The Longside Reference

JUST GET THE FOOTBALL RIGHT

      I’d sent a copy of an article to Turf Moor, to the CE and Media. In our third month without a win, the commercial boys on the club website had asked how we could improve the matchday experience at Turf Moor. I’d looked at it with a degree of surprise. Three goals in eleven games, one win in eighteen if memory serves were the thoughts that flashed through my mind. To cut a long story short, the five pages I sent said one basic thing… get the football right and all else will follow. In truth it was off the cuff, spontaneous, from the heart. In short it was a fan’s grumble. In truth I was miffed. Football is emotional, support is unconditional. The heart outweighs the head. Off it went through cyberspace. It must have landed with a thump. By coincidence I had a meeting arranged with Dave Edmundson for a couple of day later. Give him credit he doesn’t duck issues and we went through several of the things I’d mentioned.

     I’d said there were some serious difficulties to think about. Three months of sliding down the table, poor results… and slowly dwindling attendances over the last couple of seasons… was there a way to arrest this slide in support? Was there an answer, could the club get more people in, or, was it an impossible challenge anyway, with football simply suffering from too many other, cheaper, distractions on a Saturday afternoon, some of them clearly more family oriented? And then there’s the dullness of the football, which from what I have seen is a problem at most Championship clubs this season.

     Or, on the other hand, are we at fault in thinking that attendances should be higher than the current average of around 12k a game. Is this not historically just about right? Were the higher attendances of 2000 and 2001, just the peaks that came with the euphoria of promotion and a new higher Division? Returning now to lower gates and season ticket sales, is this not where we should be?  Even in the sixties and seventies there were gates of not much more than 10k sometimes.

      Whichever, the only way to either maintain the current level or increase it, is to win games and get into the top two places. But even that is not a sure fire guarantee… you need to win games consistently over a period of time, not just as a one off. I suppose that leads to the argument, would you pay to see a string of dull 1 – 0 wins as readily as you would cough up the cash to watch free flowing attractive football – even if the latter meant you’d lose a game every now and then. I don’t suppose we’ll see the answer to that one until it happens… a string of dull 1 – 0 wins that is – to test the theory. My own suspicion is that if Burnley were sitting securely in a top two position, for a reasonable length of time, and we were in the second half of the season, and promotion was indeed a possibility, then crowds would drift back, but certainly not enough to fill the stadium on a regular basis, except for the one off games that might be a promotion decider. The cynical will call them the fair-weather supporters or glory seekers, but in fact many of them are neither. They are just the lapsed fans, former season ticket holders who have grown tired of the dearth of goals.

    It is, in addition to all this, not exactly rocket science to see that high prices are a problem and football in general is pricing fans away (an absurd £27 at Wolves). £21 or £23 or £25 at Burnley, or whatever it is going to be will determine how many walk ons will turn up.

     I read somewhere that what forms the basis of most football crowds is the 18 to 40 age group; but an afternoon in the pub with a big SKY TV screen is a cheaper alternative. Many of this group in Burnley are unemployed or poorly paid and simply cannot afford to come. The worrying thing is that the older group, the 60+ is maybe dwindling by very nature of its age. It currently makes up 11% of season ticket sales. In industry you’d call it natural wastage. It’s the same here. Each year members of the younger group leave Burnley, where wages are lower than the national average, in order to find work and a future elsewhere. “Burnley is a dieing town,” said two local businessmen whose opinions I respect.  This is not to suggest that Burnley FC is a dieing football club but neither is it flourishing in spite of a recent injection of funds. Slowly haemorrhaging, just like the town, might just be a better analogy. 

     So what is this thing called the matchday experience? My three-foot long email asked have we seen a game that will draw back the crowds over the last three months? It mentioned dancing girls, giant pies, Bertie Bee, and deafening music.

     It asked when the club talks of targeting the ‘family’ and giving them a matchday experience to remember, what model do they have in mind? We talked about the equivalent family day-out in the USA for an American Football game on a warm summers day when up rolls the family in their cavernous station wagon, out comes the pre-game barbecue, the picnic table, the steaks and the Budweiser. Then once inside the stadium there is real entertainment. I went to a game over there once, and I was knocked for six by the razzmatazz, the colour, the spectacle, the bands and music, and the Amazonian, big-busted, shapely cheerleaders. I remember when at Burnley we had two lads who ran up and down the touchline with two flags when we scored. In the American game I went to they had two bloody big cannons. Beat that.

