another Forum debate

[Mark44]

Saw the below on the another forum and thought it was a good argument of what is going on across non league football, it is something I kind of mentioned before but in a not so tactful way and resulting in the "We'll all be dead in a minute song", thanks Kirby . It does seem a constant battle to get young blood in. What do you guys think?

 

What is the demographic of the support that your club has?

I'd bet that a great deal of answers will agree with: >90% male, over-50s>under-50s, <20% under-30s.

In fact, every sign of a male-centric, rapidly senescing society... one that's well on the way to extinction!

Of course, because it's so widespread, it's simply seen as 'sign o' the times' and little attention has seemingly been paid to the diminution & erosion to fan-base that has been happening since the mid-1950s.

First there was new-fangled tv being beamed to every household, soon becoming coloured and showing a few big games. The maximum-wage regulation was dropped. Then there were the crepitating stadia and the threat of the football-yobs. More channels appeared on tv and then there were the Heysel & Valley Parade disasters to boot. Hand-held games appeared, as did SKY, suddenly offering a plethora of other things to do, the latter soon providing near-'saturation' coverage of football matches on-air. And then lately there's been the rise of the internet itself, the Facebook revolution and all.

All of these things have steadily chipped away at the game's appeal at 'our' levels, for sixty years continuously, and pretty much nothing has been done to fight against it ~ that I can see, anyway.

It used to be a 'father & son' tradition to traipse along once a fortnight to see your local lads play, passing down the generations since the 1890s really. But then, suddenly techo-progress arrived, carried on the back of WWII.
As the 1950s turned into the 1960s and beyond, the world began shrinking as every individual's personal reach expanded from the purely parochial, until everyone became as today, 'a citizen of the world'.
Your sons (and daughters, now!) no longer wanted to follow dad & grandad to Localtown United games in rain, shine or blizzard ~ not when they could watch Arsenal, Man. United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich et al in ever increasing numbers of matches, from their own front room sofa.
And then their own sons and daughters now have so very many other opportunities to absorb their spare time, within their own home, that the humble non-league (and even FL) team struggles to attract, especially now that tradition of passing of the flame from father to son has died.

It's not suddenly going to 'get better' on its own. If anything, this trend will continue... and we are already just about at the end of the final generation of club owners and administrators who recall clearly the old father-son times as being 'the norm'. When they've gone, what then?

We already see 'crowds' consisting only of 'team functionaries' at many matches ~ where few, if any are pay-at-the-door customers. That's been touched upon in other posts here. For how long will the next generation(s) of owners/administrators keep clubs going like this? The clubs cannot be meeting their overheads like this.

What will the future scenario be for footie in twenty, fifty, a hundred years time?

Can anything serious be done to turn things around? Should it be done? Does it matter in the end?

 

[brighton_rebel]

Yes it does matter and I've touched on some examples in the Daventry programme. If you get it right - St Ives, Dulwich and Clapton, demographics change, crowds go up and clubs can challenge the decline. But you gotta be smart and open to new ideas

[Don Juan DeMarcus]

Ok I'd like to add to that statistic. I would expect 90%+ of our support to be white British despite slough being one of the most multi-cultural towns in the country...

[Craig Minter]

I think with the new management and the young decent team that we've got added alongside the myfootballclub sponsorship (although i'm not sure exactly what they do to sponsor us) gives us a good chance to get the club on the move.

 

I worry about the council and the new ground though because they've just pledged £16million towards the building of that 'curve' thing (http://www.sloughexpress.co.uk/News/All-Areas/Slough/Slough-to-be-transformed-through-1-billion-investment-21092012.htm)

 

Personally I believe (again, personally) that the council should be doing a lot more to help the club, its hard for the club to really integrate with the society if it's base is so hard to get to.

[brighton_rebel]

But this could change with some work. Go to a Dulwich game and feel the multi-cultural ism