More About Supporting
They’re clearly not everyone’s cup of tea, but I do enjoy listening to football phone in shows on the radio. There’s usually an entertaining array of views which build a picture of the current moods of various clubs and, while often the caller will be talking a load of rubbish, there’s a sense of satisfaction that at least they’re not spouting nonsense views about your own club.
One such emerging viewpoint which I don’t understand though is from those who want to see their manager sacked so badly they admit to wanting their team to lose. While often having good reasons for demanding a managerial change, hoping your team loses just so there’s a better chance of your wish being granted is a blinkered view.
Chelsea supporters have been the worst offenders with many of their followers recently blighting the airwaves to tell the world they want their side to lose, to hasten the departure of Avram Grant. One can understand their frustration at seeing the popular and successful Jose Mourinho given the chop to make way for the Israeli, who has done little to improve the dour style of football which is said to have cost ‘The Special One’ his job, but this season could yet go down as their most successful ever and no desire to see Grant booted out of Stamford Bridge should come before that.
Closer to home, similar thoughts of wanting City to fail have been raised by some supporters. Following the pathetic 2-1 reverse to Mansfield a month ago it seemed as though there’d be a large queue of players exiting the club this summer. With play off hopes all but over, some fans aired the viewpoint that they didn’t want City to enjoy a decent finish to the campaign in case Stuart McCall was fooled into offering any of the out of contract and underperforming players fresh deals. Such fears maybe realised because, after a month where City’s performances have greatly improved, deal or no deal decisions will be tougher to make for Stuart.
Is this a bad thing? There’s no disputing this season has failed to live up to expectations, but the picture isn’t as straight forward as it would seem. The old saying “the league table never lies” remains true, but the dreadful run of form last autumn, where City collected two out of a possible 24 points, has partially masked the improvement from the team since. By my rough calculations, City would currently be sitting in seventh, ahead of Wycombe on goal difference, had the season begun on November 6th. 29 games on from beating Chester that evening, City have lost only eight games. It leaves the question for Stuart to chew over, is the present squad as bad as it seems?
In the wake of the Mansfield defeat Stuart said he couldn’t wait for the season to finish. Clearly he felt let down by the players but they have responded brilliantly. Three wins, three draws and one unfortunate defeat may not be spectacular form, but the performances have been largely good. Some players like Barry Conlon, Tom Penford, Kyle Nix and Eddie Johnson must have feared their days were numbered; now it’s less certain. No one would argue significant strengthening is required to mount a stronger promotion challenge next season, but the near-total revamp of the squad some were hoping and demanding does not appear necessary.
The end of a season is a time where individual mistakes are less likely to be hammered by supporters and ambitions are lowered, unless you’re in for an exciting or worrying finale. It can be argued that those players who have impressed lately are only doing so with nothing at stake and that, when it really mattered, they choked; a couple of good games now does not mean they can do it for a season. This is where Stuart’s judgement will be so important in the coming weeks.
The question posed to the players after Mansfield was did they want to continue playing for this club, and at the very least their response should be applauded. There may be no prizes at stake, but their livelihood is and that undoubtedly leaves pressure on their shoulders in each remaining game. Everyone released will find a new club, albeit for some it will be in division below, but whoever among them is searching for new employment this summer, there’s little chance they’ll end up playing in front of bigger crowds or for someone with higher ambitions than The Bantams next season.
I’m not one who likes booing and was disappointed with the reaction of some fans at the Mansfield game, but if those players on the receiving end still want to play for this club we can only hope they learnt a valuable lesson that day in terms of the standards we expect them to maintain at this club and the consequences of dipping below it. If any of the players desperate for a new deal this summer are playing a big part in a promotion push this time next year, such booing will have been justified.
Before then an intriguing summer of deal or no deal will commence and no doubt a range of views will be expressed after decisions are made. Thank goodness there won’t be a special radio phone-in show about it.
