Here is the key, we have sufficient rounds left in the season to drop out of contention for not just the Premiership but also the mickey mouse cup.

Griffin said we're set to have an academy style set up with a European club?

Has been on the cards before and nothing eventuated.

Continue as coach? perhaps not, however I would have still liked to have seen him remain at the club in some capacity because he is one of the few identities left that are AUFC through and through.

For him to leave the way he has, for mine, means something is severely wrong, and Griffens respsonses could have been predicted from the get go, deflection deflection and lawyer spin.

You're unable to answer the question?

I don't think it's unusual for him to leave the way he has that's how he works always has done. Neither do i think he was of much value to keep around the club, he's too domineering, but he was of value to keep around for this season, a whole season has effectively been written off because of it, so maybe we needed to offer him some role to keep him happy for the remainder of the season.

I really hope this doesn't eventuate. Maybe the rini situation has left them short of a dollar?

#-o

So we now want Serj back on a loan?

Ok..... a) Our club is a circus but b) this is very telling :

"Adelaide's Australian marquee Dario Vidosic donned 105-game marksman van Dijk's entire playing kit and number at training the day after the Dutchman's departure was announced a fortnight ago."

Sounds like Kossie HAD lost the dressing room after all to me

Noticed Jeronimo refused a handshake too though that can always be put down to heat of the moment. Kossie always loses dressing rooms in the end. He is a bully and players these days, rightly or wrongly, don't like being treated like that.

Again - What's happened to Malik? What's this "freshness" bullshit Kossie feeds us? Another one that spoke out perhaps?

The way this has all happened is disconcerting and I will always have SOMEWHAT of a soft spot for Kossie and his retarded ways but to be honest this is just typical him. He never gets sacked, he always quits first. He does things on his terms.

Will be an interesting fortnight with two huge games

I think it's a little disingenuous of some people to now be saying this is so and so's fault and let's revolt against the owners when everyone here wanted Kossie gone. You all did. Very few of us thought he deserved another year.

He has played the politics beautifully here guys let's face it. He got his statement out first, slung a bit of general mud and it seems to have stuck. None of you wanted him here next season, that's what was going to happen so he quit.

In some ideal world people say he could have stayed on in some capacity. Do you really think he'd have done that? That's not Kossie's style. He is a controller and a dominant personality. He would not have wanted a secondary role so in order for you guys to get your wish he had to be moved on. He just made sure he got out first and didn't suffer the ignonimity of a season falling to pieces and being sacked in 12 weeks

Edited by davide82: 29/1/2013 10:39:52 AM

I personally thought he deserved a contract extension.

Spot on, Kossie did shaft the club with how he resigned. Far from professional.

Both sides have a lot of blame. It's just all so pathetic that I'm now feeling apathetic about the whole thing. Hitting these forums is a habit that is hard to break though :)

Look if you look at last season and you look at the people kossie brought in and what he has done thus far he deserved an extension. For him to blow his load to early and leave that is his fault. I dont mind if someone like valkanis gets to be the manager but bring someone with experience along side him as assistant maby miron if he would or someone like that ?

how can you truly judge?

fact is none of us know what is going on behind the scenes but it is very clear it is not such a great place to be.

Id prefer not to judge kossie on things we do not know.

What we do know is he pulled us out of a massive hole, almost got us to the ACL semis and built a very strong squad currently sitting in with all clubs above within reach.

It does seem clear that all problems within our club in the past 2 years have resulted from the very top

Sorry it is a bit small :(

Edited by general ashnak: 29/1/2013 06:23:51 PM

Let's judge him on what we do know, he sent an email to the club to resign without giving his reasons for leaving. He refused to talk to Griffin when he tried to contact him. Meanwhile he went to his mate Mike Cockerill and made a scathing statement.

Griffin may be in the wrong (I believe he is meddling too much in football matters) but what he did is a not excusable.

given the context of how he left stating that there was a lack of trust, and coolen having said the exact same thing why should we believe what griffins order of events are?

Petty retaliations are not facts. Each side will of course try cover their own arse. So no, we do not know these for facts.

Nor am i saying kossie acted professionally, but we do not know the circumstances so i will reserve my judgment.

One thing is for sure though, Coolen kossie trani stubbins flores etc do not seem to have been the problems. It would seem a patern is emerging that they were the result of what ever problem is within the confines of the club.

Either way its safe to say we are all fed up.

Edited by ShinAUFC: 29/1/2013 09:36:38 PM

Is there anyway to load that onto an image sharing site like Tinypic, Imgur or Photobucket, General? It's a tiny bit too small to read.

Edited by capac: 29/1/2013 09:58:44 PM

I cant atm General, but you could view the pdf copy and print screen

You will reserve your judgment on Kossie but not on the owners. That's ok but I think the fault isn't all at the owners feet.

I pinched this one off your twitter post General
Readable image

Awesome, thanks. Reads well, I know it doesn't make a difference but it's got my thumbs up :)

Didnt directly blame anyone but said there is clearly trouble at the top, whoever that may be

Interms on fan engagement and direction the club is in off the park.. Yes i blame the owners

I just fear sometimes when small groups get together with good intentions and lofty ideals that they may end up doing more harm than good

Don't worry, I'm not having a go coz I for one treasure what active support brings to our game and believe it is probably the biggest selling point our game has over other codes.


I just really hope certain people/groups don't fall into the trap of self indulgence or self aggrandizing too easily here and stay focussed on what's really important.

If you create a culture of whinging and misery and mithering it will take hold and numbers will dwindle even more


Edited by davide82: 30/1/2013 10:52:18 AM

Please elaborate? Apart from coaches sagas what is so bad? I agree on the fan engagement part 100% but apart from getting together with fan groups and working on a charter what else do you want from them "off the park"?

