Shattered and Furious

Well I'm back to actually typing a blog. I think its been a lack of things making me angry recently. Maybe my blog should be called How fast can a van rant and youtube clips. but anyways onto my next Rant.
As you may have guessed I'm pretty shattered by the demise of the Fury. Now you may shut off at this point and say " Look mate- no one went- thats what happens when no one supports a team." Fair point. But you may not have heard the full story.
2 years ago The NQ Fury joined the A-League Their crowds were modest at home but away from home they had the biggest attendances in the A-League. Meaning wherever they were on the ladder people came to see them mostly due to big signing Robbie Fowler- a english soccer Legend (Think Mal Maninga big). The FFA (Football Federation of Australia) trumpeted their arrival as "Key to a gateway into Asia" However no one from the FFA actually showed up to the launch. Strange
At the end of the first season The owner filed for bankruptcy and quit the club and some of Townsville's most astute business people came on board to "Save the Fury" The campaign was good- thousands of people signed up to keep the fury. Then The White Knight the FFA came on board. We all celebrated the saving of our club. They then sacked everyone. A few players were resigned. A new board appointed. Everyone else's contracts were ripped up.
Strange but ok... The FFA know what they are doing. A new coach appointed. good news. The budget is released- The Fury Salary cap is 85% of every other team. Adelaide who at this stage is also owned by the FFA doesn't have this stipulation. Also we are to have no marquee players (Players who aren't included in the salary cap- e.g. the players you pay the most to play). Most other teams have 4.
This young team launches the 2nd season- with maybe 1 or 2 bigger names. Everyone else was a reject or a very young player from other clubs. Half the players were signed before the coach was selected.
The FFA made it clear that they were only there to help the Fury get onto their feet. "Over the next few years we will be looking for a new owner to take over as it is not the FFA's job to fund clubs"- Frank Lowry. And soon great news came. A Singaporean organisation wanted to buy the Fury. The FFA rejected the sale as it wasn't an Australian entity. Strange considering they wanted the club to be a gateway to Asia.
The Draw was released. The NQ cowboys have shown that the only time slot that works in north queensland is sat night. Even friday night games aren't very well attended and sundays don't work. In the entire draw we had only 4 sat home games and only one of them was at 7pm (1 at 5pm the other 2 at 8:30). we had more monday night games than sat. We had more Wed night games than sat. And the wed night games were mostly on at 8:30 pm??? who is going to take their kids to game on a wed night at 8:30?
The only sat night game at 7pm happened to be a night where 200mm of rain fell on the day of the game. OF course our crowd figures were bad. But The draw was mostly to blame for this.
As time went on it became more and more clear that the FFA was solely focused on getting the world cup in Australia and they were propping up the Fury so they didn't look bad when the fury folded. However the World cup bid was a failure. 50 million dollars spent to get one vote. The Main man responsible for this (Ben Buckley) then came back to his forgotten job- to find the Fury a new owner.
The Board proposed a new ownership system- a community ownership scheme. FFA took the model to review it and promptly announced the Fury was losing money and was going to lose 3 million over the next 2 years. It was up to the NQ to find half of that money and they had till the end of January. This was announced just before Christmas. Any business owner will tell you the hardest time to find money is around Christmas time. The community ownership model wasn't approved. So the board began madly trying to raise money The state government came on board- things were looking great. Then we had the flood and the state government pulled out. The team wasn't doing great mostly due, in my opinion, lack of certainty in their future. The worst refs were sent here and actually cost us games. The FFA responded by fining anyone who complained about the standards of refs sent up.
The deadline drew near- we hadn't raised the money and we asked for an extension. A reply never came back just some ho humming about how the timeline wasn't set in concrete. A just after the deadline the community model was approved. This was on a friday. That next week Cyclone Yasi hit. Townsville was quite messed up and yet despite this sponsors and people started to come on board. The 1.5 million was reached with another 500,000 dollar sponsorship in the wings. The FFA received the books and said to the chairman "You guys have done an excellent job: leave it with us"
Ben Buckley then flew to Townsville two weeks later and closed the Fury down. His reasoning- you have not raised the Capital needed. Apparently sponsorship was not to be included in the 1.5 million. The Board learned that at 11:30 am on the day the Fury were closed. Now the FFA had the Fury's books for 2 weeks. Surely 1 quick phone call would have told the Fury board this.
See I can accept the the club being axed due to lack of support in Townsville. However what I can't accept is the goal posts being constantly moved. Rumour has it the decision was made in August to axe the fury and make it a nice even 10 team comp. However this wasn't made public because they still wanted the revenue from the remaining games. I'm angry about being promised "a few years" and not even getting one. I'm angry that the FFA can spend 50 million on greasing up FIFA executives and wont spend 3 million dollars on the future of football in north queensland. I'm mostly angry because despite the fact that the supporter were held up as some of the best in the A-League apparently we weren't good enough. People's lives have been seriously affected by these broken promises and whiles't its not mine, its gonna take a long time up here for anyone to trust our football authorities again.