He could’ve, he carried on as normal in his first season at Newcastle, but that injury he got up there in 97/98 meant he was never the same player and any chance of that went.

Radio 5 were playing an interview earlier that he did with Jimmy Armfield (two legends, both left out of the ‘66 winning side!) in 1997.

He spoke along the likes of how he had ‘skill, composure, finishing ability… but not very strong in the air and didn’t quite have the power and aggression to be the complete centre forward… that’s Alan Shearer.’

The interview then cut to today and Big Al was on the line almost speechless hearing that!

You won’t get chastised, you are a perfect example of how you’ve got to work to build up a crowd, but it’s so easy to lose them, and bloody hard to get them back. 

John Williams operated on that basis, alas these fools have never come close to grasping the paramount importance of it…
 

6 minutes ago, tomphil said:

I stopped going to the big local games under Allardyce, the tipping point was zero expectation to win coupled with 35/40 quid tickets. That was so long ago as well and the fact most of these games were on live tv had a dramatic negative effect on away support.

In typical Rovers fashion though it didn't really add up because home turnouts were the best they'd been for years around then.

Don't get me wrong i'd love to be in the Prem and face that issue again but give me a day out at Barnsley anytime over a corporate rip off fixture.

Have to say though with the cap on away tickets in the Prem these days we wouldn't have problems shifting plenty.

Yep the £30 cap, from memory by 2012, places like Chelsea were £45+ for us, so obviously followings fell away markedly… though you need to fork out that in Waggottland for a ticket in the Jack Walker to see some second division fixtures these days, so go figure!

Think people have forgotten that in the PL post about 2003 until relegation a lot of our away followings were in the hundreds, even on a Saturday afternoon. Many reasons, price being the main one

Now we rarely take much under a 1,000 anywhere at a weekend, which isn’t to be sniffed out when we’ve spent the past decade largely watching varying degrees of shite.

I miss those days enormously, and there’s not much to crow about re the modern BRFC, but the away support is one of them .
 

That’s not the narrative impression I got from it.

Yes, there was the usual Hovis advert ‘oop north’ angle, but most of the journo talking heads were painting it as these nouveau riche nobodies inflating fees and wages.

18 minutes ago, Ossydave said:

Looks like Bolton will have 20k on today, tenner for adults and a fiver kids.

Do people think we'd see a similar uplift? I have my doubts, although I suppose they are still riding the promotion wave combined with a promising start. The Oxford game seems such a long time ago now....

20,000 if we did something similar? 
 

No, a) because they’ve already sold 11,000 STs in comparison to our 7k, so straight away they have considerably fewer match day tickets to sell to get to that number. b. they have a feel good factor around the club that we just don’t have.

But again it just shows how important it is to build up your support with a solid core of ST holders, John Williams never forgot that, these fools aren’t even arsed in attempting to try and increase or even maintain the numbers coming through the turnstiles.

A united fanbase? No chance! Do a straw poll of Ewood this season and I’d wager we’d have some of the most popular owners in the league.

The club does end up in administration and you will hear a lot of ‘it was the fans fault for not getting behind the club’ ‘no passion’, ‘look at the money they put in!’. 

Clubs like Barnsley have a solid core of attending fans, but every now and then most clubs will have a good/exciting season and sell a fair few more STs on the back of it - which is what we are seeing with their crowds this season after the play off run.

We, on the other trundle along between about 10th and 20th in the second division for a decade, with no hint of spending anytime challenging (we even buggered up a promotion feel good factor by banging up prices and doing F-all marketing that summer). So it’s no wonder that we tread water attendance wise at best, and lose fans long term - but then why wouldn’t we with no momentum on the pitch, no engagement, no marketing and ever rising prices?

‘Dark days’

Good god.

John Percy from the Daily Telegraph tweeting that Derby are about to go into administration…

A vanishing post! How odd…

Ha when I said Swag wouldn’t be happy with his actual views appearing on here, I didn’t realise, FF minutes style, brfcs was also censoring what really gets said!

Whoa K-Hod you are giving away some state secrets there!

There’s a reason the club gets to red pen the minutes before publication!

A novel way to describe an empty ground… maybe that plus point of Ewood Park should have been on Dack’s renewal letter!

1 minute ago, rigger said:

I don't wish to be pedantic

Defo not you that, rigger 😁

1 hour ago, tomphil said:

She's learnt from up above, pass the buck to the players.

‘Fans liaison officer’, isn’t she (or at least was)?

No bloody chance, have we!

In the midst of our horror run in 91/92 we filled the open end and the paddock and seating at the camera side too… some ginger bloke calling himself Shearer scored.

To me the FF is stuck in a 2000s era comfort zone in which back then the most pressing issue at such a well run club really was stuff as prosaic as pints, speakers etc, it was a co-operative environment shared with top class executives like John Williams and Tom Finn.

Fast forward twenty years and just isn’t a forum that will hold the likes of Waggott to account when the issues facing the club are so much more critical, and perhaps even existential.

‘LT stated that implementing a re-engagement plan was currently difficult given the current constraints on players’ ability to engage with fans.’

Sorry, what? There’s many more ways to try and re-engage a fanbase than a few autograph signing afternoons in the club shop. 
 

1 minute ago, roverblue said:

A lot of season ticket holders around me didn't turn up last night, Tuesday night against Hull isn't really one to entice the fans!

 

It would be fairer to compare a Saturday 3pm attendance with the the last few years instead, probably still down on what it has been.

Putting the price up £100 in the Riverside was an idiotic move and has probably lost a couple of thousand purely based on cost.

Looking at the West Brom game. We were about 1500 down on a Saturday 2019/20 game, which is pretty much the number of STs lost this summer in comparison to that 2019/20 season .

Same for midweeks, 10,500 would have been a standard Tuesday night game attendance with a few hundred away fans, last night was just over 9,000.

As I keep saying, it’s all about flogging STs, if we lose sales, we lose crowds, it’s that simple.

15 minutes ago, tomphil said:

When a game comes along on a Saturday that a few more part timers or lapsed fans might fancy then they get charged £32 ?

The club has made the rod for its back this season i think so it will take spectacular form or a good uptake in half STs to make much difference.

£38-£45 in the Jack Walker for a ‘A’ or A+ game, the stand most popular for walk-ons.

Madness and will only stall any potential momentum re a bump in crowds if we went on a good run.

Slightly, but not by a lot. You may, say, sell an extra 1,000 or so on a Saturday (if it’s not a ridiculously priced ‘A’ or ‘A+’ game at £40-£50) if we are doing well.

However, a substantial crowd increase will only happen by selling more season tickets in the summer, ST holders make up the vast majority of our attendance base (something some people still don’t seem to grasp on this forum), we have never sold many on a match by match basis even when flying high in the PL. Always been the way here, so ergo selling less STs in a summer leads to the opposite, as we are seeing now…

20 minutes ago, Tom said:

Just read on Twitter that it’s our lowest Ewood attendance in the league in just over 30 years!

Since Ipswich in August 1991.

Noticed the club made a point in highlighting the crowd figure on a Facebook post last night. I’ve certainly not noticed them do they before.

Looks to me as a circling of the wagons and ‘f-you’ to the ones that aren’t there ‘supporting the lads’, not a wake up call to the worst crowds in 30 plus years.