How good is your club off the pitch?

[Bigluke]

• We used to show highlights of all our home games, and bloody good quality highlights as well, now we don't show any, and it's so frustrating, especially when so many other clubs do provide them.
  Are we alone or does your club not show any either, and if they do, and I know a lot do, do you guys have to pay a subscription to watch them?
• As frustrating, we don't ever (well very rarely) have any pre or post match interviews with any players or management, or chairman, in fact sometimes we don't even get any managers comments in the press, but I notice many clubs do both, and do both regularly epecially the post match responses from the boss.
  As supporters, and like most clubs I reckon, we have so much stuff we would love info and details on, and some of it quite basic. Lack of signings for example, that have been promised since July, current injury list and updates on their progress, I mean we don't even know the extent of our keepers injury from the weekend who it has been suggested broke his ankle, and it's even more important for a smaller team like us, as our thin squad is now missing four players. Lincolns interest in Miller another example of where we stood over that, completion date of new stand, promotion deals, which we did several of last year, all of this and more. At the moment, we really are getting next to nothing, and its not as though we are doing that badly, we are only one point off the play off spots
• Our web site is so poor it now beggars belief, and yes I know like most clubs, well I am guessing here, the updates are down to an army of wonderful volunteers and no one is moaning at them, but whilst it looks okay there are segments of ours which at times don't get updated for weeks which is utterly frustrating. I know clubs at level 4 and 5 that do better than that
• Our use of social media is very mixed. On match days our live updates can be excellent but as a promotion weapon, as an advert if you like for our little club, it's mostly not fit for purpose, and again it's so frustrating, so wasteful in fact
  
  Our chairman is quality, he continues to invest time, expertise and finances into the club, and our manager for all his faults lives and breathes Dover Athletic, but was just wondering if we suffer alone here, or do other clubs and against perhaps the common perception actually fare worse, or are you a lot better and therefore happy with what the club does off the pitch, especially as the vast majority are full time clubs and we aren't. Is that the problem possibly?
  
  Comments?

 

[Leo]

My club, Glasgow Rangers, have an excellent website with all the kind of information a supporter would want I'd imagine. As I no longer go to the games I only have a butcher's now and again. They do release a highlights package after every game, home and away which is excellent for people like myself and those who don't get to away games.

 

[EnglishRed]

In terms of that sort of stuff we are OK really. We used to be a shambles commercially but a few years ago a new commercial manager seemed to turn that around. He's since moved on but his successors appear to have moved forward from what he established. Communication is better, we have advertisers, we do things like set up Christmas pop up shops in the town centre, the shop is better situated and has stock. Social media is used a lot and the website, twitter and YouTube accounts are much better. Preseason they use stuff like periscope to stream the matches. We have the subscription Player service so no longer do free extended highlights but YouTube has all the goals as well as player and manager interviews.

So all in all pretty good!

 

[Joe.]

Going really well off the field. Just need to match that on the field.

New stand will be completed within the next couple of months, with the completion of the whole ground taking a further (I believe) 3 years.

 

[Bendubz]

Off the pitch everything is fine and dandy, get free highlights every match, get pre and post-match interviews, have planning permission for the new stand now so work on it can start, on non-matchdays social media is always being used to promote things going on at the club, all very nice. It's just on the pitch we need to work on things.

 

[LeWhites]

Can't say I'm particularly bothered about not hearing about injuries and transfers (can't report if nothing to say) but I can understand why others get frustrated. Whilst I understand that the club is ran by volunteers there are plenty of people on the payroll and I do find it difficult to understand what some of them do all day that means they don't have time to update our latest fixtures/remove player profiles when they get released.

Justin Allen from The Sun (I know) has done a few post match interviews live on Facebook this year and they have been brilliant. The one he did with Chris and Jake was really insightful and they both opened up nicely, without shying away from any questions. The players have all been brilliant when interviewed by him, and we did used to have post match interviews conducted by Jack O'Sullivan but I believe he has taken up full time work elsewhere so can no longer cover the club which is shame. Justin Allen even managed a good interview with Jim Parmenter before one of our games.

It doesn't appear to be through lack of commitment from the players/CK/JP, they all seem willing to get involved but there doesn't appear to be any media people to run such things. I see that Jason Burns does all our match reporting now as well as all other media. The Live Text appears to be done by somebody new every few weeks. It's difficult to find volunteers who have the know how and willingness to put the work in to have a decent media output - it's not easy.

It would be lovely if the club could pay Justin Allen to carry out some more interviews, or get Jack back in or somebody else but it's not an efficient use of money. And people like Justin aren't going to do it for free every week, particularly when he gets paid to cover Premier League grounds.

 

[Idsall Buck]

Shambles!

