Should UCD be in the league stuff

[CollegeTillIDie]

Promotion and publicity of the club

Sticking posters up outside the UCD environs requires three things
1/ Posters - You need hundreds of the damn things to put up

2/ Sites- You will need to be able to persuade some local shops to either put the posters in the window or use spaces adjacent to them. You might even have to ask Dublin Bus for permission to stick them on the frosted glass panels of bus shleters

3/ People to put the damn things up!

Maybe the new Supporters club could provide item 3 on the list.
And when you are back in the real capital @ndy then you too can play your part

But ye should discuss all of the above with Diarmuid McNally I am sure he would welcome any help ye could give him on that front.

[@ndy]

Club promotion/advertisement is/should be nothing to do with the supporters club.

I fear that we're gonna be left behind if we keep going the way we are. I think we need to branch out badly, and i think that if we get relegated which, in fairness, looks a big possibility, we're gonna really struggle to get back up.

[pineapple stu]

Couple of points @ndy -

1) We tried putting posters up all over the College for years (and I know, because I had to put some up!) The cost wasn't worth the end result - i.e. me, Schumi and John83. With summer soccer, there's even less point strongly advertising around the College. I reckon the Observer, with Aberdonian Stu having a strong influence (and using it well, going by last year), the Supporters' Club newsletter to the entire Superleague and the Soccer Supporters' Society (again, all receiveing the newsletter) is enough attention to give UCD.

2) We should have more posters in the locality - but someone has to put them up! Only Maccer's full-time in the club, and he has his work cut out with fundraising (responsible for 90% of our income), contracts, soccer camps, managing U-21 and inter teams, organising Superleague, etc. The programme is the next best way to get contacts - i.e. advertise in us and we'll give you a discount to put up posters in your shop window. Due to sales numbers, the UCD programme has always struggled to get advertisers, never mind get them to put up posters. Sad but true. However, I do agree that we should have local posters up in certain places, wherever they are.

3) Whether or not we come up next season (if we go down this year) won't have much to do with crowds. So much of our income is from sponsorship - the Alumni dinner, the Golf Classic, etc. - that our income won't drop that much if we do go down. All players are on one-year contracts (as far as I know), so we won't ever get lumped with huge wages in the First Division. We never have to spend much money on new players with the scholarship scheme anyway. So we'd actually be better off financially if we went down!!!

4) We'll meet UEFA licencing. We're possibly the best-run club off the pitch; there's a new stand going up at the end of the season, and the rest is just nit-picky stuff which might cost a bit but won't be too hard to put up. We're grand on that count.

The next step I see the Supporters' Club taking is getting regular match reports in the Southside News. That'll raise our profile across our target area (the Southside), especially if we mention it in the newsletter every week.

We do have a decent future as a club - the huge problem we have is manpower. Maybe if we had a magic clone hammock or something??

[ger121]

I think UCD have done a great job over the years. It's just a shame they might get relegated as they've shown how a small club can be successful and well run. I believe they are the only University team playing in the top league of thier counrty in europe.

[pineapple stu]

Originally posted by ger121
I believe they are the only University team playing in the top league of thier counrty in europe.

There's also Universiti Craiova in Romania and Universitat Baku in Azerbaijan. We're the only College side in the fop flight in Western Europe though.