I guess that it can be difficult to adjust to life in the fourth division when your team has had a brief spell, two seasons around the turn of the millennium, in the Premiership. The eight consecutive seasons spent in the top two divisions saw so many changes to Bradford City’s stadium in particular and professional football in general that for those who had become supporters only after the promotion of 1996 the surroundings of League Two must be quite a shock.
Some of us, of course, had spent most of our lives watching third and fourth division football at Valley Parade and at away grounds of similar standard. The 1985 fire may well have brought about the biggest structural changes to the old ground, but there have been plenty more since. When we had played for so very many years in a ground with only 4,000 wooden seats and plenty of vast open terracing, the development of an all-seater, 25,000 capacity stadium with modern facilities suggested to the old hands that football really was changing for the better.
For those of us who watched our football back in the sixties at decrepit grounds, where toilets were, shall we say, basic and corporate boxes were about as real as the Tardis, the changes throughout the eighties and nineties seemed to befit the new era. We wanted to be treated as ‘customers’, not just as turnstile fodder. We wanted to bring our children along, knowing that they would be safe and comfortable. The nostalgic days when the youngest spectators were lifted over the heads of the almost exclusively male adult fans, so that they could sit at the edge of the pitch and see what was going on, were dead long before Mr Justice Popplewell and Lord Taylor were publishing their reports into safety at football grounds.
Those of us who had been young supporters in the sixties and seventies had lived through the escalating violence at and around football. If we had thought so far ahead as to wonder whether we would allow our own children to come with us to games, we would surely have shuddered at the prospect of bringing them into such an atmosphere. Much as we wanted to encourage them to be the next generation of supporters for our local team, we could not have risked bringing them to Valley Parade or any other ground.
I hope my fellow-survivors of the fire will forgive me for saying that perhaps we were fortunate to be Bradford City supporters from the late eighties onwards. We had already paid in advance a very high price for the progress that came in the next twenty years and are still paying a rather different, purely financial price for the promotions of the nineties. Victories on the field were watched from ever-improving stands; from more and more seats; and even after three-course lunches from in-house caterers.
The outsider would probably argue that the lurch back to the bottom division was attributable to the way the club was managed after the Premiership years, to the previous chairman’s ‘six weeks of madness’, to the two spells in administration and, generally, to that familiar malaise of modern football, overspending. We deserved what we got and shouldn’t complain about watching fourth division football.
Most of us don’t complain, although we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t compare the facilities at Valley Parade with those at grounds we haven’t visited for a few years. Not all lower league grounds are still rooted in the 1980’s. Some clubs have excellent modern stadiums, even though their teams are playing in Leagues One and Two. Others have at least a partial excuse for poorer facilities, having just come up from The Conference and with very limited finances to develop their grounds.
But it’s not just about seats and prawn sandwiches. What has really changed for the better in professional football is the attitude towards spectators. Directors have realised that they have to run their clubs on commercial lines. They have to treat their supporters more as customers. Safety is still an issue, so visiting fans are kept apart from home supporters. Stewards are not there just to show people to the right seat. It isn’t quite like working in a theatre. But then the Romeo supporters at the Old Vic don’t hurl insults at the Juliet fans, do they?
Bradford City supporters should be the last people to argue that other clubs should spend more on improving their grounds. Those who live in glass stadiums, etc. But attitude costs very little. I was quite getting the hang of being a ‘customer’. Some of the grounds where I have been spending my money of late have not had the facilities I had been accustomed to. But the clubs in question usually had genuine explanations and almost always gave advance warning. If I hadn’t been prepared to risk the uncovered terracing at Accrington, I needn’t have gone. They told us in advance, our club printed that warning in the programme and I went with my eyes open.
Other clubs have given me a choice of standing in the open or sitting under cover. Macclesfield, for example, told us in advance that there would be a limited number of seats available, so we got there in good time to make sure we were not left out in the open. They realise that not all visiting fans want to stand outside. Some do, but we less young ones have become accustomed to covered seating. So, within their understandably limited resources, well done to Macclesfield for giving us a choice.
