Fleet Frustrated by the crowd numbers!

[eufckev]

Quote:

Defender Sasha Opinel says Gravesend & Northfleet's players are getting fed up with their attendance figures.

The Fleet are enjoying their best ever season - but on average, have only been attracting crowds of just over 1,000.

 

"We're fourth in the table, so if the fans don't come this year they will never come," he told BBC Radio Kent.

 

"We have the chance to have League football next season, which would be great for the club, but we would like everyone to get involved."

 

 

I can understand their frustration, as I can understand the frustration of the fans who turn up for most of the home games. It is understandable if people cannot make the matches due to work commitments, I'm sure the players, management and the fans can understand that.

 

But I cannot stand people who sit down on their ars*s on a Saturday afternoon doing nothing, and I do know a few who are like that. This is partly the problem - we have too many "armchair fans". I wasa in a pub once, told someone I was going to watch the Fleet, the first thing he said was "you do not want to waste your money watching that sh*t", and he had not even been to a match before! This are the type of people I hate, especially those who critise the team when they have hardly seen them play. If there are any fans doing nothing on a Saturday afternoon, do your local club a favour and go and support them. It is worth the £6 / £12 entry fee - the football is better than ever!

 

I'm sure the fans who go to most of the games do this, but ask - no, TELL - all your friends and family to come down to Stonebridge Road for a game, and then maybe they would come along more often.

 

BELIEVE! Up the Fleet!

 

 

[chilled out entertainer]

Originally Posted By: kevthegnfcfan

Quote:

Defender Sasha Opinel says

"We're fourth in the table, so if the fans don't come this year they will never come,We have the chance to have League football next season, which would be great for the club, but we would like everyone to get involved."

I'm sure the fans who go to most of the games do this, but ask - no, TELL - all your friends and family to come down to Stonebridge Road for a game, and then maybe they would come along more often.

i dont agree with sacha, the chance of league football means nothing if we dont take that chance. i really believe that league football will raise the attendance to 1500 on average, 2k+ for big teams.especially with charlton and gills doing so poorly. we could be the next interest for floating fans who want to see a winning team.

as for getting friends and family to come, if everyone of the thousand told someone about the fleet and 1 % came along. ten new people. we need to hit the advertising hard should we go up.

[KShep]

As mentioned by CG in a very insightful post on another thread, we need to capitalise on the team's success at the moment. A few roadsigns asides, there is no indication of a professional football team in Gravesham as you go through it. We've had little surges of ideas ending in things like posters in pubs (fair play, that was a good suggestion that did come through and may have brought in more fans) but we've never had any striking publicity.

 

The broken record is blaring out when I say we need something in the town centre. This is the place where we will attract the most fans if we advertise, except if we rent a stand at Bluewater. We need something to shake Gravesham by the shoulders and says to them 'there is a football team in this town, go and watch them!'

 

And Kev, as for armchair fans, when I was working on Saturday, during a conversation about Man Utd vs Liverpool and the result, a woman heard the word 'ManYoo', at which she said 'Yay, I'm a Manyoo fan! Who did we play today?'. Sums those people up.

[1 F in Fleet]

If we don't have a game on the 10th , why don't the whole squad go to Bluewater and the town centre for a bit of self promotion , selling gear , charging for autographs and photos , etc . Been done before , but never by the Fleet . And when all the young totty see our lads , and hopefully turn up to see them play , surely young lads and dads will follow ? ( The totty's dads , you pervs ! ) Also a chance for some useful team bonding ( again , nothing to do with totty ! )

[Slartibartfast]

Originally Posted By: KShep

The broken record is blaring out when I say we need something in the town centre. This is the place where we will attract the most fans if we advertise, except if we rent a stand at Bluewater. We need something to shake Gravesham by the shoulders and says to them 'there is a football team in this town, go and watch them!'

A couple of slight problems though....
1) Bluewater is in Dartford not Gravesham
2) Bluewater attracts visitors from far and wide, only a small proportion of them are from Gravesham and I would suspect that only a tiny proportion of those are interested in football.
3) A stand at Bluewater would not be cheap exactly how much merchandise do you think we would need to sell to cover the cost and how many shoppers from Essex are going to become instant Fleet fans.
4) A stall in Gravesend obviously would stand more chance of finding people with a potential interest in their local club but again would struggle to sell much merchandise. It would need to be manned by volunteers, it would only have any chance of being effective on a Saturday morning when the Fleet are playing at home and even then would probably need to give away free tickets in order to attract any new fans (and we all know how upset some of our current fans get at that prospect).