     How on earth you would translate this into a game at Turf Moor on a January day when it’s cold enough to freeze the knockers off a cathedral door, and then a game that itself would send an insomniac to sleep, is to be honest, beyond my thinking skills. In fact I come back to one basic, simple premise. You can have all the razzmatazz in the world, but if your team is not performing, then people will stop buying the product when there are alternative activities.

      By family do we mean mum, dad, and 2.4 children? We talked about Reading and the day of the FA Cup game when I watched the cars roll into the car park and was impressed by the number of families turning up complete with mum bedecked in blue and white. Mind you in some cars it looked more like the au pair. This is Berkshire after all. “Might just be Premiership football,” said Dave.

     Is it possible to make it attractive for whole families at Burnley? Maybe the ‘family’ is the most difficult target. There is perhaps one thing to try and that is to offer a relaxing ‘family’ meal, with player hosts, in the Jimmy Mac void when it is developed. Make mum comfortable and the battle is won. And that would be, let’s say, £90 for the family, not just for one. Some goody bags, gifts, tempt them, cosset them. There are indeed plans to develop the Stand but the funding is not in the club bank account just yet. Wait for more news was the word and Dave outlined the work that had gone into the bid. In my other life I encountered the hoops you went through to get Government funding all too well. It can be labyrinthine, endless form filling, phone calls, accountability, obstacle after obstacle, meeting after meeting, and weeks when you seem to make no progress at all. It’s the unseen work of being a chief exec.

     But should it be ‘lads and dads’ and let’s forget all this stuff about the ‘family day out’ and the ‘family experience’, or indeed am I under a misapprehension and the whole family is not the target?  The place for the family; is it not the park, the bowling alley, the cinema, the seaside, and more and more these days, the dreaded shopping mall, with its myriad attractions for all ages? Brendan Flood can no doubt confirm that. And mum, bless her, given the choice, would no doubt make Turf Moor the last place on earth she would describe as a fun day out with the family.  Now don’t shoot me down just because I’ve said that, I know there are plenty of women who watch football and love it. Mrs T is one. But my suggestion is that there are very few ‘typical’ family groups… that is to say, mum and dad with children at a football game, although maybe a special area in the newly developed Jimmy Mac area might be an attractive proposition.

     At this point the subject of dancing girls cropped up. “Strictly speaking,” explained Dave, “they are not there as entertainment. They dance as a reward for the hours of practice and lessons they have in the Leisure Centre. They are proud to be there plus which it is income for the Leisure Centre. Their presence is seen as a way of encouraging other family members to attend. Maybe, it is hoped, they will be bitten by the football bug and come back over and again even when they stop dancing.”    

     The giant pie… well that’s part of the Holland’s sponsorship and yes it is a bit of fun. The loudness of the music… “Well yes we need to do something about the tannoy system.” 

    Perhaps the best way of making the football match part of a family day out, is when the stadium is part of a shopping mall… Wigan for example and the football game becomes the end piece of the day out, or the centre piece, whatever you want to call it, with a meal at some point in the day. But even that suggestion is suspect. Watch what happens when Wigan are relegated one year, and attendances fall immediately when, Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Everton and Newcastle don’t visit any more. They’ll be under 8,000 before you can say JJB.

    OK, this leaves us with the lads and dads angle. This traditional notion is the one that most of us grew up with when we came to our first game with our dads. That’s how it starts for the majority. Is this not the group to target above all others? Should the club accept that the ‘whole family’ day out is just never going to happen? Perhaps as in the case of Reading it comes with Premiership status. And certainly, there is at present just no way you can dress up two hours at BFC as a good day out for the whole family in the way that the family decamps complete with cooler box and drinks to the American football stadium.

     Lads and dads, yes target them. Target them by price as is done now, but what about the inclusion of food in the ticket, or a goody bag, or a free programme, do it through the schools, local football clubs, give vouchers, so many vouchers gets you a tour of the stadium, or Gawthorpe, or meet a player or get a gift from the shop. They already get discounted tickets. But also, make it easy for them to bring a pal by having a block of seating where there is a flexible sit anywhere policy so that the lad can bring a friend or two along at the drop of a hat by paying on the day. “Ah, no, there are health and safety issues.” But it was explained all that needed to happen was that the season ticket holders called in at the office on matchday, bought the extra tickets and switched seats, or did it by phone. 

