For the board - entrance fees

[Ideres4U]

Dear Board

With only 51 at the game against the league leaders last night and a comparative crowd on saturday, is it not time the board starts winning back the hearts and minds of the supporters? Do you think for last part of the season you give something back? Maybe £5 entrance fee and £1 a programme?

Lordswood gave out FREE tickets last night and made money via the bar and food wagon. The place, the team and even the die hard supporters need a lift....come on be brave...Hythe got two huge crowds last year by making the entrance fee £1.........This is potentially a huge club.

On another note I angry that 6 Greenwich supporters jumped the welling gate and got in FREE....I was on my way to tell the gateman when A kid ran past and beat me too it......the gateman did nothing,.....can you sort this out please...you have a steward that is less than ineffective beating out the weeds at the danson end with his cigarettes, can he not be deployed at the Welling main gate? or even use the club shop bloke that for some reason closes at half time!!

Come on board stand up and be counted!!! Please

[ebfcman]

nice idea, wouldnt it be nice to see a couple of extra bodies in the ground, another idea is giving primary schools free tickets for under 11,s, sheff utd used to do this, if a child under 11 comes to a game, the parent will probably come to and will have to pay at the gate, come on deres lets try to get some more fans in, (i dont what you have tried ) but it would be nice to see a bigger croud, also when fisher was a bigger club and playing in salters rd they used to advertise in the south london press (any millwall fan with a season ticket can get into the fisher games half price) so when millwall was away some fans used to go there, why can we advertise in same paper or news shopper about charlton fans with season tickets at our game,s and maybe even try to arrange some sort of half time entertainment on the pitch, like penalty compitions to get more people interested, something like £2 ago and winner gets £10 im sure you would get more than £10 so that would raise a little money for the club(like martins golden ticket sort of thing)

[Doug]

DISA did try a Junior Deres scheme on the basis you suggest but despite delivering a considerable number of notices/applications around all the local schools we got precisely one dad plus his 2 children turn up to take advantage of the free entry.

[Born Again Dere]

Having seen how hard it is to bring new faces to matches, I can only conclude that the low gates are due in most part to the competition we play in. Not being funny, but to most people the idea of watching Kent League football is a joke. Most of our crowd are players dads, 'football people' with passes and the like. Not that many genuine supporters. The Ryman League does at least have some kind of status so maybe if we were to reach that level we may attract more interest. Offering discounted tickets has very little effect on our gates from what I've seen, and as Doug mentions. £7 for Tuesday's game was a joke, but if we'd have halved that to £3.50 would we have got double the gate and the same income? Doubt it.

As for people getting in through the Welling gates, I've done that a few times. But only league games when my season ticket would let me in anyway. Aren't Welling in charge of the Welling gates? However, as per my point above, even when gates are left open and people can get in free, it's not like we are being over-run with people keen to watch some FREE Kent League football.

As for the volunteers on our gate, I can't knock them.

Anyway, the whole set up is flawed with so much money needlessly going out of the door on players wages. All the while that carry on is going on we'll forever be trying to keep a sinking ship afloat and forever be having these debates.

[Skippy]

The last time I was at PVR a group of early teens managed to get in through the gate at the Danson end and proceeded to procure a 2 burgers, a tray of chips several cans of coke and accompanying mars bars!

The only way gates are going to improve at PVR is when the deres get promoted, you're covering old ground here exhausted by DISA.

It simply doesn't make sense to lower your admission fees for half a dozen casual supporters, particularly when
you've massive overheads it's a no brained, granted if your overheads were less than why not chance it.

I agree with BAD, players wages is the scurge of many a KL club. Much of that comes from the set of second rate managers currently plying their trade in the KL who appear unable to attract and offer anything different, not to mention their cut lol

[ebfcman]

some places in kent you can go into local shops or read the local rag and see information about the local side fixtures and stuff , but i have been in many shops in welling and bexleyheath on a friday and saturday but cant ever remember seeing anything about us, why dont we put signs in shop windows or pubs (info on games kick off times and such) to try and get interest in our games, im sure there must be something we can do

[Ideres4U]

trying to look surprised !! Skippy doesnt agree with me