Thanks to everyone at the club

Both my lads were mascot yesterday and they had the time of their lives

Everyone at the club from start to finish was brilliant with them. The players were great, very friendly, especially Adam Hammill, Davo and Hecky. It is an experience they will treasure forever.

In terms of the match I think you have to give Leeds a lot of credit. They pressed us from the first minute and prevented the full backs from overlapping. They forced us into errors and we just couldn’t get into the game.

They then had that bit of class in Saiz to punish us. He’s one of the better players I have seen play at this level. Outstanding.

We are still ahead of where I expected us to be this season and I still firmly believe that Hecky and the lads are doing a great job on comparative limited resources.

 

Glad your lads enjoyed it .

Pity the club couldn’t acknowledge what the Pompey fan did by cycling up all the way from Portsmouth for yesterday’s game . No welcome when he arrived, no free ticket , refusing to answer requests for a signed shirt to help boost his donations for the local hospice or help publicise his just giving page . He was spurred into doing this after reading Patrick Crynes program notes.

• Very poor

 

Of all the disappointment surrounding the game yesterday, it doesn’t come anywhere near the disappointment of reading this. It’s terrible if the club have deliberately chose to not acknowledge this. Hope it’s nothing more than an oversight, and even that’s not an excuse

 

Glad your lads had fun and agree with your match comments

 

Not surprised one bit

 

I can see a flounce on/flounce off scenario with a club employee on here today.

 

There are many, many people we've helped who've done similar things, one or two actually post on this forum so can testify to that.

We first became aware of this cycle thing, weeks and weeks ago and were in dialogue with the chap.

We were in contact with him Thursday night asking him to come to reception upon arrival (Friday at 1pm he told us) and we'd take photos etc. We were going to interview him, publicise it etc. We were then to hand him a signed shirt, have him in a future programme and offer him hospitality.

He never came to meet us. Nor emailed or messaged us. Next we knew he was in town getting drunk.

Shortly after, the club was getting tagged on twitter by folk hammering the club.

The club were happy to help the chap out, as the club do in hundreds of instances, 99% of which you probably never hear about.

 

When you say in dialogue do you mean when he asked for a shirt and he was told not my department ? The email sent very very late at night after riding 200 plus miles was too little too late and was probably just a reaction to the stick the media team were getting .

 

Are you joking? That's terrible.

**just seen Whitey's post, fair enough, ah well.

 

You're right about the shirt thing, in so much as it isn't my department to locate and then get shirts signed. There's protocol behind all that. It was never said that he couldn't have one, merely that I couldn't fix that for him myself personally. When I get requests for this and that, it's only natural that I liaise with other departments/colleagues. I can't just say "yeah, no worries" to everything.

Too little too late is unfair. We have a mail chain going back weeks. We have the shirt signed (this was sorted by hospitality) and is still sat on the desk in the office. We had the camera and everything set up to interview him that afternoon. We cannot force someone to come to reception and ask for us. He clearly came to Oakwell as I've seen the photo on twitter. So why didn't he come to reception?

When Francis Benali, the ex-footballer did his charity stuff last year, he came to reception upon arriving at Oakwell. When Jeff Stelling did his charity stuff this season, he came to reception upon arrival at the stadium. I don't understand why that wasn't possible for this chap?

There's a fella on here who cycled for charity this summer just gone. We plugged his fundraising. He was in the programme. We then had him as a guest at the Birmingham City match. He posted about it recently. A great bloke and we were proud to have helped, however small.

I have lost count of the folk we've helped. It's one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

And so it is a massive shame that this cyclist chap and the club never got together to further publicise what he was doing and help further the raising of funds for his two chosen charities. Barnsley Hospice are one of our associated charities who we deal with on a regular basis. Today, many BFC employees ran the Barnsley 10k in aid of the hospice. So yeah, a massive shame.

 

I can only speak from my own experience, but the involvement from the club with regard to supporting my fundraising endeavours for the Royal British Legion was first class. I think this also needs to be seen in the context of the club approaching me, rather than me approaching them, about contributing to the matchday programme and providing sponsorship links etc. I can only think it was from Whitey or colleagues seeing info about what I was doing on here.

Communication was continual over 3 or 4 weeks, mainly by email (ideal really, given I was in Cyprus for 2 weeks so could keep in touch) and also included agreement from them to delay the publication of the article until I'd returned from holiday.

In mid October, I was openly offered, and accepted, an invite to go behind the scenes on a matchday, take up hospitality, culminating in laying the wreath v Birmingham on behalf of BFC supporters. Again, the club (Whitey and his colleague Andy Clarke) made the first move, arrangements were made to meet at the club reception on arrival, and so on. A couple of queries were answered in the days leading up to the Birmingham game.

If I'd not responded to the communications, or not followed agreed arrangements, I'm not sure what the club could have done. What I saw behind the scenes was an eye-opener, I can honestly say that I had no idea of the scope of work that goes on in the club on a matchday, be that in our media team, CEO, box office staff, catering, ground staff etc. Reception staff needed thick skins, getting a mouthful of abuse from two Birmingham supporters about their tickets being given to someone else. As it turned out, BFC managed to identify that the said tickets, as requested by the purchaser, had been sent to Birmingham City's ticket office for collection. Matchday schedules are tight, and I know the window of time allocated to me wasn't easy to fit in.

Like I say, I can't offer a view on what happened, or not, with communication between Carl and BFC about what was mutually agreed/ignored or whatever, but from experience I can only speak positively of them. But I'd like to think that if Carl has a genuine personal grievance then he'd take it up with the club in private and not through social media.

 

Fair do’s Whitey, I just remain disappointed at yesterday’s result and performance.

 

The sad thing is pal, this has overlapped into my private life. Getting tagged on social media for 24 hours, with one delightful bloke suggesting I needed a “brick around the head”. There’s a reason I’ve locked my personal twitter account and barely use it anymore. But even on Facebook I’m getting referred to. It’s just not on.

Despite all that, I have once again emailed Carl asking what the club can do for him. Because no matter what nonsense has gone off, what he’s achieved is superb. But if he doesn’t respond, is that still reason for the club to get hammered or my personal accounts to get smashed by morons?

It’s Sunday and I’m tired of it.

I am thankful that you and others can offer a truer reflection of how the club handle these sorts of situations. And your kind words make the efforts worthwhile. It’s a massive shame we haven’t achieved that with Carl.

 

Me too.

 

Personalising issues and giving threats is the big issue with Social Media. It's mindless and where an individual is tagged in relation to their job it's even more difficult as responding crosses the boundary between our own views and that of the employer. We've seen players drop themselves in it throughout the league.

I think you've responded well on here, and on other media I've seen. Enjoy what's left of Sunday!

 

Be a big ******* brick size of thy heed.

 

Breeze block perhaps?

 

Be great for all other departments to have own twitter/ Facebook accounts to liaise with fans wouldn't it ? Oh we used to but the future was a rebrand on twitter that's the future

 

Not quite sure how that relates.

However, it was a terrific idea to change from bfc_official to BarnsleyFC. Every social account under one name. It’s about brand recognition.

People constantly call for the club to improve and strive for better, to move forward etc etc. But then react badly to change.

I appreciate it must be poorer for fans though who can’t now ask Beth how many we’ve sold for Reading away at 11:44pm on an evening.

 

No, surely not! Can't believe anyone would do that. On the other hand....