Went to get my 7 year old son a birthday card from oakwell today I asked for the card to be signed by the players That will be £25 sir !!! Don’t mind paying but £25 for the players to sign a card is beyond a joke
Average player salary at BFC £2k a week. Based on a 5 hour working day 7 days a week that’s £0.79 per minute of their time. Time taken to sign a card, 1 minute. Squad of 30 players including the manager etc, 30 x 0.79 = approximately £24. Seems almost fair.
A minute to sign their name? I know footballers are stereotypically a bit thick but I reckon a toddler could sign theirs quicker than that
To be honest, I don't think £25 is too unreasonable. It's essentially a unique, one off personalised piece of memorabilia that your young un will treasure forever no doubt. My birthdays 15th August if anyone's stuck for something to get me
Maybe you could get his favourite player to sign it after a game? Do people still go round the back of the North stand and get autographs? Or am i 15 years behind? I used to do it when i was a kid, or up at Ardsley House, end of season awards etc.
I think it's reasonable. It does take some admin and effort for them to take the card and your name and arrange it to go to the players to be signed, and then all the players have to do it and then store it for you to pick up/post it to you. I know it doesn't take long but it doesn't take long just for yours, if loads of people heard it was free and started to do it for everyone's birthday, every year, then they could spend ages signing cards rather than doing their job. It's meant to sort of put people off doing it but not to the extent where people who really want it are put off. There is still a way to potentially get it done for free (by going to each player individually and asking them) or you can pay for the convenience.
I’ll sort this for you, next year, mate. But with you, unfortunately, having a birthday during the transfer window, I Best Buy you a bottle of Tippex too. Likely to be half full of ex players’ signatures by the end of August.
Players won't see a penny of that £24. It's just to put people off asking otherwise they'd be inundated with requests and be spending all day signing cards. I once asked if I could have something for a charity raffle we were doing for Huntingdons. Don Rowing took the trouble to reply saying they were inundated with this type of request so unfortunately couldn't offer anything. We got match tickets from the two Sheffield teams and Rotherham but instead of sticking a couple of tickets in an envelope Don took the trouble to reply lol. I went through the back door and Ronnie Branson got me an autographed football. I wonder what he's doing these days.
During the mid to late 70's i used to write to clubs asking for autographs. Not one club declined my request; all replying with autographs on a club headed A4 sheet. Even Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal etc. Some of them even sent along free programmes by means of courtesy.