2nd stand at Tallaght

[Calcio Jack]

The bottom line for me here is that Rovers need to learn from City's experience of when we came back into senior football.

Huge initial interest that lasted four years, then slowly began to taper off, before falling-off more drastically from the mid-90's onwards as the whole novelty wore off and the season-to-season drudgery of following a club (and one that wasn't as succesful as it should've been) sunk in.

Rovers need to ackowledge that the current buzz and crowds around the club may not last, and put in-place measures and strategies to ensure the novelty effect is converted into deep, long-term support.

With that in-mind, you could argue that flogging macot spaces at approx E175 a time may actually be killing the golden goose.

Actually one can''t argue that because for the €175 , the kid gets a full Rovers kit (cost €70), free entry to for them and two adults (cost €35), thus the 'net' cost is €70 which covers the 'cost' of a fun memory etc. for the kid and their parents.

[dcfcsteve]

Fair point Steve. So lets learn from the Derry experience. What measures and strategies can you teach us?

Just do the opposite of most of what we did......

In fairness, you're off to a better start than we had. When we began again in 1985, the Brandywell was a kip. Along with the Council we did up one side of the ground, but never got round to doing the other side until it became too late. We also had the wisdom to buy a piece of land in a good location (Buncrana Rd) to build a new stadium,. but then had to sell it about 12 years ago when we ran into financial problems. That was probably our last chance of ourselves making a new stadium happen on the city side of the Foyle (i.e. without major Council help), and we've been hamstrung ever since. You've avoided all this by starting off in a brand new stdaium, which is a huge advantage.

Basically, don't fritter any cash that is coming in - and that includes spending it all on players, even if you have it to spend. We had Brazilians, Zaireans, South Africans, Frenchmen etc all on good wages with cars accommodation etc. Yes -it got us a treble, but we neglected to invest in any of the club's structures at the same time, which meant that once success inevitably dried-up (it always does - no matter who the club is) we had little left but memories to show for it all.

Get your youth teams sorted and strong, a proper community out-reach programme in-place etc etc etc. Common sense would dictate what should be done - but unfortunately, it never is all that common.

[dcfcsteve]

Or you could argue that the experience on the day could weld the child to Rovers for life.

True. But that's a max of, say, 25 kids a year.

What about the hundreds of kids who's parents can't afford or don't want to pay for this ? They feel left out from this as some spoilt ballax gets all the fun. I'd never have got E175 spent on me for a birthday by my parents (or the equivalent back a few years when I were a lad), and rightly so.

Why not have 11 mascots for certain games, for example - one per player as they come out on the pitch ? Will that be any less meaningful an experience for those kids than the bought for one ? Why not weld 11 kids to Rovers at every game, rather than just the 1 who has parents with a loose wallet ?

[passinginterest]

That sounds like a fair warning Steve but it does look like they're trying to do things the right way, this year they reorganised the youth teams structure and they report to O'Neill, part of the reason he was hired was his financial knowledge and interest in developing players and it looks like he's following through with that.

http://www.shamrockrovers.ie/news/61...-new-structure

[MariborKev]

Fair point Steve. So lets learn from the Derry experience. What measures and strategies can you teach us?

If you do the absolute reverse of everything Derry do, you should be grand.

[Réiteoir]

If you do the absolute reverse of everything Derry do, you should be grand.

So they'll be playing up in the IFA Premier in a few years time then?

[Steve Bruce]

We were 6th in the table on opening night in Tallaght. Even when we were outside the top 3, games were almost always sold out. Leaving aside the novelty aspect of the stadium, Tallaght is an enormous area to call on for support, a one-club town, with a state-of-the-art stadium on it's doorstep. Despite the quality of some of the players, and at times the style of play, people keep coming back. So it's not necessarily the success rate of the team that's attracting them in.

If you where struggling against relegation you wouldn't get the same level of support.

I'm not arguing that your support wouldn't be good, I'm just saying the fact that your doing so well, helps your cause.

I really do not see how you could disagree with that

[longfordjames]

not a bad stand.

[mypost]

If you where struggling against relegation you wouldn't get the same level of support.

I'm not arguing that your support wouldn't be good, I'm just saying the fact that your doing so well, helps your cause.

I really do not see how you could disagree with that

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm taking issue with "the struggling against relegation" part.

The season ticket holders make up a lot of the support. So they've been there since Night 1, and are therefore committed to going to most, if not all the 18 home league games in the season. Next year's will probably see an increase in take up, so we're guaranteed that 90-95% of them will be at almost every game, regardless where we are in the table.

Cup games are harder to predict, with a different system in place, but many st's will go to them as well.

[fergalr]

Common sense would dictate what should be done - but unfortunately, it never is all that common.

All point well made and so far think the club is on the right track. Common sense will continue to prevail so long as the current ownership/governance structure continues to work as well as it does.

[DeLorean]

Lads, what are the crowds like for Rovers home game? A friend of mine is going up to Dublin for the All Ireland tomorrow and was hoping take in Rovers v Bray, but was not sure if a ticket would be needed well in advance?

[passinginterest]

Lads, what are the crowds like for Rovers home game? A friend of mine is going up to Dublin for the All Ireland tomorrow and was hoping take in Rovers v Bray, but was not sure if a ticket would be needed well in advance?

Should get one for this, get there at least an hour before kick off and they'll definitely be available, I doubt it'll sell out.

[fergalr]

Good advice but don't leave it too late. There were quite a few locked out of the last home league game. Get there early, get your ticket and then nip across the road to the Maldron to get into the pre match atmosphere.