Club Promotion / Poor Attendances

Just a quick question, is the club promotional actually promoting the matches? i have never seen an advertisement (posters etc) or even heard an advert on the radio - which a lot of other clubs seem to be doing. the attendances hav been falling rapidly since the first 2 home games and are the club trying to get people to the matches? i know anthony rooney posts here so maybe he can answer the questions.

PS this is not an attack at the club or an attack at Anthony i'm just looking for some answers. The attendances have been shocking of late.

I agree attendance levels are falling but in all fairness the 1st 2 home games where bohs and rovers. When we play the bigger teams or any dublin team in general where always gonna have bigger attendances.

in answer to advertisement i have to agree with you ive never heard a game been advertised or even seen a section in local papers.

how bout all regular supporters try bring a mate or 2

Bringing a friend or two is great in theory, but way more difficult to execute. I've spent years talking the league up to my mates, or telling them they'd enjoy a day out somewhere around the country...but ultimately I think most of them would rather stay in the pub, or sit in watching tv!! I go to 90% of games by myself. Funnily enough, I'm having the same hassle over here, trying to convince my English mates to come along with me to see York City play!

Originally Posted by mightyseagull

I agree attendance levels are falling but in all fairness the 1st 2 home games where bohs and rovers. When we play the bigger teams or any dublin team in general where always gonna have bigger attendances.

in answer to advertisement i have to agree with you ive never heard a game been advertised or even seen a section in local papers.

how bout all regular supporters try bring a mate or 2

In all fairness if it was as easy as that then the ground would be packed. But as Eoingull said its like p!ssing into the wind unfortunately

Originally Posted by mightyseagull

I agree attendance levels are falling but in all fairness the 1st 2 home games where bohs and rovers. When we play the bigger teams or any dublin team in general where always gonna have bigger attendances.

I know that but I think that the home crowd for the last two games has been well below par. Imo, this should be addressed by the club.

On the note of ads, the one ad I've seen is the ones they have in shops but then again that's been going on for years. Other clubs seem to love their CPOs and rave about what they're doing so it seems like this must be solely a Bray problem.

Originally Posted by superfrank

Other clubs seem to love their CPOs and rave about what they're doing so it seems like this must be solely a Bray problem.

I'd suggest that a group of you (supporters' club maybe?) should ask your CPO for a meeting and tell them this stuff and give them some ideas. I'm sure they'll take them on board.

Yesterday i sent a PM to all the posters in this thread. Only 1 reply so far...

I'm always willing to listen to what people have to say on how we might better our club. I am going to set up a fans forum, see braywanderers.ie for details.

EDIT:

2 reply's now. But from the impression i'm getting nobody really wants to sit down and discuss this matter. As i've said lads, i'd love to meet with Bray supporters and have a chat about how we can make things better, we need everybody pulling in the right direction.

Someone mentioned that they don't have a place to store the drum. If it's an option and makes things easy for you it can be stored in my office.

Fair play to you Roo69. I for one am very glad that you're on here making the right noises. I didn't know it was you until an earlier post.

Unfortunately some of us have learnt to expect very little by way of a response. I e-mailed the club years ago about the need for a fans forum on our own site and wasn't even afforded a response. I'm sure everyone on here has been lied to lots of times about merchandise in the club shop, namely when an item is due in ( I won't harp on about 5 years and no jerseys- I know they're back in now). So it's all too easy to be cynical when you are a Wanderers fan.

It's never too late to start implementing good ideas, so good luck and I'll certainly be happy to give some feedback to any ideas mooted on here.

With respect, Grey, that sounds a very passive answer.

Is there a Bray SC? Get them to poll their members for ideas, and then get a few committee members to meet up with Roo to thrash out ideas. That way, you can expand on ideas at the time as well. We did it with the UCD CPO a couple of weeks ago and got some good ideas out that he hadn't thought about but that he's now going to look into.

Much more effective to meet up rather than get someone else to post ideas on the website and then comment on them.

To be honest, I think the publicity around the town is fine. There are ads up in plenty of shop windows, the Bray People gives the team great coverage...and Rocky the Seagull always marches in the Paddy's Day parade. I'm not being sarcastic, but what more do folk want? Sadly, I feel it's the opt-publicised problem of the wider public falling under the spell of the Premiership and it's glossy presentation. As much as I love the Carlisle, looking at it through another person's eyes, it's probably not flash enough. I'd love to see something like Bohs' Jodi stand being built...but that would obviously be a huge undertaking, and easier said than done.
I think it would be a good idea to emphasise the historic aspect of the Wanderers in Bray, and play upon our shared heritage. Try a quote like, "We can all buy a satellite dish, but we can't buy a history".
One other thought I had is that the club could maybe advertise a little further afield. It's been commented upon a few times that a lot of our support is from outside of Bray. Perhaps we could stick up the match posters in Shankill, Loughlinstown, Ballybrack... I know that's wandering into traditionally Rovers territory, but so what? It might be worth a shot.