Personally I would favour handing out free tickets to every home game at all of the primary schools in the area, together with visits from the players to get the little buggers interested and then hoping that they go home and pester Mum or Dad into taking them. That way we get the full admission of the parents and if the kids go to a few games they might actually get hooked, as might mum or Dad.

The only one of the many schemes tried by the club over the past few years to prove succesful as far as I am concerned was Friday night football. Not only did it increase the gate but it seemed that the increase was pretty well exclusively made up of lads in their late teens early twenties, this is the age group that is most likely to come back regularly and most likely to spend money while they are inside the ground (behind the bar but it all counts). Lets see some more Friday night football.

[Bill Kent]

No good preaching on here, we are all addicted to the Fleet. Couch potatoes are probably not even aware of this site. As I have said a few times, grab a pal and bring him/her to the next home match. I think I might have shamed someone else into attending the next home match.

 

I have to go along with the view that league football will increase support, possibly drawing in Darts fans and others when not at home.

 

By the way CG that was me you met and chatted to after parking your car behind mine a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Hempstead Gaz]

Nice to meet you at last Bill.

We have a lot in common!!

[Hempstead Gaz]

Here is most posting again, for what it is worth.

 

Whilst we are punching above our weight on the pitch, I do wonder whether we need to promote the club 1000% more from the boardroom.

We have a commercial/marketing manager. How many know his name, have heard him on the radio, seen adverts in newspapers, flysheets?

How many of the dozens of promotional ideas promulgated on here have been taken up? A couple.

I sometimes feel the team are leaving the board behind. We are now a top conference side (this year at least) pressing hard for a playoff spot to the Football league, whilst the "impression" one gets, (and this has been agreed by a least one person high up in the Trust) is that the board are in the comfort zone, and are living and running the club as in a bygone era.

I'm not for one moment advocating spending money we haven't got, but since the profligate days of Roger Easterby we have been a "cautious and prudent" club.

Nothing wrong with that, except things always happen too slowly, taking decades to get places the more adventurous clubs get to in a few years.

This is our best chance EVER to get into the football league, maybe our only chance for the next 5 years, yet we have little or no publicity outside of the Distorter, a paper with such limited circulation it is virtually impossible to obtain only 6 miles away here in Medway.

One wonders whether we will get the new ground before or after the 20,000 new houses on our doorstep are built.

If the new ground is in place and in use, residents will come.

If we are still at an undeveloped Stonebridge Road, people will simply not come to stand in the rain, get rust showers when the ball lands on stand roofs, and urinate in cess pits.

Rent a stall for the remainder of the season at Bluewater, employ some unemployed Fleet fans to operate it, selling shirts, pens gifts, whatever, but more importantly selling the Club!!!

[Harry J Allstars]

Originally Posted By: Slartibartfast

1) Bluewater is in Dartford not Gravesham.

Exactly. If we do that how does this make us any better then Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Charlton. We're going out of our catchment area if we try the Bluewater route.

All above ideas are good but they don't actually go the whole way and get people to come through the gates, if someone can come up with that idea then they should be Knighted, or the female equivalent.

What we have to stop moaning and get on with it. The reason why people are not coming through the gates is because of our current standing in the football table. No I don't mean the Conference or that we are 96 best team in the country but the standing in the general history of football. For example the higher the League you've been in at your highest point the higher your standing. As has been mentioned the highest attendances have been all against former League clubs which further backs up my theory. Look at clubs like Charlton, Wigan and Reading. All in the past five years have enjoyed a lot of success, by their own standards, and played at the highest level but still can't get gates over 30,000. Wigan have the lowest gates in the Premiership with an average of only 17,000, Reading 23,000 and Charlton 26,000. Meanwhile Sunderland have an average of 29,000 and they play in the Championship but have played consistently at a higher level.

Don't get me wrong they're things that we can do but on limited resources posters and free tickets are all we can manage. There are obviously objections to this but we have to work hard at it. Ideas are great but we need to work on getting people through the gate. For example what about giving people the chance to win something really big, and no I don't just mean a football signed by the team, I'm talking about a holiday or something, something someone might actually want.

A new stadium is also important but that won't be here for at least three years.

So we need to stop moaning when nobody turns up after putting up a few posters and handing out some free tickets, it takes a whole lot more than that.

[Riverview Supporter]

Harry has hit the nail on the head with his analysis.

 

Maybe we need to think more with our promotions. Image in any business is important. Although I appreciate we need to spend money on the team , a few quick wins can be made.

 

1) Think before offering free tickets. The club will have no idea who uses the freebies this week.

 

2) Signage inside the ground directing people to the shop , bar , toilets etc......

 

3) Advertise more in local press. Dartford do it , but I cant recall seeing a fleet one recently.

 

4) Free tickets to kids with a paying parent £12 for adult and two kids.

