It was a nice backhanded favour done to CCM by the FFA.
Apparently there has been a change in worth ethic in the team, which is still training.
If the recruitment is half decent the team will be competitive.
Forever optimistic.
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In retrospect Okon looks to have been your best manager since Arnie. Is that the central coast consensus?
Hope Stajic works out but the fact that there has been no âoutcomeâ (not even sure its possible at this point) to the Matildas saga is worrying. He is either the victim of FFA incompetence/infighting or a flawed manager. Either outcome is deeply concerning considering the Matildas are the most important team in Australian football (in my opinion - get that it is a minority view).
If the culture was that bad and he was abusive or whatever the FFA claimed, then surely the FFA would have reported him to FIFA and stripped him of his qualifications??
I donât know what happened and i doubt it will ever come out but either possibility is unacceptable:
A) Staj is flawed or worse and still coaching,
B) FFA fired someone for invented reasons.
For what its worth I believe its quite obviously B.
Either way is shameful on the game.
or C) The FFA was happy to push Staj into the next team that needed a manager. A handshake agreement, if you will, to avoid any legal action Staj was considering for his dismissal. Think about it, how much have we heard about impending legal action lately?
Okon put together the best squad we have had since Arnie. However with what was a good squad he achieved no better results than the other failures. I do not know where that ranks him.
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Whatever happens there will be NDAs on both sides at the conclusion. Will never be made public.
Not the place for it but im pretty fucking sick of the lack respect the Matildas and the womenâs game get. If this happened in the menâs team it would have been enormous news with consequences. WHEN the Matildas win a WC hopefully things will change.
Yeah but how good is âHorsesâ?
Not very.
Okon was the best of a poor bunch and the best at attracting players.
However he failed because he was so stubborn and dogmatic in his style of play and couldnât adjust for the poorer population group he assembled from the salary cap floor.
He tried to play a possession based game yet didnât have the technical players to accomplish this. We were easy bait to teams that pressed, this put our players under pressure at the back, who ultimately coughed up the ball in our half and we conceded. Goal after goal came from this.
Despite this he continued to play this style. He was famously quoted as saying âwe donât need a Plan B, we need to do Plan A better.â
Also, he had a total dick in his assistant Ivan Jolic who managed to piss the players off.
Basically his best moment - beating us - was the beginning of the end. Iâd like to think that Daryl Braithwaite is what broke it.
Okon is a really poor coach who got jobs based solely on his name - it is uber obvious that was the case not sure why anyone would ever think otherwise. That was his ârepâ before even signing on with CCM.
CCM got super lucky with Arnold - his reputation was down after the Olyroos (and Socceroos) problems so he was open to any offer - they were âluckyâ with McKinna as he just picked the bones of a failed NSL club and moved it up the expressway.
Like most A-League clubs, when they have actually had to make an appointment âfrom scratchâ they have got it completely wrong and not once thought outside of the box.
The Club did not get lucky with McKinna. He had been part of Northern Spirit looking to move to Gosford before the end of the NSL. The Coast got lucky to get him and a club.
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Isnât that was I said?
Also â please donât think I was critiquing CCM alone on this. Besides Muscat at Victory â I canât really think of any proper planning of coaching departments or succession planning at any A-League club. (donât include Corica as it is his first season and I donât think he was first choice). Coaching appointments are maybe the most ad-hoc, ill-planned part of the A-League.
It really isnât right to shit on what the Mariners had pre-Charlesworth. They had guys like Lyall Gorman, Peter Turnbull, and McKinna for many of those years. There is no luck in any of that, they all did a great job. Arnold was a great appointment after McKinna, obviously. They made the club part of the community. It seems like none of that has ever been spoken of in the Charlesworth era, which insinuates the club is no longer seriously part of the community. Perhaps it just gets ignored, I donât know. Only the Mariners fans can answer.
We speak of having Frank Farina as the RoT. No, Charlesworth is the real RoT. From the outside it looks like heâs taken everything that was good about the Mariners and set it all on fire. As mentioned previously, he seems to be AWOL an awful lot for someone who pretends to care about the club.
Hopefully the Stajcic appointment is the start of a turnaround for the club. In reality, though, there are about four or five clubs in this league who need a real kick up the arse. The Mariners is just one of them.
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Even with his lack of understanding of what it takes to own a football club, and his inability to successfully run it, we must remember without Charlesworth Mariners would have gone to the wall years ago.
Many would say that would have been better than the last 4 years of the living dead that the club has been going through.
As a fan however, I believe that while there is life there is hope.
Going through the tough times make the good times so much better.
I just hope I last long enough to see them. 
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Look on the bright side,WestyUnited Carpetlayers could finish 11thâŚbut Iâm sure the Coastys may want the record of being first team in A league history to claim 11th!
The Fury already did that.
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Western Union will probably have enough to avoid the spoon anyway.
Any names from the Mariners annual 30 NPL players trial? Interested to see who they are looking at.