Tonight the first of the FFA supporter forums was held at Mounties.
I, along with several other members of the forum attended the meeting.
Several high level members of the FFA including Ben Buckley were present and spoke and listened. Lyall Gorman, Kyle Paterson (who made a series of "Dad jokes" early on) and Mark Bosnich also attended, but sadly Mel McLaughlin did not. Bozza received rapturous applause throughout the night. He is very articulate, passionate, charismatic and this came through everything he spoke about.
From my view it was very successful. The results I discussed in our community round up were exceptionally well regarded and brought up not just by members of the forum.
There was discussion about club culture that meshed well with what I seen spoken about here, wanting to represent Western Sydney and to enable talent to have an outlet that doesn't involve going to Sydney FC or Central Coast to play professionally. Bozza spoke of how he believes this club is going to reflect the community of Western Sydney as it moves from mono-ethnic groups to a wider and more diverse group of people who begin to see themselves as part of Australia and have pride in being from Western Sydney.
Healing and building with the ex-NSL clubs was spoken highly and was applauded. Many Western Sydney coaches were named as potential leaders of the club.
There were two other issues with not a great deal of relation to the new club that came up. One was grass roots fees, and another was about the Training Compensation by a group of fans from a NSWPL club. After a heated discussion Bozza calmed tensions. The NSWPL supporters left the room afterward.
On the club colours, name and logo, what our community has discussed and prefers here was what was wanted in the forum. Red & Black colours, the name West or Western Sydney Wanderers was given rapturous applause. A handful of other suggestions included the colours of West Ham, Green & Gold those were not well received.
A show of hands was asked for those in favour of Parramatta stadium and almost to a person the audience raised their hands. The idea of ANZ was utterly rejected whenever it was raised. A long term vision for a football specific stadium was mentioned, with a member of the public having the idea of playing at Fairfield Showground.
Ben Buckley spoke of needing to build clubs from the bottom up, not the top down.
All in all it was a great night, there were a lot of good, sensible ideas and those ideas well supported were ones that the community here also agree and support.
I would suggest anyone who didn't attend tonight for whatever reason make the effort to go to the next meeting which is to be held at Parramatta.
I would like to thank Julyaugustreno for this effort making flyers that were handed out at the end of the night. He also spoke to Ben Buckley and also the FFA's Digital group on our behalf, and we have some details we will be following up with them.
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