TOPIC:

In today’s West Swans president Peter Hodyl has announced plans to give the club the best chance to be a top 2 or 3 team every year for the next 5 years and expects the club to be debt free at the end of this year. I can’t provide a link it’s only available in the online print version or the paper.

Thanks DD might even buy a copy of the rag later and see what the "master plan" is. I suspect it may be fairly vague and unrealistic but I will suspend my judgement until I read what he has to say. He did send a letter to members a few weeks ago full of promises about not taking short cuts and "playing the long game" so it may be a rehash of that

Hodyl mentioned it in a radio interview as well yesterday DD.
There has been no doubt our main focus over the last handful of years has been to be debt free which is fair enough so hopefully now that house is in order we can have a far bigger focus on the football side of things which has been sadly lacking of late and some KPI's set to keep everyone honest.
As has been mentioned many times we have some good young talent coming through at the club but they need to be fully developed in every area (strength & conditioning, skills, running capacities, coaching etc) to reach their undoubted potential and these areas all need focus and should be at the forefront in this master plan and be sustainable not just in the short term.

A huge pat on the back to SD and those who run the club to take the hard road of working your way through debt unlike others in the league. Well done and now hopefully you can now focus on on-field success.

Here is something for your plan. Stop recruiting dud blokes

the EP bloke gives us lecture, cant wait for our Perth mate to come in with his 5 cents worth !

mikeh wrote: Thanks DD might even buy a copy of the rag later and see what the "master plan" is. I suspect it may be fairly vague and unrealistic but I will suspend my judgement until I read what he has to say. He did send a letter to members a few weeks ago full of promises about not taking short cuts and "playing the long game" so it may be a rehash of that

You would be better of listening to the interview on the 91.3fm podcast Mike!

I had a listen to the pod cast, a lot of big picture stuff and certainly Hodyl says all the right things. I want to see some detail though as to what the specific KPI's are for the footy department in this 5 year plan. Interesting that a few people on here have stated that Pickering has been given another contract but that is not the case according to Hodyl.

I believe from hearing Hodyl's interview Mike it is still to be finalised as yet.

BC the club could have taken the easy way out like you said certain other clubs did either by alignment or going into administration but staggeringly SD have been disadvantaged by doing such especially on the field as the WAFC has bent over backwards for those who took the easy option (be it paying their whole players, coaches, admin staff wages for the year or offering extra player concessions to those aligned) and have offered no help whatsoever to the club who rolled the sleeves up and got themselves out of the mire.
Hard to believe but thats the WAFC in a nutshell for you only looking after their mates with a large dose of nepotism involved......and that Western Suburb dwelling mob cannot see any benefit for themselves in helping a club based in the lowest socio economic area of all the WAFL clubs!

Reading the story, while the finances on track is a positive, a major concern is the football plan being worked on by Smart and Pickering. Swans need a new brains trust at the head of football down