the club would enjoy two bumper pay days instead of one. The extra money taken from the match at which tickets went on sale would more than equal any price increase implemented for the big game. Secondly, by doing that, clubs would not incur the wrath of supporters incensed at having to pay more than the normal admission price. Even allowing for the extra costs of policing, gatemen and so on, I am sure clubs would still benefit both financially and in terms of goodwill.
These days clubs invest heavily in PR departments and community schemes in an attempt to foster better relations with supporters and the wider public. Yet when they have an opportunity to do just that and make some extra money in the process, they ignore it. Perhaps this has something to do with people who work behind the scenes at clubs these days. Many have a proven track record in marketing and advertising but have never been football supporters, never mind players. Of course there are chiefexecutives and commercial directors with a football background, but there are many people in key commercial and administrative positions in clubs today whose first experience of football comes with their taking up the post. They understand marketing but seemingly not football or its supporters. They try to sell the club as they would do any commercial product. But they don’t have to, because in the supporters a football club already has inbuilt brand loyalty. What’s more, unlike breakfast cereal or toilet tissue, football instils a great level of emotion in its consumers. When such loyalty and emotion is not understood and occasionally ignored, supporters at best feel exploited, at worst antagonized.
If a fan turns up at a home game to hear the stadium announcer pushing the club’s own-brand financial services, when on the field the team is crying out for a new striker to avert a decline towards the relegation zone, then he or she is bound to resent his club’s scale of priorities. Yet time and again I hear stories of clubs riding roughshod over their supporters’ feelings, an attitude that inspires cynicism, not loyalty.
A near-capacity crowd of 38,000 turned up at Filbert Street for the West Brom tie. It became evident that something was wrong during an unusually long half-time interval. After a quarter of an hour we still hadn’t heard the buzzer sound in our changing room, the sign for us to go out for the second half. Thinking there may have been a problem outside the ground with ticketless supporters, Matt Gillies told us to take to the field and to keep warm until the match officials appeared. As we filed out in the corridor, our trainer Les Dowdells told us to return to the changing room; the second half was going to be delayed because the referee, Jack Husband, had been taken ill. Then Charles Maley, our club secretary, came with some shocking news. Jack Husband had collapsed in the officials’ changing room and died. But it had been decided to continue the game.
When a loudspeaker appeal was made to the crowd for asuitably qualified official, a former referee came forward to run the line with one of the linesmen taking over as referee. After a lengthy delay we went on to beat West Brom 2–1 with goals from Jimmy Walsh and Albert Cheesebrough, though our celebrations were muted. That the game was allowed to continue speaks volumes about the nation’s attitude to death in the aftermath of the Second World War. Nowadays we would all be shocked by such an event, and rightly so, and it would be inconceivable to play on afterwards. But to people with the carnage of war fresh in their minds it seemed hardly to warrant a second thought. The best defence people had erected against six years of destruction and tragedy was, as Mam said, simply to ‘get on with it’. So we did.
In the sixth round a crowd of 39,000 saw us bow out of the FA Cup against Wolverhampton Wanderers. It turned out to be a classic quarter-final, full of cut and thrust. Peter
These days clubs invest heavily in PR departments and community schemes in an attempt to foster better relations with supporters and the wider public. Yet when they have an opportunity to do just that and make some extra money in the process, they ignore it. Perhaps this has something to do with people who work behind the scenes at clubs these days. Many have a proven track record in marketing and advertising but have never been football supporters, never mind players. Of course there are chiefexecutives and commercial directors with a football background, but there are many people in key commercial and administrative positions in clubs today whose first experience of football comes with their taking up the post. They understand marketing but seemingly not football or its supporters. They try to sell the club as they would do any commercial product. But they don’t have to, because in the supporters a football club already has inbuilt brand loyalty. What’s more, unlike breakfast cereal or toilet tissue, football instils a great level of emotion in its consumers. When such loyalty and emotion is not understood and occasionally ignored, supporters at best feel exploited, at worst antagonized.
If a fan turns up at a home game to hear the stadium announcer pushing the club’s own-brand financial services, when on the field the team is crying out for a new striker to avert a decline towards the relegation zone, then he or she is bound to resent his club’s scale of priorities. Yet time and again I hear stories of clubs riding roughshod over their supporters’ feelings, an attitude that inspires cynicism, not loyalty.
A near-capacity crowd of 38,000 turned up at Filbert Street for the West Brom tie. It became evident that something was wrong during an unusually long half-time interval. After a quarter of an hour we still hadn’t heard the buzzer sound in our changing room, the sign for us to go out for the second half. Thinking there may have been a problem outside the ground with ticketless supporters, Matt Gillies told us to take to the field and to keep warm until the match officials appeared. As we filed out in the corridor, our trainer Les Dowdells told us to return to the changing room; the second half was going to be delayed because the referee, Jack Husband, had been taken ill. Then Charles Maley, our club secretary, came with some shocking news. Jack Husband had collapsed in the officials’ changing room and died. But it had been decided to continue the game.
When a loudspeaker appeal was made to the crowd for asuitably qualified official, a former referee came forward to run the line with one of the linesmen taking over as referee. After a lengthy delay we went on to beat West Brom 2–1 with goals from Jimmy Walsh and Albert Cheesebrough, though our celebrations were muted. That the game was allowed to continue speaks volumes about the nation’s attitude to death in the aftermath of the Second World War. Nowadays we would all be shocked by such an event, and rightly so, and it would be inconceivable to play on afterwards. But to people with the carnage of war fresh in their minds it seemed hardly to warrant a second thought. The best defence people had erected against six years of destruction and tragedy was, as Mam said, simply to ‘get on with it’. So we did.
In the sixth round a crowd of 39,000 saw us bow out of the FA Cup against Wolverhampton Wanderers. It turned out to be a classic quarter-final, full of cut and thrust. Peter
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