And so it was that my travels around the fourth division had persuaded me that even the lower league teams had accepted the need to look after the fans, as far as finances permitted, and that they didn’t assume we were all teenage hooligans. But all that confidence in the better, more customer-friendly game came to an abrupt end at Edgeley Park, the home of Stockport County.
I’d been there as an away fan not that long ago. Three years back, on an early season sunny Saturday, we had had the ‘Macclesfield’ choice, except that the open area was seating, because Stockport had spent some time in what was then called the First Division, where all-seater stadiums were compulsory. This time around it was early March and the weather forecast was for strong winds and driving rain. So, once again I wanted to make sure I got a seat in the covered area. There’s nothing quite as bad as sitting in the pouring rain. If you are uncovered, somehow it feels better to stand up and get wet.
What a disappointment, then, to discover that, contrary to previous recent experience and in the absence of any pre-match advice, we were not allowed into the covered seats. They were to be kept empty. There wasn’t even the old explanation about keeping the fans apart. As I said, three seasons back we could sit in there, with the home fans much further down the touchline and well away from the visitors. But this time those covered seats were just empty, as if to taunt those of the visiting fans who really would have liked the opportunity to sit under cover.
A few tried to shelter from the driving rain by walking to the corner nearest to the empty seats, where the stand provided some protection from the strong wind and rain. The reports of the stewards’ reaction to that harmless and understandable movement do not make happy reading in the context of customer care. The situation was exacerbated for me by the news from a friend that he had been to the same ground earlier in the season and seen visiting supporters, admittedly in much lower numbers, in those same empty seats.
I thought all of football had long since cottoned on to the notion that for every young lad who was prepared to stand in the pouring rain with his shirt off there were three or four couples who wanted to bring their children into a comfortable environment. It’s called customer choice and, while football cannot safely give the fullest range of such choice, in most cases it costs very little and in all cases it encourages the very supporters professional sport needs to attract.
At the start of the week when 700 Bradford City fans turned up at Edgeley Park their club had just won a Football League award for a revolutionary ticket pricing scheme aimed entirely at making football affordable in one of the best appointed grounds in the lower leagues. Maybe we have got too accustomed to safety, comfort and affordability, all in one package. I know that if I’d been seeking to make a good impression and achieve a higher income for Stockport County, I would have taken heed of that weather forecast and given the visiting fans the option of paying the same price the Stockport fans paid at Valley Parade to sit in covered seats. Maybe the Football League could think about how it wants its clubs to treat their fans and advise on minimum standards (finance permitting) of customer care.
The Shipley Bantams were formed in the summer of 2004 to provide travel to away matches. They meet once a week in a pub and talk over all matter’s City as well as arranging trips and looking at which pubs to stop in on the way. They have rules and regulations about drinking on the coaches and stick to them with an ardent sense of responsibility as good members of a community should.
In a way the Shipley Bantams are nothing new. CTC73 was formed to answer the same problems in the 1970s and from that, owing to a lack of anything approaching reporting on City, The City Gent sprung. Former City Gent editor Dave Pendleton established a History of Bradford City exhibition to mark the centenary and accompanied it with a website. BfB came out of the lack of a Bradford City online presence back in 1998.
In short when the need arises Bradford City Supporters have a track record of being able to look after themselves. When the people of the Shipley Bantams first got together they did so to support the club by quiet literally turning up to support from the stands - we use the term supporter so casually - and back then it is almost impossible to think that within six months the Shipley Bantams would be in a loggerhead situation with Bradford City.
Nevertheless as an exit from administration came into view then the club started to ramp up activities like away travel and started to undercut the Shipley Bantams. The two met and an offer was made by the club to engulf the SBs and let them run the show within Bradford City.
The Shipley Bantams declined and rightly so.
One month later a summit was held in a Bradford pub - a pub from which the sharp eyed could see Valley Parade - but despite location no one from the club was called on to attend nor were they needed. The evening was organised by supporters and the outcome - an attempt to re-establish the local supporter’s clubs in the style of that which has the name Shipley - is based around the efforts of supporters around but not including or drawn from the club.
