The thing I find so hard to get my head around is the media swoon whenever the Mariners hit a purple patch, endless pontificating about the ‘culture’ and ‘community’ and how big a part of the Central Coast identity they’ve become which is all well and good and very admirable, but the same people are happy to gloss over the 15 years of effort by the Mariners, under a variety of owners to either fully relocate to, or play games on, the North Shore, their efforts to build relationships with associations and clubs on the North Shore and opening academy offerings on the North Shore.
For an entity that’s so engaged with its community it seems to have spent a lot of time and effort trying to get away from it.
I’ve also seen an unfortunate turn of mindset from fans on social media, with CCM fans happy to join the general Cove/SFC pile-on with WSW and Victory fans, regurgitating fantasy bullshit to justify their nonsense and conveniently disowning their own duplicity when it came to the boycotts.
I still like CCM as much as one can like a rival, but there’s an ugly sort of inverse-smugness underpinning this cycle of success that tarnishes it for me.
Fairly sure the Nth Sydney move was mostly being agitated by the previous owner, who was a dick. This season under the new owner has seen a refreshed embrace of the local community who’ve stepped up to support along with improved onfield results.
I find a lot of it to be fairly cringeworthy myself, probably because I grew up with the Australian cultural cringe that raged through the sixties and still exists. You see it in, Socceroos against the world, Tassie v the mainland along with many other examples.
A think a hell of a lot of it in the media this year is probably because of the number of years the Mariners were crap and seen to have no future without a rich owner. A lot of our fans are crowing more than expected because of the many years of tv media pundits continually sprouting that the Mariners were not a fit club to be in the league and were arguing that they would be trying harder if there was relegation. As well, there was much talk on various social media by football fans calling the Club disgrace and that it should have its licence revoked. That hurt, and has probably led to much of the inverse-smugness you find offensive but I think is understandable.
The whole story of “Little Club Who Could against the Rich Giants” is made for the Australian media to blow up as loudly as possible which should be welcomed seeing how they ignore our game the rest of the time. Any publicity is good publicity, no?
As for wanting to move the Club. That was always a furphy. The whole North Sydney thing was to play some whom games at NSO in order to encourage fans from Sydney’s north. A move to NSO was never seriously contemplated thank goodness. It would have been a disaster not to be contemplated and there would not be a worse ground in Sydney for watching football than NSO.
I think that in the main there is a healthy rivalry and respect between the fans of the two clubs. I think a lot of that goes back to the first season when your fans came into the Kendall Bar at the Leagues Club and sang against, and with us, before the match and we did the same at your pub in forveaux St for the reverse game. Great memories. Having said that there is no other team in the competition we would rather beat than SFC, but without the hate as to be seen between you and Victory or us and the Jets and both sets of fans against the Warriors.
It was a shame we are not meeting in the grand final. It would have been wonderful to see us reverse of the result from the first season and bookend Corica’s A- league time with a winning goal in the first as a start and losing as coach as an end.
PS Having said that I hope he stays as coach of SFC for a bit longer yet.
No idea what his own ambitions are but right now I doubt you’d find someone better suited to youth development. He’s done an outstanding job and is right where we want / need him most, the NPL gig should be his for as long as he wants it.
Always a legend.
Foundation player, first GF goalscorer.
Won every domestic trophy as both an assistant and head coach. May not always make management decisions which please us, but I know where his heart is.
in the 
.