I think the fact that The Chronicle has never been so disconnected from the club also demonstrates the insular mentality of Don and his buddies. The back of the Chronicle used to be an excellent advert for the club, now it is generally much more negative outside of the columns written by players. Matthew Murray seems to take pleasure from the team's defeats - possibly due to what he and some of his colleagues have seen as harsh/unfair treatment from the club in the past.
As you know Paul, I've written to the club a number of times as recently as Xmas to offer my contribution to the club. They never reply. Three years or so back, I had a plan to paint murals within the concourses to brighten them up - something everyone complains about, but again no reply. I'm not one to slag off the board, but they do have a very limited vision and imagination. Their community relations registers in the negative and their communication skills and customer courtesy is a flat line. The adage is, how do you help someone who doesn't want to help themselves?
We do have quite a few fans from the Wakefield and Pontefract areas although I wouldn't say there are many kids from these areas gaining an interest. Wakefield City Centre is visible from the top floor of Gateway Plaza and a train takes a little over ten minutes - some sustained exposure there, at the right time (ie when results are good), can only be beneficial.
Mr C is it that they dont want help or there that out of touch they darent ask for help. Or accept it the concourses around oakwell are terrible and as you say do need brightening up.
To add some positivity to this I emailed Don once, got a call within a couple of days and I was invited down to meet him. So it's not all bad.
Don has no doubt been busy the last few weeks due to the manager situation - but what does he actually do the rest of the time? By my reckoning in 2012 he set one ticket price, got a quote for a scoreboard, ordered scoreboard, cancelled the scoreboard, sacked the manager.
I emailed Don before and got invited down to meet him. Over to you I think Gally - you have the connections to make the first move. Maybe the next big BBS meeting could be arranged asap - I think a 6.30 start would be a decent time to give people a chance to make it and so it also doesn't end up finishing at 10pm...the Don does have a home to go to Wednesdays seem a good night for them???
i'm more than happy to help coordinate a 'think tank'. i don't mean trading blows on a BBS, ad-infinitum. i mean a structured co-operative gathering of like-minded people, which involves people physically getting together and coming up with some robust proposals. among the numpties, i'm sure there is actually a reasonable talent pool among us. i'm up for it. lead, follow, or get out of the way..
The club in so insular, that they assume that the fan base is a mob of redundant miners. With all respect to that profession, as a community we have had to move on and evolve. A lot of us had to leave Barnsley and South Yorkshire to do that as there was fck all for the generation of school leavers that followed the strike and closure of the pits and other industries. Nowadays, the fan base is composed of an able and diverse range of professions, representing a greater cross section of society. The pool of skills and experience is vast. One of the single greatest things about this board is discovering the wealth of talent and abilities of the fellow posters. Explain this to the club. Explain also that many of us work in industries and institutions far more established and complex than Barnsley Football Club and we can see right through how inadequate they are and how they try to soft soap the supporters. We can see how completely ineffective the marketing strategy is and how much money and resources are being wasted because of it. I think this is why the club resists help or involvement - no-one likes to have their own shortcomings and failings pointed out to them.
Post of the year! Exactly what l said to my dad an ex Oakwell employee of over 10 years. There's folk on here more qualified in Marketing etc than anyone at Oakwell offering to come up with ideas, working at companies much larger than BFC. The company l work for has a turnover of nearly £200 million every year, pity my expertise is in finance and not marketing.
I'd be more than happy to get involved and can bring a lot to the table, but I'm a busy person and would only dive into something like this if I felt it was something the club would be willing to accept. It would need them to allow access to their information and be very honest with us, in the case of aspects such as ticket pricing they would need to be completely open as to why they continue to charge an amount that causes home fan attendances to suffer.
I'd agree with you on that. The skills and resource are obviously not within the club or otherwise they'd occasionally take up the good ideas chucked at them. I think the ideas are plentiful and there are people out there with the skills to make them happen. We just need pull it all together.
We could start by producing a sticky thread to which serious ideas regarding tickets and pricing structures could be collated by admin and viewed by everyone including Pat and Don. For example, I would like to buy a half season ticket please. I'll pay £170 up front for 12 home match vouchers in unreserved seating and valid from the start of the season to the end. This would be economically viable for me as I live 200 miles away and can't make every game. If I use all my vouchers then I have to pay full whack so the club wins either way. I would deem this a reasonable request, simple to administer and of wide appeal to exiled fans.
i appreciate that. i'm just as busy. we have to be slightly realistic though. initially, it's unlikely we'll get buy in from key stakeholders at the Club, unless we approach them with a well thought through set of proposals, supported by an equally robust set of problem statements. if we want to affect changes ourselves, i think the first move is ours, to be honest. what i will say is, we find hours to spend gassing on here. that time could be MUCH better spent, getting together and making something happen.
814 views ! All these ideas! Not read them but wld love to get involved and start some proper realignment! This board might have found its true purpose at last! How do we make contact and pull it together?
