12,000 points first day of sale for Cardiff Away

[allan harper]

For arguments sake let's say 1,000 points are available each year if you attend every game.

Fan A has 10,000 points. He has been to every game for 10 years and will keep going to every game.
Fan B has 5,000 points. He has attended half the games in the last 10 years, and will continue to attend half of them.
Fan C has 0 points now but is now old enough to start going and plans to attend every game.

Under the current points system it would take 10 years for Fan C to catch Fan B and he will never catch Fan A.
Under the proposed 10 year rolling points system Fan C will overtake Fan B after 5 years, and finally be on a par with Fan A after 10 years.

Those sort of timescales in the rolling system feel right to me.

If you are Fan C the current points system stinks. Fan B has always been less committed than Fan C, but he's older so he'll stay ahead in the queue for the next 10 years. He'll take the high-demand ticket you could have had, but he'll smugly point out to you on Bluemoon that he's time-served and if you really want to catch him you need to go to Crystal Palace on a Tuesday night (he won't be going personally, he never does those sort of games).

Fan A has nothing to fear from a rolling points system.

When you put it like that I can understand what you're getting at but:

It's basically a formula to help new comers get to the top quicker, which I'll never agree with, I don't care how many points i have.

The club already have a system to help new comers, it's called platinum and cup schemes, add time and money to those two and put the graft in like the rest of us have had to do, you'll soon work your way up the ladder.

The price of watching football is taking its toil on most of us, you say those at the top will stay at the top, not really, I'm already cutting my London trips down, so will a lot of other fans, there's an opportunity to catch us up, I'm not arsed if its done that way but to take points off everyone especially when some bloke wasn't even watching us 10 years ago is pure wrong.

Weren't you a newcomer once? Surely using the (great) example provided, a period of 10 years to catch people up is hardly a short time period - ie "newcomers" aren't gonna catch any of the top points fans up unless they match their attendance record over a 10 year period (given the example used).

I love the way that a lot of fans think that supporting City started at COMS. All I earned for 19 years of season tickets in the North Stand at Maine Road was a measly 1500 loyalty points for being classed as a "regular season ticket holder", so all the "newcomers" in the new stadium were able to catch some of us up pretty quickly, but fair's fair...if they attend matches over a decent period of time, they deserve the points and the right to have a chance at attending the top away games.
People didn't stand around shouting "this isn't fair, I was at the XXXX game in 1984, where were all you lot then" etc etc. Under your way of thinking, if this points system would have started back in the 80's with no rolling window and fans had the same view then of "I aint giving up any points from 10, 12, 15 years ago etc",, you wouldn't have had a chance of attending any of the big games now. A rolling window will reward future fans who are consistently attending home & away games over a given period of time.

Your example of using platinum to catch people up is not a good one as it's a level playing field for everyone, ie every fan could take up platinum if they so wished, and generally the top 25% of attending fans will no doubt do so.

Not sure why you mention 1984 when the system they use now wasn't the system back then? Arguing for the sake of arguing it seems to me.

Yeah I was a new fan, I didn't moan or think the system used was unfair to me, I just went about getting tickets for the big games as best as I could, though I've earned my way up to the top just like others have done, I watched us when we was dog shit which was far more harder than watching a team of superstars.

I'm not even from Manchester so when we we've played in a half empty stadium when even the local blues could be arsed turning up and I do, don't try and say my loyalty then shouldn't be rewarded in 10 years time.

But now, now we're brilliant there seems to an issue with the points system, yeah alright.

My example of platinum IS a good one, newcomers sign up to platinum will soon catch up to those who don't.

Of course they won't catch those at the top, but I'd imagine most at the top are older lads, some stop going, some don't bother with certain away games due to having been to certain grounds loads of times.

I'm not bothering with Chelsea,west ham,spurs,arsenal this year and probably a few more, that's at least a 160 points someone can gain on me this year, FairPlay to them, in time they'll have earned there way to the top.

 

[allan harper]

Tuesday 25 September 2012, 7:45PM
Etihad Stadium Att:28,015
Capital One Cup

City 2 Villa 4


Is probably the date this similar thread died of death last year. Don't worry those 28k fans in 10 years time your loyalty won't be recognised.

 

[Bill]

what is being overlooked in these loyalty points arguments, is that those time served fans really did earn their points the hard way, in the first few years most games were just 10 loyalty points, no 100 points for tipping up for Timisoara at home, or hundreds of points for joining cup schemes.

In fact you could argue some of the recent incentives offered for loyalty points have virtually deemed those first few seasons of points earning nearly worthless, at a time when the team was dire and empty seats at away games was the norm, but then again those moaning now, were not interested then.

bang on.

 

[Tricky Dickys Right Foot Shot]

Each year the top bracket of points will increase on high demand games

This^^^^

It use to be 8000 points a few seasons back, it will always jump so the high demand games will go to the fans who attend more games and not just the Johnny come latelys that pick and choose when they want to go!!

 

[Tonster]

Once again I don't remember too much moaning about loyalty points at Reading away last season when I had a choice of empty rows to sit in

 

[dw7]

If you had that 10 year rolling period could you not eventually have 10,000/15,000 supporters on the same points then we be getting pushed into a ballot system

 

[Eccles Blue]

Once again I don't remember too much moaning about loyalty points at Reading away last season when I had a choice of empty rows to sit in

No, it's amazing that we get this 'discussion' every season but there have been away matches where I have been able to move around to sit wherever was best for me. As you say Reading is a case in point and there were others.

But hey, the older we get the fewer matches we will be able to get to for various reasons and then the JCL's will be able to catch up.

Why should we lose our hard earned loyalty points?

 

[Durham Blue]

Sorry how does this points thing work? I remember cutting out tokens from the match day program and then you had to glue them into a booklet and present these at the ticket office, in person , at Maine Road, to get tickets for high demand Cup games and away matches, did the system change and I missed it?
Also does my book of vouchers with match numbers not work any more to give to the man at the turnstiles? This week they just sent me one plastic voucher with my seat number on it, how do I get into the rest of the games?? Confused of Durham.

 

[Bluebee2]

Sorry how does this points thing work? I remember cutting out tokens from the match day program and then you had to glue them into a booklet and present these at the ticket office, in person , at Maine Road, to get tickets for high demand Cup games and away matches, did the system change and I missed it?
Also does my book of vouchers with match numbers not work any more to give to the man at the turnstiles? This week they just sent me one plastic voucher with my seat number on it, how do I get into the rest of the games?? Confused of Durham.

You are way out of touch mate, away ticket stubs we needed for Wigan Play-off Semi final, now that's the future .

 

[East Level 2]

You are way out of touch mate, away ticket stubs we needed for Wigan Play-off Semi final, now that's the future .

Yeah, 5 away stubs even though we played over twenty-five away games. And I still maintain we were never told to keep our tickets stubs.