 

[eightiesrobin]

It's all fine apparently, which is a bit of a bone of contention on our forum, given how badly it's gone wrong on the pitch. I think our chairman has lost some support over a recent NLP interview, which appeared to have a dig at the fans, particularly re Neil Young's departure.

The free radio commentary and TV highlights are excellent, shame they don't have much positive news to broadcast however!

 

[LeWhites]

This morning I've seen a two tweets about the Gateshead game and there's a preview gone up on the Official Site with team news suggesting Modeste will be back.

The club were never going to release stories about Lincoln's interest in Miller - why would they?

This isn't the Premier League, there isn't a circus of nonsense to report on every day.

 

[Chris FGR]

Our press coverage from both the local media and club itself is pretty good imo. Our club has it's own media team and we also have both the SNJ and Citizen (local papers) who have reporters covering the club, so we generally get a lot of video interviews, articles, interactive social media stuff and highlights all for free. All our games including the cups are covered live on BBC Glos, which also provides interviews etc as well.

You can pretty much guarantee that if anything happens Involving the club, even if it's fairly minor they'll be detailed coverage of it.

 

[Clem Fandango]

Pretty much everything City do is via volunteers - Websites, Footage, Social Media. The lot.

Our local paper (Glos Citizen) ignored us for a lot of time, focusing on mainly the rugby club (fair enough) and Cheltenham (not fair) with a little bit of us and FGR (debatable coverage seen as they are Stroud and they have the SNJ). However last 3 or 4 months the coverage from them has been excellent. BBC Glos on the other hand are utter, utter shit. To the point where recently 2 or 3 times in a row they mentioned we had lost when we had actually won and they updated their Facebook page the other day when the ground was approved with an artists impression of the stadium we were refused to build 6 years ago We don't get any live coverage. It got so bad that some of our fans set-up our own radio station (Severn FM).

 

[JaggerCFC]

Our press coverage from both the local media and club itself is pretty good imo. Our club has it's own media team and we also have both the SNJ and Citizen (local papers) who have reporters covering the club, so we generally get a lot of video interviews, articles, interactive social media stuff and highlights all for free. All our games including the cups are covered live on BBC Glos, which also provides interviews etc as well.

You can pretty much guarantee that if anything happens Involving the club, even if it's fairly minor they'll be detailed coverage of it.

New energy efficient light bulbs have been successfully installed in club shop and the like?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

[JaggerCFC]

We are covered very well by our local paper and the social media side is improving. Post match interview every week.

The website is awful and we are stuck in a contract with the provider till the end of this year i believe.

Some of our highlights are now free on youtube and there is a subscription based commentary but i have never used it.

Not the worst but not the best. Think its improving slowly.


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[The Jovial Forester]

The Twitter updates are pretty good, see they're pushing that "fan app" thing that looks like some one size fits all effort a lot of clubs use, not bothered as afaict it'll just be the twitter stuff in a different viewer.

 

[Leo]

New energy efficient light bulbs have been successfully installed in club shop and the like?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

ooooft....sarky bassa..............

 

[Bigluke]

Can't say I'm particularly bothered about not hearing about injuries and transfers (can't report if nothing to say) but I can understand why others get frustrated. Whilst I understand that the club is ran by volunteers there are plenty of people on the payroll and I do find it difficult to understand what some of them do all day that means they don't have time to update our latest fixtures/remove player profiles when they get released.

Justin Allen from The Sun (I know) has done a few post match interviews live on Facebook this year and they have been brilliant. The one he did with Chris and Jake was really insightful and they both opened up nicely, without shying away from any questions. The players have all been brilliant when interviewed by him, and we did used to have post match interviews conducted by Jack O'Sullivan but I believe he has taken up full time work elsewhere so can no longer cover the club which is shame. Justin Allen even managed a good interview with Jim Parmenter before one of our games.

It doesn't appear to be through lack of commitment from the players/CK/JP, they all seem willing to get involved but there doesn't appear to be any media people to run such things. I see that Jason Burns does all our match reporting now as well as all other media. The Live Text appears to be done by somebody new every few weeks. It's difficult to find volunteers who have the know how and willingness to put the work in to have a decent media output - it's not easy.-

It would be lovely if the club could pay Justin Allen to carry out some more interviews, or get Jack back in or somebody else but it's not an efficient use of money. And people like Justin aren't going to do it for free every week, particularly when he gets paid to cover Premier League grounds.

I agree about the two interviews Justin Allen did, one with CK and Jake, the other with Lafayette, but he is a Sun journalist and did them one assumes because he is a local boy, supports the club and was down there with no premiership matches to cover, but worse, I don't think they were even put up on the web site, but as you say they were really good, and from the people I spoke to the answers raised many eyebrows, but can't have it, like any supporter really you are not interested in hearing updates, particularly about our injured players, especially when with the size of our squad they are now hugely important!

