on a future of a multicultural Australia for all Australians. There was a conscious decision to break away from the strong heritage in soccer from the Northern Hemisphere e.g. names like United and City, and traditional strip designs.

It was felt the name Perth Glory had broad appeal and a sense of history. The sunburst in the logo is characteristic of Perth in summer and the orange and purple colours were chosen in contrast to the more traditional combinations.

Before the start of the season just finished our stadium was redevloped and can now fit inbetween 17500-18500 for pictures of the redovelopment and new stadium go to www.gloryshed.com then click on pictures then redovelopment.

The NSL (national soccer league) is now dead and the ASA (australian soccer association) are making a new plan for an australian competition because of this the new league is not expected to start until june/july 2005 with a "soft competition" set for january/february 2005 with the winner qualifiying for the world club championships. The new league will be mainly made up of new clubs because they will need to have the amount of money the ASA has said that each club wishing to join the APL needs. Out of the old NSL teams the only teams that are expected to be in the league are Perth Glory and Adelaide United. There isnt much more info on the APL as yet but when i get some more info i will let you all know.

anyways hello from perth western australia

feel free to talk to me about anything in general

BTW the perth glory supporters club site can be found at www.gloryboys.net

and the clubs forum can be found at www.gloryboys.net/forum