My millions of loyal readers will doubtless recall my recent blog about the homophobic incident at Bristol Rovers. This is it, here. A complaint to the club, which I believe was taken seriously, and matters have been referred to the police. My personal view is that nothing will come of the police investigation but I am impressed with the club’s commitment to making the club a safe place for everyone, including LGBT supporters, something it plainly isn’t at the moment.
Bigotry against gay people is, of course, not confined to Bristol Rovers. It’s not confined to football either. But this incident was specifically about one club, Bristol Rovers. Let’s see if their future deeds match their current words. I hope so. Soon, I suspect, on another subject, they are going to have to say sorry again.
The club recently decided to impose a £15 administration fee on the price of season tickets for those who prefer a card rather than a digital ticket stored in the wallet of a smart phone. The Supporters Club, on behalf of affected supporters, wrote to the football club expressing their concerns. This, verbatim, is the football club’s reply:
‘As a club we are looking to progress and going electronic on season passes and not allowing cash in the stadium are things that are done in all successful clubs in the UK and around the world.
‘We have provided all disabled fans through Clare to get FREE cards for them upon request. As for normal fans and older fans they can purchase the card for 15 pounds, which is the exact cost on the club, and we are not making any money on it, just covering the costs.
‘Clubs like Peterborough and Blackpool charge all fans 20 pounds for cards that includes disabled fans too.
‘We feel we are extremely fair priced as we cover costs only and in the recent future the cards will be stopped with the new stadium and no option but electronic will be available, and everyone has to move electronically.
‘Satisfying every fan is an impossible task; however, we have the club progress from the administrative side, football side and infrastructure side as our main priority and we are not afraid to make the tough decisions that we feel will take Bristol Rovers Football Club to the next level and be a sustainable football club.
Given my own dubious grip of the English language, I am probably not one to talk, but this is something else.
I don’t intend to pick the letter apart, but there are some breathtaking aspects to it. The author announces that all disabled fans can get free cards but not “normal and older fans“. Can you see the problem here? The distinction between disabled fans and normal fans? Now call me woke – PLEASE! – but this is bang out of order. I doubt that the author of the letter intended to say that disabled fans are not normal, but actual words matter. Whether it’s laziness, incompetence or a lack of basic understanding of the English language doesn’t matter. This is supposed to be a business and if you are relying on customers, in this case supporters, to keep the business going, it’s probably not a good idea to insult some of them.
The whole letter is a crock of shite and would not have got past a sub-editor at any reputable newspaper. It’s not just the poor English, but the whiny nature of it, too. Other clubs are charging even more for cards and that includes their non-normal – sorry – disabled fans, too. The only reason, they say, we are charging an extra £15 is to cover costs. “We are not a fucking charity,” they didn’t add, but might as well have done. In the last paragraph, the author turns into the chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt when he shafts the less well off: “we are not afraid to make the tough decisions that we feel will take Bristol Rovers Football Club to the next level and be a sustainable football club.”
Now, I very much support a plan to run a club sustainably. For most of my life, the club has been run unsustainably. Losses are currently running at circa £4 million a year. Unless someone is happy to piss away that kind of money every year, as Rovers’ previous owner was, then great. But the previous owner couldn’t afford to do that every year and here we are with new owners who appear to have a different business model.
None of the fuss need have happened with decent communications, or comms as da yoot call them. Announce at the outset that if people want an actual season card, it will cost them £15. Explain that the club is not making any money out of this. It’s purely to cover costs. They want to run the club sustainably and cannot afford the losses of recent years. Then, when people are confronted with a £15 charge, there’s no issue. Simples. To suddenly do it as an afterthought, and then to issue a crass, semi-literate reply is frankly insulting and somewhat pathetic.
One step forward and two steps back. It was always thus at Bristol Rovers, even in the days when I went. Yet despite getting rid of the many committed voluntary helpers at the club, who behaved like professionals, they appear to have replaced them with paid staff who run the place like amateurs.
They’ve taken homophobia seriously and have now clumsily suggested that disabled supporters aren’t normal. It’s worth pointing this stuff out – good and bad – because otherwise nothing changes. Even though I haven’t been to a game for six years, the Rovers still know how to piss me off. Somehow I must still care. God knows why.
