Out of interest, when did you last survey your members on this topic, and what was the wording of it?
Out of interest, when did you last survey your members on this topic, and what was the wording of the question?
Would have been more than one question.
You’ll have to read through previous mailers, if you really care about the work being done you’ll see that over many years we’ve constantly asked questions about the atmosphere.
If you are a member you will have that information to hand, if you don’t have it you wouldn’t have joined therefore perhaps asking disingenuous questions? We came to a decision last year based on being in the room with the club, looking into the whites of their eyes and getting permission to attend from our membership and having their wishes took into the meetings.
To make atmosphere work a section needs to be backed and marketed properly as one and to have the confidence to know it will work it needs to have all the things going wrong took away from it / relaxation of ticket transfer, a commitment to full season tickets in that area / removal of 3rd party resellers from these sections / a halt to excessive stewarding and chucking people out for simply showing passion. Otherwise there is no commitment to the atmosphere from the club.
The club sold the south stand as “our end” 10 years ago at the Chelsea game with big fanfare and tickertape cannons. Since thrown they gradually made the area less partisan, resulting in today’s situation.
There are no guarantees at the moment that any new sections in NSL2 would have any such protections.
Our surveys have attracted over 5000 responses and over 1600 individual comments. We don’t see anyone else doing that work.
The information presented months ago is the same information now. So certainly nothing has changed. The car crash in level 1 with city hall and the way fans have been treated there I think proves that when you try and deal with the club they may well have other plans up their sleeves at the same time.
In September 2024 we mailed Danny Wilson saying we don’t wish to be included on any club press releases about this stand because that would look like we approve of the current plans as they do.
We did also say on mail to him at that time that we would still support anyone that wants to go across there and that’s always been the case. We think a majority of people do not wish to swap ends they are happy staying put but for those that do move well support them and collect names of interested people but then also seek to fill the gaps in the south stand - whatever tier - with people interested in them atmosphere and collect those names also.
So our position has not changed in all that time. And the concourse protests highlighted fans were unhappy about club’s policies including lack of real season tickets being brought back.
You can’t have an atmosphere with a different person sat in the seats every week.
The club set the expectation level sky high with their blue wall comments. Not the fans. The club came up with plans for that end and got them cleared by the council. Not fans. The club chose the level of consultation and chose the vision and how to “sell” their plans, they did this through drip feeding information but no detail on things such as price. That’s the club not the fans.
I personally think a lot more fans would have jumped at the chance to go over had the club approached things in a different way.
We said make it attractive for people to go. Sell your vision.
They spent the majority of the time talking up the hotel - which is something built for tourists.