Across town the Bradford City Supporters’ Trust were meeting. A half year on from being the last bastion of hope when all had left the club the BCST faced something of an image problem with some City fans crying foul with fundamental disagreements over Trust policy on attempting to get board membership and angrily shouting that BCST does not represent them.
Chairman Mark Boocock opted for a meeting of members to approve policy giving him the ability to represent those members with a more clear mandate. In the end the Trust may or may not get a place in the Bradford City boardroom but should you subscribe to that aim and you have enough like minds around you then the Trust offers a path to fruition and does so at a good arm’s length from the club itself.
This website - www.boyfrombrazil.co.uk - exists with virtually no contact with Bradford City save the odd question about factual matters or seating arrangements for various games. We shun the phrase “unofficial” when talking about BfB because we do not believe that as a publication to be read by Bradford City fans that we need an “official” stamp of approval from anyone especially not Bradford City AFC (1983) Ltd or Bradford City Football Club Limited 2004.
Which is not to say that any of the organisations mentioned should be at loggerheads with the club or even be aloof from the work that goes on at Valley Parade but that the propensity to be at loggerheads should exist. Any community is stronger when it supports the ability to hold diverse opinion.
As we exit administration the club must learn the lessons of the last ten years when everything connected with it - be it away travel, supporters groups or publications - was taken in house. Bradford City football club tried to be at the centre of everything surrounding the supporter’s passion for football. The Richmond regime, as is common up and down the country, wanted to take your money to travel away from home, get your money from you for merchandise, get your lunch money off you with a café and to sign you up to various clubs all of which were operated from with VP. Once administration cut the will to do these things City fans like those who formed the Shipley Bantams took a look at what was left found that it was very little.
The new club, and one optimistically uses the phrase, needs to view supporter activities not as something to be privatised but rather as something which should be facilitated.
I hope that BfB that enriches the experience of being a Bradford City supporter in even a tenth of the way that our fellow publication The City Gent has done and continues to do so for over twenty years. I’m sure that the Shipley Bantams do for it’s members and I know that the Trust did in the summer and can do again. All these things make a stronger club but do so outside of the business that is Bradford City.
Previously Bradford City Limited has been at the top of a family tree - the grandfather - and everything which is established for City fans has been subservient to it. Grab a piece of scrap paper and draw a box with the words Bradford City in it and you could add the children of that box - the away travel and supporters clubs of the Richmond years - underneath it. Perhaps under those children there are grandchildren smaller subgroups but always Bradford City are at the top.
Next piece of paper.
Bradford City in the middle but The Shipley Bantams, BfB, City Gent, BCST, Bantams Past et al are not children of the club but surround it like planets circling the Sun reliant on the centre for focus and life - not much point in having a Shipley Bantams without a Bantams - but able to go about it’s day to day, month to month, year to year business with contact from the centre.
Now imagine not five or six or seven planets put twenty or thirty or sixty or seventy all giving every Bradford City supporter an outlet for whatever he or she has passions for. Naturally the mind turns to things connected to the game but it need not stop there. Bradford City is the heart of our community. Should it opt to be a facilitator of community rather than trying to be a provider then who is to say what resourceful City fans will dream up?
With the support of the club to give the oxygen of advertisement in programmes and on scoreboards then attempts to set up the kind of groups which make a richer Bradford City supporting experience will be enhanced. Today it’s website and magazines but tomorrow it could be five-a-side teams, it could be swimmers in our colour, it could even be the Bradford City knitting circle. As long as it is strengthening community bonds and enriching the supporting experience for fans then it is constructive. It might not add to the bottom line in the way that putting a pound on the cost of coaches did for the club’s away travel did but it will pay off in the longer term when the club becomes more than just a Saturday afternoon to more people.
The club has a chance to change - to forge a new path away from the failing business model of trying to get as much cash out of an ever decreasing band of supporters - into the Sun at the centre of a system of supporter communities which will keep interest in the Bantams buzzing long after the final whistle on a Saturday afternoon.