Agree. Unfortunately at this present time, there is no way you could fill the squad full of locals, although I do think we need to make the most of what we’ve got when the players are training locally.
Get them out there in the public eye. We’ve got 100s if not 1000s of kids playing local football on a Saturday morning, how much of a buzz would they get if a couple of Barrow players or the manager turned up to their game, said hello and dished out some vouchers for the game that afternoon? What would the parents think of it and what perception would it give to them about the club?
And don’t just do it once a season, build really strong relationships. I don’t think the postcode of the player is the issue, it’s the relationships that the Rugby lads seem to have with locals. Even if they aren’t local, they feel like they are as as they’re in the schools, at local grassroots games, having photos at the end of games and a chat pitchside. A few weeks ago, Joe Bullock who has signed for Wigan recently from Barrow, was stood on the popular side having a pint with Supporters. He isn’t a local lad, but over the 3 or 4 years that he was here, he built a strong relationship with the fans and they treated him like one of their own.
Ive heard a lot of talk about how much the club wants to interact with the community over the last few years, but not a lot of action unless it makes a profit. If you are bringing in people that wouldn’t usually go, you aren’t losing money - your making it through the raffles, bar takings, merchandise, programmes etc.
barrowaberdeen wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 8:25 pm
My personal view:
The way the rugby market themselves, I think we can take some lessons from that.
But the cost of running a team and paying players at the different levels between us and the rugby are night and day. You want to go mainly 'locally' based? See where Kendal and Workington are now because that's where we would end up too. And we would be back to mid 70s crowds. Everyone who waxes about the good old days never seems to mention that period.
We are at a stage when we can afford a year more at this level and while we do it, everyone in here is going to have to find some way of increasing revenue to the club. Whether that's volunteering, bringing someone, using facilities more, going earlier and leaving later, raffle, lottery, whatever, At we are going to have to, in some way, do some of the work as volunteers or help with the upkeep and development of HS.
We are the commercial department when it comes to catching the pennies rather than the big bucks. There's 900 odd of us and we could do with setting ourselves a target of doubling our input, in whatever way we can. If we want to watch football at this level or the one below.
I am 100% in support of what's happening with the 21's (although the lack of fixtures sometimes frustrates me when it comes to the rest of the Performance Centre). Eventually though, we might get to an Academy- tbh it's where it needs to go- the best footballers in our region are either subsumed and spat out by bigger clubs, or they don't play enough decent other players to progress. Then, again eventually, we would start to have more locally based players. But drop down a couple of levels and we wouldn't be anywhere nearer that as we wouldn't have a penny to put into development.
