By Michael Esposito
WESTERN Bulldogs president David Smorgon announced the club’s major objectives at the season launch last week, and not surprisingly tapping into the West’s rapid growth was a crucial component of the strategic plan.
Speaking in front of more than 900 guests at the Crown Palladium, Smorgon, who earlier expressed his delight at how big an event the season launch had become, said the club had “an audience waiting to become Bulldogs in our backyard”.
Bulldogs CEO Simon Garlick spoke to Star about the club’s commitment to building its fan base by encouraging the West’s new residents to be involved in grassroots footy.
“Realistically we need to grow a fan base that currently sits at just under 150,000 and we want to move that to 250,000 within three years and then push it to 500,000 before 2020,” Garlick said.
“We’ve always had a really strong conversion from fans to members, and its about us now growing our pool so we can have a fan base to drive a really strong membership base.”
The Bulldogs last year commissioned a KPMG study into the population boom to confirm with hard data what the club already new – that Melbourne’s West was the fastest growing region in the country.
“Unfortunately we can’t put a barbed wire fence around it and own it just by natural right, we need to put in a lot of strategies,” Garlick said.
“We’ve already got early years programs that move up through our Bulldogs Friendly schools programs. We’ll be looking to build on those and improve on those and increase those to ensure that, as we all know, if you can get a child barracking for your team there usually going to stick with you more often than not.”
Garlick said the Bulldogs had begun to work more closely with the Western Region Football League to ensure local footy clubs created the right environment to attract players.
“I think we probably haven’t worked as closely as we would have liked in previous years but now I think there’s real opportunity and we’ve got a good dialogue going with (WRFL CEO) Bob Tregear and I think we haven’t scratched the surface yet, I think there’s a real opportunity to work closer with them and we’ll be looking to do that as much as we can.
“What you want is a strong local league to build an aspirational competition if you like, so people who are not traditionally football people can look at it and say ‘I want to be involved in that’.
“So a strong well-run league which I know Bob and (WRFL president) Bill (Baarini) are working hard towards to really create is critical not only to their immediate goals but also the greater good for the WRFL, AFL, AFL Victoria and the Western Bulldogs.”