We have a great squad, mostly all re-signed. Only Kossie forced 2 good players out not the owners...Dario wearing Serj's kit to training was a fairly big FU pointed right at Kossie for it too by the way. (side note at nobody in particular - I love how in some people's eyes kossie has come out of this as Angel John here. He is a genius)

I'm actually asking a serious question by the way. What is it that people really want to see happening "off the park" that you are all so down about? Because Kossie said it was reactive decision making or something else?

Please do not reply anything to do with fans as I know this and agree with this but you made a separate point about direction off the park. So what other than head coach dramas and fan involvement needs to be addressed with their "direction off the park"?

Davide82. I like you.

you really think we have a good reputation now ?

so far we have..
-Publicly spoken out of turn against the FFA to the point other owners back away from our statements.

-Forced the AFC to intervene due to our choice of sponsorship deals in the champions league ( dont for a second assume we didnt already know the rules)

-Fielded a suspended player in AFC champions league play off

-Announced a big time sth american coming for a trial who turned out to be a DJ.

-Our Ex coach took the club to court and had a good enough case that the club agreed to settle for a sizable amount out of court.

-Fielded injured players on the bench of champions league away matches because the club did not want to pay for a larger squad to travel.

-MASSIVE lack of promotion, in all honesty WATRS does a better job of promoting matches then the club . facebook comments rarely generate a response and in general there is no online presence.

-Zero forward planning, you get the feeling when things are quiet they sit back and wait till the next mini crisis and then work out what direction they want to head in then.

-Ex players, coaches and staff all leaving the club and saying the same basic issues that fans are also saying.

Completely understand not spending so much, but you also need to spend money to grow. The club is not growing.

Bottom line there is a basic misunderstanding in regards to the values this club was founded on we are heading in the direction on a skeleton franchise.

Good well run clubs are not embarassed on a monthly basis, they have a direction they want to head, they have a plan in place and work to implement it. I see no evidence of this apart from things that fall into AUFC's lap.

Also don't make the mistake of thinking this is pureply the active supporters speaking out. That letter is infact a result of people coming together from all parts of hindmarsh and all kinds of backgrounds.

I dont believe the owners set out to do wrong, infact they are successful businessmen they should be an asset. But i dont believe they have really taken the time to understand the differences of the game/ club/league/fans .

If there was one question i could ask them at the members meeting ( ill be working sadly ) is if they can name atleast 2 players from our inaugural squad or if they know where we finished in the first year of the Aleague

but thats just my take on things as im sure we all have our own individual views. But i cut the owners alot of slack until they started brushing off fans requests for change. Now im being a bit more realistic with myself

Edited by ShinAUFC: 30/1/2013 11:17:16 AM

Edited by ShinAUFC: 30/1/2013 11:19:06 AM

I don't recall saying we had a good reputation now? How many clubs do out of curiosity? Sydney? - No. Newcastle? - No. Perth? - hell no. The list goes on

Players from the inaugural squad are still milling around today such as our new coach so i doubt that would slip them up

I'm not saying they haven't made mistakes but a lot of those mistakes such as fielding ineligible players aren't really to do with the "direction of the club off the park".

I mean Dexter Rosales...who's fault was that? It can't just have been the owners, surely the coaches were a big part of that as well, yeah?

Also, I don't even really know what WATR is. I mean, sure, I do but I don't follow them on facebook , I don't read their website etc etc

A huge % of the people in the stands don't either and I guess that's what I mean by vocal minorities.

As far as promotion goes, c'mon guys. We have never been promoted well. We certainly weren't under FFA administration.

The Clive Palmer thing I flat out thought was a disgrace so agree with you there. I think they should have an open channel of communication with fan groups too so I agree with you there.

Many players leave or left because of the coaches as much as the owners as well so it's not quite as clear as you are making out there. Stubbins left coz of Coolen, Flores left for money and also didn't like Coolen. Serj and Zenon coz of Kossie


Look, at the end of it all I don't want to sound like I'm having a dig at anyone here or anyone that's trying to get the clubs to hear the fans voices. But I think some people go too far when they are upset and criticise everything that's ever happened and in fact create a culture of negativity that's just as hard to erase as the memory of a season of coming last and signing a DJ is.

I too have always cut them slack and thought the fobbing off of fan concerns was terrible, a disgrace in fact but if they were to listen to that I hope people don't start delving into areas that aren't really their place to delve into.

Davide, it's trendy to be hatin on the club.
Gangnam style is old hat,
hating on the club is the new black.

This to me is a bigger problem than the owners. Thanks again for writing all I wanted to say on the matter ;)

Surely people can point out the issues with AUFC without being labelled as haters? It's just like people were complaining about the lack of communication and transparency from the FFA not a year ago.

My main issue with the club currently is the lack of community engagement, something which encompasses media management, proper action in the community and communication with supporters. I think part of the reason for this is that these are football guys. They expect the history of support to be there. North Adelaide has a catchment area in the SANFL where they draw players and supporters from, and have histories of family support, they don't have to do much to keep the club going.

My other issue is that supposed politics that have been mentioned since the start of the A League. Kosmina complained about it the first time, Vidmar complained about it in the infamous pissant town speech, Coolen discussed it (though he caused some as well), now Kosmina has brought it up again. I'm not saying Kosmina is infallible, he clearly orchestrated the whole thing so he came out golden, but when something is mentioned multiple times over many years then it's something that needs to be taken seriously.

As a last note, I think the fact that they were dicking Kossie around with negotiations and the issues with supporters does show that they probably don't have a long term plan set up, which is a little bit disconcerting.

Edited by capac: 30/1/2013 01:26:48 PM