But do we even know if there is a willingness to do so such interviews, which all fans that I know, love, or would love to hear on a regular basis, and paying out what wouldn't be a lot of money at all, to do so and or record highlights and do interviews like we used to, far from wasting money, is surely an investment, if only to how we are perceived by others. Do you not think the first thing any new players considering joining us would do is examine the web site, if only to get a fee for the club?

Not only that, as other have said above, running simultaneously along side that will be increased traffic on social media and the like which many other clubs it would appear utilise to the max.Many clubs get the highlights sponsored and with hundreds, sometimes thousands of unique hits to watch them every week, that is a nice, cost effective little advertising outlet for someone

Just a bit frustrating really, in this one department anyway for us to be lagging a fair bit behind some of our peers who on the face of it would have less resources than we do

 

[DarkSithLord]

Shambles!

Whats going on at your club? I see Tom Peers has left and joined Warrington to leave only 15 players on the books? Money issues?
(Dont mind if we take this conversation to the North thread)

 

[Bigluke]

This morning I've seen a two tweets about the Gateshead game and there's a preview gone up on the Official Site with team news suggesting Modeste will be back.

The club were never going to release stories about Lincoln's interest in Miller - why would they?

This isn't the Premier League, there isn't a circus of nonsense to report on every day.

You're being particularly glib here my friend, you know that hardly represents the norm. But in a way you are proving my point exactly, you say it suggesting Modeste will be back, not he will, and one assumes the manager would 'know' not guess at such facts so why not simply so so, and anyway, if he is fit, like other players this year, will he start?

As for Miller, I would have liked to know whats going on, as was the case with Raggett...wouldn't you, Honestly, as a fan?

As for the tweets, anything is nice, but the two you mentioned are the same and is then replicated on the main site, where after reading unless i missed it, doesn't say anything about Ricky Modeste, so one post really.

 

[Bigluke]

New energy efficient light bulbs have been successfully installed in club shop and the like?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

You must be a right fucking bright spark now then!

 

[Bigluke]

Whats going on at your club? I see Tom Peers has left and joined Warrington to leave only 15 players on the books? Money issues?
(Dont mind if we take this conversation to the North thread)

If you discount our three injuries and one three match ban, we haven't even got that

 

[LeWhites]

I agree about the two interviews Justin Allen did, one with CK and Jake, the other with Lafayette, but he is a Sun journalist and did them one assumes because he is a local boy, supports the club and was down there with no premiership matches to cover, but worse, I don't think they were even put up on the web site, but as you say they were really good, and from the people I spoke to the answers raised many eyebrows, but can't have it, like any supporter really you are not interested in hearing updates, particularly about our injured players, especially when with the size of our squad they are now hugely important!

But do we even know if there is a willingness to do so such interviews, which all fans that I know, love, or would love to hear on a regular basis, and paying out what wouldn't be a lot of money at all, to do so and or record highlights and do interviews like we used to, far from wasting money, is surely an investment, if only to how we are perceived by others. Do you not think the first thing any new players considering joining us would do is examine the web site, if only to get a fee for the club?

Not only that, as other have said above, running simultaneously along side that will be increased traffic on social media and the like which many other clubs it would appear utilise to the max.Many clubs get the highlights sponsored and with hundreds, sometimes thousands of unique hits to watch them every week, that is a nice, cost effective little advertising outlet for someone

Just a bit frustrating really, in this one department anyway for us to be lagging a fair bit behind some of our peers who on the face of it would have less resources than we do

Are you seriously saying that top players will sign for Maidstone over Dover because they offer a better highlights package, the opportunity to be interviewed every week and a better player profile on the website?

 

[Mark kavanagh]

We are too good off the pitch . All our emphasis seems to be on posh bars and restaurants to encourage the corporate brigade to invest and wine and dine in the club.

Allegedly last month palios flew to china to see if he could get extra overseas investment into the club and to launch our acadamies over there, he sat investors down to be richly entertained by sutton v tranmere live on bt. Potential investors were treated to 89 minutes of songs about brabin out whilst bt showed our supporters behind brabins bench openly abusing him and threatening him unless he quits after his signings had served up another turgid performance.

For some reason he was sacked the day after??? Palios hasnt commented on the levels of investment that were generated by his presentation.

The point being here it seems, palios will put up with terrible defensive football and the fact we have no chance of promotion but god help anyone who messes up his attempts to suck ip to foreign investors.

 

[Luke Imp]

We're quite lucky in that we don't have any big sides a stones throw away, so our coverage across the paper and radio are very good because we're the main side. Used to get 4 or 5 pages every day in the paper, but that changed when it went weekly.

As it stands, we get 3 pages in the Lincolnshire Echo on a Thursday although those stories and more are drip fed on the internet over the week so there are probably 1-3 news stories a day on there.