Didn't know it was you, Roo. Belated congrats, good luck with the job. Good idea on the ladies night, I've seen it abroad before to decent effect.

Originally Posted by Eoingull

To be honest, I think the publicity around the town is fine. There are ads up in plenty of shop windows, the Bray People gives the team great coverage...and Rocky the Seagull always marches in the Paddy's Day parade. I'm not being sarcastic, but what more do folk want? Sadly, I feel it's the opt-publicised problem of the wider public falling under the spell of the Premiership and it's glossy presentation. As much as I love the Carlisle, looking at it through another person's eyes, it's probably not flash enough. I'd love to see something like Bohs' Jodi stand being built...but that would obviously be a huge undertaking, and easier said than done.
I think it would be a good idea to emphasise the historic aspect of the Wanderers in Bray, and play upon our shared heritage. Try a quote like, "We can all buy a satellite dish, but we can't buy a history".
One other thought I had is that the club could maybe advertise a little further afield. It's been commented upon a few times that a lot of our support is from outside of Bray. Perhaps we could stick up the match posters in Shankill, Loughlinstown, Ballybrack... I know that's wandering into traditionally Rovers territory, but so what? It might be worth a shot.

Definitely worth a shot. I think unfortunately the club have maxed out what they can get from Bray itself , bar cup runs and testimonials against Wolves. The location of our ground couldn't be better, a stones throw from the D.A.R.T. That is something we should exploit more. Personally I travel in from Rathfarnham for every match. Once you have the itch for real live football you are stuck with it, you'll travel from wherever within reason.

Improving the Carlisles facilities is essential to keeping new punters also. Ironically I feel the new stand has probably curtailed the atmosphere to an extent as supporters are more spread out and it was always nicer looking across at the uncovered side when there was a few more bodies in it.

The tried and trusted method of giving kids free season tickets to get the parents in is also worth a shot ( if it isn't already being done). Although the stewarding of kids has to be addressed as well. They are very distacting running up and down the bank behind the Quinsboro Rd. end. It can make the club look a little amateur in my opinion.

ladies day is a good idea. kids free season ticket imo opinion is a terrible idea. there are far too many kids unsupervised at matches. kids dont have an interest in the match all they want to do is run around - which the stewards dont stop. we need to atract more adults at the matches. maybe a reduced season ticket at the half way mark or something like that. maybe at the next match we can get together at half time or before the match and get some ideas together. i think more advertising wouldnt hurt. maybe signs along roads - like the politicians (instaed of their faces up have bray signs)!!

Thats a good idea about advertising outside of Bray. I always see posters promoting matches around the town but maybe advertising outside Bray along the bus and dart routes might bring in a few extra bodies. Friday night was the lowest attendance at a Bray match I've seen in a long time. The results havent gone well over the last few weeks so maybe that had something to do with it. If so, the win on Friday might help boost the attendance for UCD.

Good feedback lads, it's all been noted. Most of it is already in my files. I like the "We can all buy a satellite dish, but we can't buy a history" quote...
One of my main problems with trying to get the games advertise outside of Bray is time, if i could get a volunteer force to help for 1 evening a week then that would solve a problem... any takers? :-)

If I can get days instead of evenings now i got the summer off from collage i've got no problem with giving a hand (long as it aint tuesday )

Great stuff....

Another thing that might be worth trying is adding one or two other languages to posters advertising the matches. A simple line at the bottom of the poster in Chinese/Polish/Russian/Lituanian/etc. inviting those for whom English is not their first language along to the game could generate some curiosity. Even translating the word "welcome" could make a difference. The research would only have to be done once, and put on the master copy of the poster. Often one small welcoming gesture can make a big difference to folk, especially if they're new to Bray and are feeling alienated from mainstream activities.

just thinking another idea could be to promote the games in colleges in bray/dun laoghaire. a club rep could vist the colleges and talk up the club and maybe hand out free tickets or even cheap tickets to try get more people involved. ok nothing may come of it but at this stage if only 1 or 2 ppl extra come to the games it'l be a sucess. wont it ?

with all the chavs in the town ud think we'd have a good following wudnt ya??