DAMIEN BRESIC

Referees

I don’t mean to be derogatory to the referees, I think it’s the education across the board. We have got a lack of referees on the Coast and the ones that we have got have come a long way the last couple of years. We seem to lose some really good quality for whatever reason. There’s a really good bunch coming through so there’s a good conveyor belt happening with young kids coming through … but we still need to show some respect to our referees. We need to build some education to the spectators, coaches, the players and how they should treat our referees to keep them in the game a little bit longer.

Retention and recruitment

The argument over retention and recruitment is a fine line. I like to think we should focus more on the retention of our players. We had 8700 or so players registered this year and our churn rate from 2017 to 2018 was about 3000. They’re either players that have not come back or gone somewhere else for whatever reason. If we were able to replace those 3000 and our numbers only went down 200 or 300 this year, that means we picked up 2700 players this year. If we can learn how to give our players a better experience in club land, and that starts with Football Gold Coast but inevitably falls on the clubs, they won’t leave our game.

Coaching

We want our kids to play better but the only way they can play better is if we have better coaches so we try and bring out a better environment and education for our coaches. (Football Gold Coast regional development officer) Jason (Maguire) is new on board and he’s done a wonderful job while he’s been here. He’s put 500 or 600 coaches through courses from grassroots to a C Licence.