Tim Adams: Inaugral Auckland FC fans' representative group chair on the new gig and their role with the club

Auckland FC has just named their first fan representative group, a council of eight people, linking supporters directly to management.

It's an A-League-wide initiative with every club set to have one.

The group will meet at least four times a year, with the chair meeting with the A-League's fan representative group from the 12 other clubs.

Inaugural chairman Tim Adams joined Heather du Plessis-Allan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Houses for caring about your fans. A Auckland Football club
is setting up a group. It's a fan representative group
and basically the point of the thing is to get
feedback from fans and people who go along to the
matches on how to make the experience even better. They've
already got a chair for it. It's Tim Adams and
he's with us now.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey Tim, Hey, how's it going?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Very good? Thank you? So how does this work? If
you go along to a match can and you think, oh,
that would be better if the hot dogs came by
every five minutes or whatever, could we just drop you
a line and give you that feedback?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah. So each club has a fan feedback form which
asks for feedback for any anything about the about the game,
transport through hostility, entertainment, any of that stuff. So one
of those forms out and then it goes to the
club and the club give that to us as a
committee and we have looked at that and see what
areas you want to try and improve on.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
How much power have you got? Like if I wrote
to you and I said I don't like going to
Mount Smart and I'd much rather go to Eden Park,
could you pull that one off?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Probably not, but I mean put it in if you want.
I think those things are I mean we're starting out,
we're early, early, early doors, but I think those things
are good to know in the long term because you know,
the group will want to know what fans feel about
the stadium.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Have you got have you got anything coming in just yet?

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, we've We've had an artificial survey to members only
for the first two games while this was getting set up,
and we've seen a bit of stuff in there about
hostility and entertainment for those first two games. So it
was good to sit down at that and look at
those at the meeting and talk about, you know, where
we are in terms of those things versus other other

(01:34):
other places.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Anybody raised the Mount Smart versus Eden Park thing.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Ah, there was a bit of people saying mouths, mu's
hard to get to him. No, not just you, but
I think you know, at the moment, it's a good
size for what we're doing and you know, a great atmosphere.
So I think those those fears, maybe once you get
to a game, will be dispelled a bit by some
of those members.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Tim Listen, this is a fantastic idea, and especially at
the time where everybody's sort of fighting to get the
fans to, you know, to engage with various sports. Given
there so much that we can get engaged with at
the moment. Whose idea is this? Is this a you
guys thing or an A League thing?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
It's part of the participation criteria for the A League,
so every A League team has one and then there's
a group of all the chairs on a league wide
f I g to then talk to the A League
directly about things, which is exciting. But I think it's
from my experience so far, or can I see are

(02:34):
very genuine with their need and want to listen to
their fans. They've been very, very upfront and very receptive
to ideas, so I think whilst it's something they had
to do, certainly not of tech Blok gets size from
that point of.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
View, Tim, How stressful was that game last night?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Ah? Yes, sir, that was That was definitely what I
call a leagu classic, had about everything?

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Did it? What did you know that? Did you did
you feel had you given up? Like had you left
your seat kind of thing? And then in the last
five minutes realized actually you didn't need to give up. Hope.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, I mean as a football fan, you always know
this time and I think you have shown a bit
of character. It's scoring on a late goal, so I
was positive, but you know, a bit of nervous.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, a bit nervous. Tim, Thanks very much, good luck
with all the fan feedback. That's Tim Adams, chairman of
Auckland f c's fan representative group. If you didn't watch
the game last night, what happened was that Melbourne were
leading for the vast majority of it. In the last
five minutes of stoppage time, Auckland FC managed to equalize
and so it was two too, and so they still
haven't lost. They've had basically wins in one draw. But

(03:37):
there was also the own goal. Now the own goal,
I mean there are own goals and then there are
own goals, and that was one of those. Was one
where the guys were like, oh, hold on, they just
kick the ball backwards to the to the you know
how they do that. They turn around. It's a weird
thing they do in football, turn around, kick the ball
backwards to the goalie and the goalie picks it up
and sort of punts it down the park. Except the
goalie just let it keep going and it went straight

(03:59):
into the goal.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
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