Radio Lincs do a Friday Football show and cover all our games. They also do a Facebook Live show from Sincil Bank with a player on a Thursday before the press conference in the afternoon and sometimes do a post-match one as well. Then there's the two or three pre and post match interviews as well.

Website isn't great but we're tied into a contract on that and have little control over it. Anything other than news articles are updated by whoever supplies the platform to us.

In our league days, most of what you wanted was only available through Imps Player subscription, but pretty much everything is free across various social media platforms now. Only thing you can't get is the full match.

In that respect, it's probably the best it ever has been but it was very good before anyway.

 

[FrankTheTank]

Our press coverage from both the local media and club itself is pretty good imo. Our club has it's own media team and we also have both the SNJ and Citizen (local papers) who have reporters covering the club, so we generally get a lot of video interviews, articles, interactive social media stuff and highlights all for free. All our games including the cups are covered live on BBC Glos, which also provides interviews etc as well.

You can pretty much guarantee that if anything happens Involving the club, even if it's fairly minor they'll be detailed coverage of it.

Our match highlights are also shown on the regional BBC and ITV News which is good.

 

[LeWhites]

We get a pretty shit deal of news coverage from all around really.

BBC Kent are only interested in Ebbsfleet and Maidstone, although Matt Gerrard does a fantastic job with the online commentary.
Dover Express is atrocious in general and seems disinterested in the club, having made the sports reporters redundant. Same goes for Kent Online. Never seen any mention of the club on South East Today or the local ITV news. Poor all round, especially considering the only club better than us in the county is Gillingham.

 

[JaggerCFC]

You must be a right fucking bright spark now then!

Not as bright as the new bulbs now being installed in the club house [emoji2]

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[JaggerCFC]

Whats going on at your club? I see Tom Peers has left and joined Warrington to leave only 15 players on the books? Money issues?
(Dont mind if we take this conversation to the North thread)

How has tom peers got on in the CN?

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[Sparrow]

Website - Class. Run and made by volunteers.

Highlights and post-match interviews - Class. Run and made by volunteers. Generally uploaded within 24 hours.

BBC Surrey coverage - Class. There's some cock-ups every so often but we're very fortunate to have commentary at almost every game.

Local news coverage - Decent. The Surrey Ad have dramatically increased their coverage online this season.

Commercial department - Was class when Nicky Banger came in for a couple of seasons. For some reason we got rid of him and numbers have dropped significantly in the sponsors' lounge. We have a portakabin club shop at the ground which is open a lot. We have a shop in the town centre which seems to be open less and less.

THE BOARD - New chairwoman since April. Had an 'open meeting' a few weeks ago for fans to discuss how to improve the club (because mixed with our dreadful start everything seemed to be going overboard). They seem to be acting upon the ideas which is good. The main thing is that we desperately need invest to keep the club going now that Sir Peter Jordan isn't going to be propping us up as much. Redevelopment plans, again, are 'in progress'. But that was meant to happen five years ago and a lot of our fans aren't holding their breath.

Announcements about new signings/club stuff - Pretty terrible, which stems from the board. Seems that whenever we sign a player it has already been announced elsewhere. Last season was awful for the number of 'PR own-goals' as the club bumbled it's way through some off-field problems releasing strange 'statements'.

We're run like a Conference South club (or worse) off the pitch. Still operating in the past. Suppose we might end up there anyway after this season.

 

[Silver Stone]

We get a pretty shit deal of news coverage from all around really.

BBC Kent are only interested in Ebbsfleet and Maidstone, although Matt Gerrard does a fantastic job with the online commentary.
Dover Express is atrocious in general and seems disinterested in the club, having made the sports reporters redundant. Same goes for Kent Online. Never seen any mention of the club on South East Today or the local ITV news. Poor all round, especially considering the only club better than us in the county is Gillingham.

Ironically enough, many of our fans complain about a lack of local coverage. I don't quite see it, but I definitely hear more about Ebbsfleet and Charlton than I care to.

 

[LeWhites]

Ironically enough, many of our fans complain about a lack of local coverage. I don't quite see it, but I definitely hear more about Ebbsfleet and Charlton than I care to.

You lot are on BBC Radio Kent quite often at least, although probably not as often as Ebbsfleet.

Local news coverage includes Gillingham, Brighton, Crawley and Charlton. Nothing within 50 miles of Dover gets a look in. Even when we were in the play offs last season South East Today only briefly mentioned it in passing.

Radio Kent became slightly interested in us towards the back end of the season but Dover's promotion push in the National League is apparently less interesting and significant than Ebbsfleet/Maidstone's in the National South.

Can't say I blame them, they're based in North Kent, and Maidstone/Ebbsfleet are slightly more glamorous than us with your new ground and Ebbsfleet's calibre of player.