The future looks bleak for struggling Mariners

After the global attention on their Usain Bolt experiment, the Central Coast Mariners’ season ended with all too familiar whimper last weekend. Can anything be done to save this once champion club, writes TOM SMITHIES.

It just gets worse for Central Coast Mariners. Image: Tony Feder/Getty Images.

• Mariners legend in line to replace Mulvey
• Unlucky 13 sealed Mulvey’s fate

The one consolation for the Mariners in the 8-2 humiliation on Saturday night that precipitated the end for Mike Mulvey is the fact that only 26,000 people tuned in to watch it on Fox Sports.

A season that began amid an unprecedented level of global attention thanks to Usain Bolt will slowly crawl to a close with a whimper, another coach gone and the club hierarchy once again trying to work out had things have gone so badly wrong.

By Tuesday an interim coach should be in place to oversee the last six games of the season. It won’t be Jose Mourinho, it’s safe to assume, but it’s doubtful even Mourinho could make a great deal of difference at a club and with a squad that appear so lost.

It just gets worse for Central Coast Mariners. Image: Tony Feder/Getty Images.

If it feels like a familiar routine — the Mariners losing their head coach in March and promising a full review of a woeful campaign before selecting the next figure tasked with yet another rebuild — then it is indeed horribly familiar. This is the third time in four years such process has happened.

Of course there are promises that things will be different, but each time fewer and fewer supporters are listening. If it’s true that new directors Kamran Kahn and Anton Tagliaferro have made clear to the owner, Mike Charlesworth, that more investment is needed, then that is a welcome development; but is it too little too late?

The Mariners’ grand finals seem like a dream now. Image: Troy Snook

For years there have been legendary stories of how the Mariners scrimped and saved, from Graham Arnold buying pots of pasta for his players to eat under the Gosford flyover, to Paul Okon’s squad being forced to walk to restaurants at away games to save money on eating in the team hotel.

The brutal fact is that they operate with the lowest budget in the A-League and it shows. In days of lore, when the Mariners were actually good, coaches like Lawrie McKinna and Arnold were able to paper over those cracks, but not anymore.

The achievements of Graham Arnold look even greater now. Image: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images.

It doesn’t help that recruitment has been so average, especially in terms of visa players. Far too many overseas signings have been players so far past their best-before dates that their bodies have begun to breakdown.

The environment has hardly helped. When the club’s fitness coach fell out with Mulvey last October on the verge of the new season, it was almost nine weeks before his replacement started. It is hardly the hallmark of an elite sporting club.

The A-League club owners tend to close ranks when anyone discusses the validity of certain clubs, but the average attendance for the A-League as a whole would be five per cent higher this season without the Mariners’ dwindling attendances.

What now for Mariners CEO Shaun Mielekamp and owner Mike Charlesworth? Image: Mark Scott

The question now is what future Charlesworth sees for the club. It’s a sobering exercise to measure the games the club has won since he took majority control almost six years ago.

To that point the club had played 182 games and won 80, a rate of 44 per cent. Since then, in 158 more games, the win ratio has halved. Five coaches have come and gone. But the deckchairs on this particular Titanic are sliding close to the edge.