I agree that the club could be marketed better in the town and the surrounding areas, and certainly it would be a great idea to increase the number of "hardcore" fans, but those "blow ins" that you mentioned in your post are exactly the type of people that the club should be targeting.
These are the people who watch premier league football on tv, travel to england to watch games, and generally claim to like and support football. Getting them to come down to the ground even once would be a huge win for the club - I've often told people that if they come down to watch they would be hooked - but not with unexciting,conservative and scoreless matches we've had recently, the quality does not have to be great, the results are not the driving factor, the spectacle is, for the new fan coming through the turnstile. Is what they see entertaining at the moment? No.
Word of mouth around the town is the best marketing there is - Are people asking friends to come down, because they know they'll enjoy the game? Are people talking about what a great match they went to the previous week? What are the national newspapers writing in the match reports - end to end stuff? or that Bray have scored 2 goals in 8 games? To say that the performance of a team does not influence attendences is naive. To say the two things are not corelated or that "the idea is simply rubbish" beggars belief - marketing can get people into the ground, however, what they see/experience when they get there will determine whether they will come back for more the following week - did they enjoy the experience?
Finally, I don't want to turn this into an Eddie bashing thread either - he's a young manager, has overachieved points-wise with the team, and I like the attempt at being a more progressive side, however, as the manager he must also take responsibility (not blame) for many things associated with the club, this includes results, performance, tactics, discipline within the club etc - I can't think of many topics you can discuss about a small league of Ireland football club where the manager does not have some influence.
Bookmarks