 

But as harry says , you cant but history.

[Riverview Supporter]

Originally Posted By: Harry J Allstars

For example what about giving people the chance to win something really big, and no I don't just mean a football signed by the team, I'm talking about a holiday or something, something someone might actually want.

Volunteering your PS3

[Fleet boys]

my mate said he wouldnt go because he dosent want to waste his money

[Harry J Allstars]

Originally Posted By: Riverview Supporter

Volunteering your PS3

Don't be silly, that would mean a waste of months of working on how to get my average hours of sleep a week to 35.

[Stu M]

Originally Posted By: Fleet boys

my mate said he wouldnt go because he dosent want to waste his money

And that in a nutshell is the problem. Every club has a natural fan base of x thousand or whatever. To get over and above that amount, you can tempt former fans back, you can improve facilities, you can lower prices, you can market yourself better... all of this will bring in a few extra bodies. But I'm not sure all of these schemes being successful will bring in more than a few hundred at their most effective (which would be welcome but not increase our average by any significant amount).

As Fleet boys and many others have alluded to... the mindset of the average football 'fan' in the town is that the Fleet aren't in the top two divisions, are 'non league' and surely aren't worth turning up to watch unless they're playing a Premiership club. How do you change that? I don't think you do. You convert the odd one along the way, but by and large the common perception of football at League One and lower is not enough to make a large amount of people excited by the thought of attending.

[EUFC superb]

If Money is the problem then why not this idea: Half price if you bring a friend, who will also get in half price. This will keep the clubs profits the same/increase them for ther refreshments etc. Also, go to three games get 10% off or something.

[Euston100]

Although it is a fact that Bluewater is in Dartford (borough),

GNFC's natural catchment area does include Swanscombe, Greenhithe

and Bluewater to the west, Longfield and New Ash Green to the south and the former Strood rural district to the east.

The huge eastern quarry regeneration project, now to be known (cynically) as 'Ebbsfleet Valley' (which it is not) - that will see up to 7000 new homes built over twenty years - will also be inside the Gravesend urban envelope, regardless of which local authority it actually comes under.

Phoenix Parc housing development (behind Swale Motors) is (well most of it) in Dartford borough. Should the Fleet not 'market' there either, due to a local authority boundary?

 

Bluewater almost decimated Gravesend in it's first year of opening. I believe that it owes Gravesham a huge drink at the very least! However, a partnership with the club would suffice.

Equally, a "support" deal with the Thamesgate or St George's centres by way of a substantially discounted retail unit lease, could be very possible.

Should the Fleet reach the heights of the Football League this year, without a doubt, they will attain a very creditable increase in support turnover. However, the new stadium is a must.

Finally, the superb Austrian Airlines ad outside the ground, would also sit well opposite Garrick Street Interchange.

 

 

[Hempstead Gaz]

Don't forget that the Medway towns also provide substantial numbers, albeit expatriate Gravesendians like myself.

We could include the busy Hempstead Valley shopping centre as a potential site for a stand - probably a tenth the price of Bluewater

[Slartibartfast]

The point about Bluewater was more about where the people who shop there live.

Of course we have a number of supporters from Swanscombe and Greenhithe and I can tell you that Meopham comes to a standstill when the Fleet are at home (tee hee) but the people who shop at Bluewater don't all live in Greenhithe and are not going to suddenly start supporting the Fleet.

Of course Phoenix Parc (do they really think that a spelling mistake can put £20,000 on the price of an appartment) and Ebbsfleet Valley should be targeted but a mail shot will reach the people who live in the right area rather than someone from Milton Keynes who is spending a day shopping.

[Hempstead Gaz]

But what better way to spend a family afternoon - expecially if wife/girlfriend/boyfriend doesn't like football. Dump 'em at Bluewater then it's only 5 minutes to Fleet from there.

[DA11]

Try and think back to what first attracted us to this great club. You can't just support a club because they need support. My dad has been coming to Stonebridge Road since he was sixteen (He's nearly 70 now. When I was 5 he took me to my first match 1973. He then took me every week. Home and away. Saturdays and midweek. I fed from his passion. His passion then turned into my passion. I myself, am now a father. I have already taken my 4 yr old daughter, who by the way, is deaparate to go again. It's the kids who, if we educate properly will be our fan base of the future. I know it's not immediate but I feel a responsibility to make sure my kids support the Fleet. I still get goose bumps when I hear " Here Come The Fleet" why we still dont play it god only knows....They sing along to it on CD every day. I love this club with a passion but understand why locals don't. Rather than moaning about it we need to do something. Team up with the KM trailor in town on a Saturday perhaps...they are our official media partner. What we need is a proper marketing manager..