Ignorance, apathy or a combination?

[Aussie]

On Sunday we hosted The Bill Mathews Cup, this is a Sunday League event that turned out quite well supported (350 People). I over heard a young chap turn to his mates and say something along the lines of " I see Torquay lost AGAIN ( he emphasised Again like it was more than common ) yesterday" this was Sunday remember! Well I had to walk away and bite my tongue, or he was gunna get both barrels with no remorse. Also talking to various people that don`t bother to go any more and the common theme seems to be " they`ll only let me down again " or " Torquay have no ambition "! Well this seems to me to be a very sad state of peoples frames of mind, all this in an area so close, even inside the ground. Would the way to address this be to flood the entire area, and further, with Gulls news bullitens and info packs? Perhaps a way to generate more people turning up would be to help them be informed and encouraged through some forms of media! Obviously the Herald Express didn`t help much ( No offence DT ) when it was a daily because the mentallity hadn`t changed in these people, or are these people just TUFC Haters?
Some good ideas please people so the club can benifit from everyones input, what do you think?

[Dave]

Don't think it's a case of local people being TUFC haters, I think it's long deep routed apathy passed down the genrerations, when I started going back in 1981, all you ever heard was Torquay can't afford to go up, 30 years down the line, you still hear it said.

I think what has not helped, through my time all I can remember is the odd promotion near miss followed by a few seasons of scraping against relegation out of the football league, and yes the club did go up to league 1 twice, only to come straight back down, and this is where a lot of the deep routed apathy comes from, local people just don't believe Torquay will ever be anything other than a league 2/ conference club.

As we all know since the new board took over we have nothing but good times, Wembley twice/Old Trafford, and here we are 2 games to go and still in the hunt for automatic promotion, this coupled with the opening of Bristows bench, will hopefully give local peole a real feeling that Torquay does have some ambition, and very much is a club on the up.

Early seaosn ticket sales would suggest that gates will be up next season, so hopefully better times ahead.

[AustrianAndyGull]

I'm not from the area so i obviously don't understand the local feeling towards the club both past and present but all i can say is that coming from an area surrounded by lots of clubs, i have a certain amount of understanding of the feelings of fans of many other small clubs. Most of my friends support small clubs apart from Wednesday, United and Leeds. You ask the Spireites fans, many of whom i speak with on a regular basis and they will tell you that the club has lost it's ambition and they only went up last season and with a new stadium!! Scunny fans the same. I know many Donny Rovers fans and they say the same. One of my closest mates is a big Barnsley fan and he says the same. Apathy is everywhere and not just exclusive to us. The thing i find odd about Torquay though is that no matter who we play ( if it's a good team or a team from a higher league ) or however well we are doing in the league, we rarely sell out at Plainmoor. I seem to remember looking at our attendances when we were in league 1 last time and they didn't really increase by much. Chesterfield went up and added well over 1500 more fans onto their gates. If we went up this season would that happen at Plainmoor? And you can't say that Chesterfield has a bigger catchment area because it doesn't. Most fans around here either support Wednesday, United, Derby or Mansfield. Like forever says, the stability of our board and our steady improvement on and off the pitch is testament to the way in which our club is approaching their attitude to progression and i am grateful for that. Yes there should be much, much more done in the local community in terms of promoting games and enticing fans in, young and old. At the end of the day the club is a business and if people won't come to IT then IT has to make an effort to get to them. At the end of the day we have a core fanbase who are always going to be there come hell or high water and we will always attract more floaters for the one off bigger games many of which will disappear into the ether once they have left our hallowed ground not to return until the next big match. Apart from the club promoting more aggressively i don't see what else they can do. If someone is not interested then they're not interested. If stay aways want to moan about Torquay and laugh at us saying we are crap and have no ambition then let them, i don't personally want morons like that at Plainmoor and i'm happy to leave them to their sweaty overused armchairs and their fix of Premiership TV. They wouldn't know a real football experience if it bit them on the phallus!

[SteveDeckchair]

He said phallus!

[Aussie]

He said phallus!

O.k I`ll admit it, I giggled!

[Glostergull]

O.k I`ll admit it, I giggled!

er Aussie. Don't you mean googled. After all it's a damn god way of finding what a phallus is

[Dave]

er Aussie. Don't you mean googled. After all it's a damn god way of finding what a phallus is

Lol indeed, guilty I did that, as I didn't have a clue what phallus was, then I....

