Our next meeting with Club is on Thursday. Anybody got any questions for club, non team related. Sensible one's. Finally it's not funny setting off flares/ smoke canisters. There must be at least one decent fan who knows the culprits. Loyalty to a mate won't look good when somebody get a serious injury.
Don't football stadiums have CCTV? About time the football clubs and Police got off their arses and did their own work instead of asking fans to do it for them.
On the flares thing, the culprit on Saturday was stood proud at the back of the stand. It was clear that it was somebody in a group of roughly 10 people. After the first incident surely at the very least a police officer or CCTV should have been trained on this small group in order to clearly identify the ****** when they did it again. Although in reality as it was a clear danger the entire group should have been kicked out immediately. If a small group of teenagers went to the cinema and one or two in that group acted like dicks they'd all be told to leave. After the home game incident one of the fans identify pied HIMSELF on Facebook. Surely this is enough for a banning order?
The new scoreboard, is it modular? Ie can it be made bigger in time or is that the size of it with no option to extend? Turnstiles. In your last update you said that the club say fans should go to other turnstiles, why do they not relay this information via stewards? What are the stewards on the exterior of the stands for if not to assist with fans entering the stadium? Also can any clarification be given as to which CASH turnstiles were open for the cup match? Everyone I speak to says 2 upper and 2 lower the club says 10. Also what reasoning is thee behind refusing to allow cash through the ticket turnstiles when queues show that the ratio at a given time is wrong? Programmes. For the cup game the programme was just 15 pages long (including full page add) but the price was £1.50. Why was such a poor effort put in and how do the club justify charging so much for so little? Shirts. The club yet again ran out of shirts this season and the argument for that appears to be that they ordered the same amount as last season. Didn't they run out then too? And the year before? What calculations do the club do to predict sales? And is that calculation limited by using data from the previous years failings? TVs. Is there any chance of a consistent (and publicised) strategy for the TV's at oakwell? One week they display the 'early' game on sky, the next week they display sky sports news and the week after it is a live stream of the oakwell pitch. What is the reasoning behind the inconsistency? Ball boys: Rocket up the arse please?
Online Store: can a preorder option be added so that the club have an idea of how many people want to order shirts. Also, could people preorder the next season's shirt in advance, again to give a rough idea of numbers? (I know they have to put the first order in much sooner than most fans would want to preorder but if they had one towards the close of the season they could then put another order in immediately rather than waiting until sometime between Sept and Christmas as per usual. They could even offer an incentive to get people to preorder.) Ball boys: can they please receive some sort of training so they can be more effective? You can almost see them rolling their eyes when they have to stand up. I'd hazard a guess that the number of times they actually retrieve the ball when it goes off the pitch must be less than 5% of the time. I know it sometimes goes into the crowd in which case you would expect a fan to throw it back but you get fans, stewards and even players scrabbling around trying to get the ball whilst the ball boys are sat on their backside watching them. If it needs to be in the form of a question then something asking if the ball boys actually have regular training and reviews and are the club happy with the standard they are currently at and if not what are they doing to rectify it.
Flexiticket. Two home games gone and still not a peep from the club on this complete no-brainer of an idea. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Admission prices: The price gap between season ticket prices and pay on the day prices is too large, which means that people like me have almost stopped going. What are the club going to do about it, and why has there been no news on this since the club's message that some sort of scheme will be put in place?
Any chance of the Club making the ESL concourse a bit more welcoming, spent 30 minutes down there last Saturday having got in early due to taking 5 year old, it is a bleak place on a nice summers day, I see the exec areas are sporting nice new graphics from our Wembley trips, the football is a joy to behold but I'm afraid the whole match day experience needs looking at.
Regarding the ball boys, I'd always prefer us using some school kids selected at the start of the season, say a dozen of them around the perimeter. Not sure how accurate my memory is but I think Leicester did this many years ago, and even introduced them to the crowd about 10 mins prior to kick off - had them run to the centre circle, wave to the crowd, and then run to wherever their position was. Bet any kid would love that. Sent from my SM-T710 using Tapatalk
Stock in the shop. I'd have bought something last weekend (first weekend of season). Absolutely nothing available. Poor variety, and not enough of anything.
... and knowing that the cost of this may be difficult, couldn't the club invite local tradespeople to deliver this, "in kind" in return for discounted tickets etc?
Car Park: We pay to park at £4 or £70 is season ticket. I have given my ST up for the car park because its a joke trying to get out after a game:- - Some club staff park at the bottom row obviously because they arrive early but because they leave late they are blocking exits - The parking in rows is poor planning and organisation and makes it difficult for orderly exit - Two gates open with zero traffic control makes departure both slow, frustrating and importantly unsafe I look forward to hearing what they plan to do to improve this function
Kits are ordered a year in advance with the position we were in last September - falling crowds etc and team not performing maybe that's why they ordered so little stock. Who would have predicted where we are now 12 months ago?
I'd accept that excuse if we hadn't sold out last season, and the season before and the season before etc. ... To add to icer's car park comment... it really is incredibly unsafe. I don't know how many times the lack of lights need to be brought up before something changes. Unfortunately, I think it's a case that nothing will change until someone gets seriously hurt. Also about lighting, I always have a moment of panic when leaving the match in the dark when rounding the corner of the East Stand as the crowd I am walking in are then joined by people leaving through the exit at the South Stand side. This creates a bottleneck exactly where there are some bollards which people are constantly walking into and/or tripping over as it is impossible to see them in the dark. I have good eyesight and am quite agile but I can imagine how bad it must be for people who struggle to see and are less mobile.
Thanks for queries to date. Some old chestnuts but views welcomed. Still got until wed night for further queries /comments.
I'd like the club to speak to Huddersfield Town about their control of their own supporters. Whilst I'm sure the Barnsley fans ejected on Saturday were done so for a reason, how do HTFC explain that for ten minutes in the first half their own supporters threw around 150-200 'missiles' at cameramen behind the goal, of which 30/40 landed on the pitch. They even threw them at stewards and the police, yet nothing was done. I'm not saying this is a fair comparison with letting off a flare, but it hardly sets a precedent when you can see something so blatantly wrong being allowed to continue for such a substantial amount of time - well, until they ran out of whatever it was they were throwing. Grown men encouraging their kids to 'have another go' at hitting the bearded cameraman on the head. If our fans had done that it'd be all over Radio Leeds and Sheffield.
i'd like to ask about the clubs relationship with Zebra Finance. A few lads who had lapsed were convinced to buy season tickets did so by using zebra finance option. Had a few initial issues (not on their side) then received an email apologising for problems but confirming that issues were now resolved and tickets validated. turned up first game of season tickets didn't work. Went to box office received a pretty poor service (but that's a separate matter) and told to come back after the match and then after the match told to come back on Tuesday. Tuesday comes around and were told season tickets were not validated because of problems with initial set up with Zebra. My mate said but i got an email stating that these are now sorted (was pretty much called a liar until he produced said email again a separate matter). Ended up paying for tickets on his credit card. Is this an isolated incident? Why are people not offered any form of compensation when mess ups happen through sub contractors Are sub contractors the right thing in this area or community based club particulary if they can't get it right
The reason there are old chestnuts Bondy is that the fans have legitimate concerns which the club repeatedly fails to address.