Mattyblue

Glenn too! Ste B still goes, I think (but I spotted that he’d moved to the other side of the Blackburn End a couple of years ago, so would need confirming)…

Gets some media attention for a little bit, fair enough. That Daniel Storey article was very good. But of course the media cycle moves on in a week or two and as the regime will have just stayed in their submarine till it dies down they’ll just shrug it off. The ‘official boycott’ on its own terms will do nothing a savvy media campaign would do anyway - like we saw last season with the three stooges in their hostage video - but what it has done has lost the Coalition a lot of ground with the majority of match goers, which is kind of the opposite of what they were aiming for.

It’s going to be ‘officially’ tried, but c6,000 will still be in the ground, not a million miles off what we’ve seen in the past couple of months anyway. So what are we getting from it over and above what has already been happening?

Social media is the Wild West, obviously the crux of the whole thing is getting a critical mass of that 9,000 or so that will (actually) attend for a 3pm Saturday game to not do so. Does the Coalition still think that will happen? As I have very big doubts after the conversations I had on Saturday and since.

What’s still to cut? Cut the wage bill further (Cantwell? get shut of those wages), close the Riverside, downgrade the Academy, have another go at putting houses on Brockhall, loads to go at.

Alarm bells with who? Still plenty of cut backs to be made yet.

Been a couple more in The Times/Sunday Times too recently in a similar, ‘Christ, how good is this lad?’ vein. Still, least we got a similar fee to Tyler Morton and only ten million behind Jobe.

Played 19 (soon to be 21) Tests under Bazball against India and Australia, won 6. There was nothing results wise under this regime that pointed to any new dawn. The Root era ended in a poor way, scared, negative cricket. However, this lot have just over-corrected, they still don’t win against the big boys.

Fundamentally, and I don’t say this lightly, the likes of Glen and the rest of the Coalition decision makers don’t understand the mindset of the majority of the remaining match goers, that’s majority and remaining and their motivations when it comes to their fortnightly or so visits to Ewood - i.e not the likes of us on brfcs/their own social circles that still go but will do whatever it takes to try and get the bastards out or not those that have already stopped going. If they did they would not have gone near an ‘official’ boycott with a barge pole.

No tickets on the day is a Sheff Wed decision (why this has become a thing across the division post Covid I’ve no idea when few games sell out), not being able to buy one for almost a week before the game (didn’t realise there were six bank holidays between the 23rd and 29th) is obviously ours.

It’s very simple. The wages are paid and there’s a team in blue and white running around Ewood Park, whilst that is the case a good few thousand will turn up, plus they’ll buy a pie if they fancy and they’ll buy some tat from the shop if they fancy and that’s that. There is no point in wasting energy in worrying about changing minds of such folk.

As always… Masher gonna’ Masher.

Yeah they are definitely tuning into games like Oxford at 2am Pune time 😒

Exactly what we said would happen, especially for a 3pm. The ‘boycott’ is happening anyway, 6,000 are in the ground midweek, 8,000 on a Saturday. 6,000 for a Championship club of our stature! That should have been shouted from the rooftops through traditional and social media, we didn’t need anything ‘official’. Case study, lad next to me, he’s lamented with me what’s happened to this club every step of the way for a decade plus, he is no way in the ‘who else we gonna get brigade?’ But when I floated the boycott idea him and his mate looked at me like I had two heads. It wouldn’t have entered their minds for a second to do that, or that I would do it either. For them it’s simple; this is who they support, so they turn up, terrible owners and all, they just hope they can see them off at some point. Whilst they are paying the wages the remaining core will be there and as soon as you start making it ‘official’ it actually becomes counterproductive folk get very intransigent about it, ‘who are these people telling me what to do?’

Was in Jack’s Kitchen today, it was packed which I was pretty surprised about considering 12.30 game and our horrendous home form. Listening in to conversations and around me in the ground, any boycotts were generally just scoffed at. Of course, the fact there was probably just 8,000 or so rattling around Ewood tells you all you need to know regardless but I really doubt it will be significantly emptier for Watford than it was today.