Thanks for your input. You have asked a few questions and made a number of statements which I would like to address.
Q: At what point do you believe this will increase interest in the game, certainly an interest to the level that is needed to help out our game when presumably you are generating interest in your site from coming onto forums like this that have members who are already interested in the game.
A: We are a week old. The reason for coming onto sites like this one is because we have to start somewhere. The forums have a number of fans who are knowledgeable about what is happening in Scottish Football at the moment. We will use a number of techniques to connect with fans and engage with other sections of society but I doubt that trying to initially engage with a book reading club would have much success. We have achieved one thing by coming on this site and that is if we had not then you would not have known about or have been discussing The Real SPL (either positively or negatively).
Q: I don't doubt you have probably used other avenues to promote the site but by using fans sites like this you are not increasing the popularity of Scottish Football, we already know about it hence why we are on here.
A: We will be seeking to use every means available in the coming months. People on forums are interested in increasing the popularity of Scottish Football and we wholeheartedly agree. Discussing things on a forum is fine but we fans have not to date had effective method of pulling this into one single platform. As I said above, we are a week old.... we need a groundswell within fan bases across the country. You may discuss things in your own forum but to date we have seen little evidence that this has changed anything on a national basis.
Statement: In our own way we are all doing something to help the good of Scottish Football, by going to games we are helping our own clubs grow, by giving them money in order to progress and therefore hopefully increasing the level of our game.
Response: Absolutely agree. But as Walter Smith said in an interview with the Sun, Wake up, our game is dying, "All this stuff is going on around the game - and NOBODY is facing the fact that crowds are dropping.". People are turning their back on the game we all love. We need to address this and grow the game once more in Scotland.
Statement: I can't see how your site will make anyone that is in authority pay any attention to what fans think, they don't already and have clearly shown that the fans opinion is very low down in their priorities.
Response: Perhaps if fans spoke with a single voice and we demonstrated our views as a collective then they would take the views of the fans more seriously. If you think that no matter what we do that our opinions will be ignored then we must disagree with you on this point. We just have not been effective in putting a case forward in the past.
It is the easiest thing to criticize, as we have seen more so on this forum thread than some others. This is a shame and if everyone was of the same opinion then we would have stopped the site and gone and cut the grass or just got back complaining on our own fans forums....
However, this is truly not the case. We have received so much support that we will carry on. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the many ICT fans who have connected to The Real SPL on Facebook and those who have sent their private wishes of good luck and offers of assistance. These are all appreciated. With thousands of unique users in the first week and over 600 Facebook connections already in the first week (incidentally almost double the "Likes" of this site), I would respectfully point out that many fans disagree with your views and want a platform to voice their thoughts and concerns with the game. Who knows, we may actually achieve something.
Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all.
