We had our era. Moore was ok but he just ran it as a family thing. He set us up with a good leagues club that provided us finance that went further in the 80s than today. Coorey came in and made it rich!
We also had western sydney to choose from in juniors.
The area was aussie and leb. Football giants.
Now the aussies moved and we have chinese, bangladeshi, indian, people that dont follow footy. Also the days of assimilation are over. A leb, or any immigrant, in the 70s wanted to be part of australian life, they needed to be. Nowadays, a syrian refugee could waltz inti the area, get away with no english, live a middle eastern life happily. Shisha in the morning, shopping at middle east market in the afternoon and mosque and community events wherever he feels. There is no need to ever look at rugby league. its a parallel identity.
Sure, the syrian in my story might have kids who like the dogs, but the Sub continentals and asian kids probably wont. especially if we r losing
The area has lost alot of its footy culture is what i am saying.
We havent manged to carve out a partnership with regional australia. we had christchurch at one point (sbw) and south brisbane but it was a failure. Roosters however git the golden ticket of CC and melb got rural qld (slater).
we still have people here almost daily suggest 'lets get props from fiji'. Thats so ignorant of the fact the countries footballing size is less than that of the cronulla district, and its all rugby, and they are all wingers and as soon as they go good they just go back to rugby.
Gary mcintyre gave us success because he blatabtly cheated.
Our last era was beause we cheated.
our fond memories was the consequence of cheating, the hangover with a sweet taste of retaining our players.
We lost the dogs magic somewhere around the 99 season.
other clubs have emerged. one town teams. teams with big nurseries are getting better at harnessing talent.
the comp will be 18 teams before we know it so all things being equal thats still only a 7% chance of a permiership on any given year.
our rep is based on those that can remember the 80s, thry are fading. media personalities (who are supposedly shitting on us) are the only ones keeping this dogs of war reputation alive.
kids dont support us and see us as a terrorist club. people still joke about rape and coffs harbour (although thankfully thats subsuided) and any mystique we had has been scuppered by 5 years if straight failure.
its rare to see a cellar dweller of any team be shit for 5 years, and our supporters are hear talking about us being a powerhouse.