about UCD

**Gerrit** · 09/04/2005, 10:05 PM

I was just wondering... It must be quite hard to get a fanbase as a university club. Most people who come to college and support soccer already have a favourite team from the years before uni, and once graduated people leave university life behind them. Also, part of the students leave Dublin for the weekends and so they can't be at the games.
For people living near Belfield I can imagine they may have problems associating with a team named after the university. It's not like a team having the name of the quarter in its name ; I can imagine for them supporting UCD may be like supporting a team from a company without working at the company, they may not go because they think it's not "their team" because they don't go to college.

How do you guys attract your crowd ? Are your fans mainly students or ex-students, or do you also get supporters who are in no way affiliated to the college ?

And what about the players ? Are those all students or do you have players s well that have no direct connection to the uni ?

I was just wondering these things because seeing a college team in the top flight is quite strange in a positive way. Except for Academica Coimbra (Portugal) and UCD, not a single country in Western Europe has a college team in its highest divisions. In my native Belgium it's even very unusual to see student teams exist at all. So I was just wondering about "how UCD works".

I met some guys when they played at Shels, but the answers to these questions varied from person to person, so that's why I am asking here for the one and only truth

The few guys I spoke to by the way were very nice lads, good luck to you in your first season back amongst the big guys. I hope you can save yourselves, and to be honest I don't see you guys go down again.

**pineapple stu** · 10/04/2005, 1:57 AM

Originally Posted by Gerrit

I was just wondering... It must be quite hard to get a fanbase as a university club. Most people who come to college and support soccer already have a favourite team from the years before uni, and once graduated people leave university life behind them. Also, part of the students leave Dublin for the weekends and so they can't be at the games.

Howaya Gerrit!? Long time (well three weeks!) no speak!

Originally Posted by Gerrit

For people living near Belfield I can imagine they may have problems associating with a team named after the university. It's not like a team having the name of the quarter in its name ; I can imagine for them supporting UCD may be like supporting a team from a company without working at the company, they may not go because they think it's not "their team" because they don't go to college.

Yep. Which is why we try to market ourselves as a local team. In particular, we run soccer camps for local kids who don't understand that UCD means a college and so we hope to get some of them on board as fans.[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Gerrit

And what about the players ? Are those all students or do you have players as well that have no direct connection to the uni?

As I understand it, they're all either students or ex-students, which gives us a nice leeway in that we get the option of keeping our best player. However, there's no reason in the rules for us to keep this. The club basically signs whoever they want, pay for their course in college and put them through it. If they don't pass their exams, there's trouble!

Most do, in which case, they get a degree, get first-team football and move on - just like most footballers. Some stay, so we get an experienced backbone. So there you go!

**Gerrit** · 10/04/2005, 2:37 PM

Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Howaya Gerrit!? Long time (well three weeks!) no speak!

ah, it was you I talked to at Tolka ?

Hope to meet again when we travel to Belfield, it was a nice meet-up, and thx again for that UCD scarf

To brand yourself as a local team, why not add the name Belfield to the clubname (UCD Belfield FC or so) or just disabbreviate the name to UC Dublin ? (only few would care what the UC stands for and would just remember the 'Dublin')

**Poor Student** · 10/04/2005, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Gerrit

ah, it was you I talked to at Tolka ?

Hope to meet again when we travel to Belfield, it was a nice meet-up, and thx again for that UCD scarf

To brand yourself as a local team, why not add the name Belfield to the clubname (UCD Belfield FC or so) or just disabbreviate the name to UC Dublin ? (only few would care what the UC stands for and would just remember the 'Dublin')

UC Dublin is what livescore.com call us.

**pineapple stu** · 10/04/2005, 8:35 PM

Originally Posted by Gerrit

To brand yourself as a local team, why not add the name Belfield to the clubname (UCD Belfield FC or so) or just disabbreviate the name to UC Dublin ? (only few would care what the UC stands for and would just remember the 'Dublin')

For the first - Belfield isn't a region, so wouldn't mean anything. Belfield is the name of the campus, and a couple of estates around the area. So it wouldn't do much good.
For the second - Dublin isn't really local either. It's too broad really. Plus UC Dublin sounds very awkward - always annoys me when I see it written out that way for some reason! The best thing to do is imbue meaning into UCD - images of a local club with belonging (e.g. through summer soccer camps with the team's players and coaches, which we do) and then try and get the name up around the area as much as possible (which we don't do).