[Aussie]

er Aussie. Don't you mean googled. After all it's a damn god way of finding what a phallus is

No mate, I knew what it meant that`s why I giggled!
Also why are you damning God!

[Gullscorer]

There's an old saying: 'It pays to advertise.' Perhaps a little more publicity is needed. And why doesn't the club sell its own lottery scratch cards in the local shops? I seem to remember it did this, or something similar, years ago. Can't say I've noticed anything in recent years. Every little helps.

[Kernowgull]

I would be interested to know, although no idea where figures would come from, if, when we have a big game and bigger crowd, is this local floaters and glory hunters, or is this exiles who have to pick and choose their home games due to location?

As an example- Chesterfield do have bigger local rivals than us, but I bet that percentage wise of those who do support the spierites, compared to Torquay, most stay local. So when they are doing well, they turn up, whereas we have a very large London/northern contingent. The league we are in is irrelevant to their financial and time constraints, meaning that they will still have to pick and choose their games.

[Trojan 67]

O.k I`ll admit it, I giggled!

Ok then, I'll admit, I had to google it. :Oops: :Oops: :Oops:

[popside_yidlad]

How about the club doing a letter which details a five year plan for the club, in the community work and local youth players. Maybe detail the difference every 100 fans could make financially and rate of progression. The local youth players bit would hopefully show that its truly a local club with local talents coming through and hopefully going on to wear the shirt.

Then get them dropped through every door in local area and put in the herald. This summer with new stand and score board going up is ideal time

[Sexy_Gulls]

I'm convinced that clubs like ours need to find a new angle when promoting the club. We all love going to watch Torquay because we are already hooked on supporting a team and we love the match day experience. We are then mystified to why other locals don't want to join in with all the fun we're having, but the fact is supporting a team is not rational, especially if that team is down in the lower leagues. Torquay United cannot compete with the premier league in terms of football quality and, lets face it, entertainment. Even if a newcomer comes to plainmoor and its 4-3 to the gulls they will still think the football was poor. Also watching a game from the terrace means a completely different viewing angle to the telly and that can take some getting used to as well. But none of us fans go to watch Torquay for footballing quality, we watch because it's our team.

From a business point of view, Torquay United's product is football. But it cannot compete with Sky Sports. its like a corner shop trying to compete with Tesco's, we cant win on this front. However our other product is a combination of match day experience and a team to support. Sky can offer better teams to support but not live. So Maybe it would be worth promoting the live football angle, that you can come and experience the atmosphere, the passion, the close to the pitch view, the bloke behind you swearing his mouth off, the gallows humour etc etc.
Sky Sports has packaged football into a safe, clean, sterile product. There's none of the roughness round the edges that you get when going to a live game. Why do you think Sky go mental over bad refereeing, goal-line technology or players that aren't 100% professional (i.e. Balotelli)? It's because these things bring the Sky product of football into disrepute. No controversy, perfect robot players, no idea of what its like to watch a football match live because your sitting in a pub and Gary Neville is doing a goalgasm over the sound of the crowd.

I think our club (and others at our level) should be marketing Torquay as Real Football warts and all, the opposite to what you see on the telly.

[Dave]

Some nice idea's Yidlad, however I am no fan of football clubs making their 5 year plan's public , one reason for that is, a good friend of mine is an Exeter season ticket holder, met up with him Monday and he was going nut's, because Tisdale had gone public saying Exeter can afford to be in or sustain league 1 football.

He said to me what happened to that bloody 5 year plan , where by Exeter told to us they planed to re-develop the grandstand/away end, as part of the building blocks to bring Championship football to the club, and now their telling us we can't afford to be league1, and thats the point, things can change very quickly and you can make yourselfs look stupid.

As leafet drops, yes good idea, tad old hat though, I can't understand why it appears the club are sleep walking over the use of the internet their surely can't be much of a cost issue here, as many will know I joined the bristol Rovers fan's forum for some good old Buckle banter at the start of the season.

Since then I have received 4 e-mails from Bristol Rovers fc, detailing family days held at the memorial ground and various other goings on at that club, in the same time I have received nothing from Torquay.

Their are variuos ways our club can collect e-mail adresess's , lottery card scheme which some mentioned the other day, market researcher's etc, and then get a clicking the send button with generic e-mails.

[popside_yidlad]

I listen to talksport and a chairman of a football club did a scheme where under 16-s paid up front for a season ticket. Then for every game they attended they got paid back on a pro-rata basis. I understand we cant do this but just shows what some clubs are willing to do