      Messageboard posters pointed out that the nearest Wacky Warehouse, or a PlayStation is too often a more vibrant option for an eight or nine year old. And is it any longer a case of young sons tugging at their dad’s sleeves pestering to be taken to a game. It’s a case of dad himself trying to persuade his son to come along. And then even if the lad wants to come, it has to be at a price that dad can afford. Another poster pointed out that the emotional pull of your small town club is dwindling and that is not just at Burnley, it is everywhere, as other attractions and activities fill our Saturday afternoons. The civic pride that a town once held for its club, the thousands of people who lined the roads from Rossendale into Burnley when Burnley came back from Manchester City in 1960, I’d suggest is gone. It’s the times we live in; football isn’t the centrepiece of the town any more. Brian Clough once famously said it’s the job of the football club to brighten the community and people’s lives. It’s May 2000 since that last happened here.

    “ That’s true within a purely football context,” said the chief exec, “but here now it’s more than just that and with community and leisure activities in operation seven days a week, it does brighten up people’s lives.”

     While I was there, a huge group of pupils was in the stadium from Rhyddings High School, Accrington, working on English and Maths studies. It was a mixed group of Asian and white pupils. Dave Edmundson is adamant that here is one way forward and how the club can be a centrepiece of the town. 

     My email, maybe most importantly, ended on something else; that at the end of the day, there is still no substitute for football when it comes to persuading people to come to Turf Moor on a Saturday. Taking this further, what it means is simply this, that there is no substitute for the excitement of the game itself, the thrill of attacking play, the roar of the crowd, the contagious joy and feeling of oneness. It’s unique. I’d suggest something else too, that it comes specifically from the thrill of goals and wins. Who will forget those last minute winners against Ipswich and Preston this season? The hairs on the back of your neck stood up on end. At that moment I envied the pal I was with who was arm in arm with his young son and they were punching the air together. He was thrilled that he had, what he described to me as, this ‘father and son moment’. It took me back a few years.

    And then the trouble is; what do we do about the Burnley lads for whom Burnley is a second team? Their first choice is Man U or even Chelsea, God forbid. It happens. That’s a sign of changing football times, when as a young lad, you don’t necessarily support your own home town team. Football is changing, and that’s part of it, when you are brought up miles away from Manchester or London and yet you can watch these top Premier teams week in week out on SKY.

     Many of us will say with certainty that our own fathers would not recognise the game today, they wouldn’t recognise the actual football that is played, nor the trappings that go with it. We had in those days, if I remember rightly, a surfeit of heroes, and I don’t know about you but I always managed to identify with them. You know how it went. You played football in the school yard or in the street, and you said, “baggsy being Jimmy Mac.” In the seventies you might have said, “I’ll be Leighton James.”  If you were captain and picking the team you pretended to be Jimmy Adamson. Does this still happen? Do young ‘uns still play in the street, jumpers for goal posts, in the yard, trying to emulate or pretend to be their Burnley heroes?

     Heroes they can identify with have been few and far between lately… Payton… Blake… Little… and Akinbiyi for a short spell last season.
     What worries me is the boredom factor. “My lad is simply bored at most home games and isn’t really bothered for going on,” wrote Luppy. “The football is dull, which some of us diehards can stomach, but then the kids see Man U playing fantasy football on TV and bagging 63 goals in 27 games – already more than we’ll score all season – is there really any point going watching Burnley, other than it’s the team the family follow?”

       The message is simple. Competition for the Saturday afternoon family housekeeping purse and time, is huge; competition for the loyalty and attention of the eight and nine year old, the future supporter, is fierce.

     I have no magic answer or solution to any of these problems; none of us have, except maybe one. It is simply this.  It is the football itself, it is excitement, and it is the atmosphere while the game is in progress. It is goals, and it is winning that is the key. Not necessarily winning every game either. You can lose a marvellous game 3 – 4 and want to come back for more. You can draw a scintillating game 3 – 3 and want to come back next week. Provide the excitement, put smiles on faces, and you have the way forward. It’s the football… and it’s not only at Burnley… just get the football right.

Dave Thomas February 2007