merged: County Community Club?

[BornCaley]

Post match comments from George Adams after the Cup game in which he contradicted the company line. Basically he said that he was at odds with the board over their running of the club as a community club and he didnt care about being a community club and wanted to be a SPL club and County had to get rid of the community aspect to reach that SPL goal.

Interesting comments i thought and i agree totally with him on that. Not sure if ICT are any different.

thoughts?

[CaleyD]

In a nutshell.....bollocks.

Just look at how dramatically the wheels fell off at ICT when they turned away from their "community" roots and started treating fans as nothing more than a customer.

This might surprise a lot of you given the views I have expressed in recent times, but ICT will come back bigger and better than they have ever been and it will be because they are working to restore the "community" aspect that they lost and have missed so much for the last 5 years or so....and when we get back to the SPL we will benefit greatly from holding on to that and not allowing it to slip again.

[BornCaley]

In a nutshell.....bollocks.

Just look at how dramatically the wheels fell off at ICT when they turned away from their "community" roots and started treating fans as nothing more than a customer.

This might surprise a lot of you given the views I have expressed in recent times, but ICT will come back bigger and better than they have ever been and it will be because they are working to restore the "community" aspect that they lost and have missed so much for the last 5 years or so....and when we get back to the SPL we will benefit greatly from holding on to that and not allowing it to slip again.

Jesus- i never thought i would hear that. Football clubs are businesses? and like it or not; fans are customers. Its the way the game is now. While the idea of a club keeping its roots within its own community is a romantic one, its not the way that a club must operate to play at the top level. Yes they manage it in other countries like France, but the UK is a whole different game with different ideals etc etc.

So to say its "bollocks" is maybe a kneejerk reaction Caley D.. Think about it again and while im not trying to change your opinions I am trying to say that Adams comments were right. County have always been in our shadow and its the way forward for them. Whether they can succeed with such a small fanbase is another story.

I will say that ICT can have community at the core of its ethics, but ICT can and should embrace the "Branding" of its name and expand on a national and international platform like so many other clubs have succeded at. Revenue is everything in Football and im sorry to say that we wont generate the revenues we need at a "local " level.

Edited March 24, 2010 by BornCaley

[CaleyD]

You talk as if Community and Business cannot run in tandem and that you have to cut off the community in order to achieve success!!! Of course clubs are businesses, but they operate in an environment which is pretty unique to sport, where the customers are also fans (many of them shareholders) and, like it or not, if you fail to treat them as if they are part of the "business"...i.e. "Community"...then you soon drive them off and without them you no longer have customers and the business goes to the wall.

As I said, just take a look at what happened to us the moment the club started to put up barriers between club and fans and started with the whole "We must operate like an SPL Club" and fans are nothing but customers attitude. What did we gain from our 5 seasons in the SPL by doing business in this manner? Absolutely nothing, and relegation put us right back where we started, probably further back as the realisations sets in that the club needs the fans to be more than just customers and now has one hell of a job ahead of them to repair the damage that has been done.

[Sorted]

I'm with CD on this one. the two are not mutually exclusive and can, when properly managed, deliver the best results for all. Granted at times it can cause difficulty but when it's good it's fab.

The prime example, the biggest community club of all, FC Barcelona. A multi million euro business still subject to democratic checks and balances from it's members i.e. the fans. A model for all huge clubs that makes the Glazier/Gillette/Hicks fiasco exactly what they are, a recipe for disaster.

[Iain]

Well they'd be hard pushed to be classed a community club with what they were throwing at and calling Esson.

[buckett]

This might surprise a lot of you given the views I have expressed in recent times, but ICT will come back bigger and better . . . .

Going into administration???

[CaleyD]

[CELTIC1CALEY3]

Spot on post.

George Adams and Derek are basically lining themselves up for the Aberdeen jobs.

[DALNEIGHCALEY]

Spot on post.

George Adams and Derek are basically lining themselves up for the Aberdeen jobs.

:021:

[BornCaley]

Already a thread on this

http://community.caleythistleonline.com/in...showtopic=17579

[SMEE]

I hate these labels/concepts of Family club and Community club. I think it kills the passion of the support!

[BornCaley]

I agree Smee. Theres nothing wrong with a club being family/community friendly but branding a club as such doesnt work in my mind, its just not the UK way. I think it works in the US but the "Family" thing is just not the British ethos; if it were then supporters would'nt be trying to stab each other.

The recent Southampton v Portsmouth game is a case in point. 2 clubs who use the Family/community thing but watch the footage on youtube of their recent meet, its not pleasant viewing.

[Stirling Observer]

I perceive being a community club simply as reaching other to local schools providing lots of coaching and small gestures which 1 stops local lads joining other clubs and spreading a net over inverness and further afield to talent spot most players and 2 ensures the next generation has many more supporters (or customers) than if an effort was not made with youth. Clubs incomes are mainly proportioned to their size of attendances.

Short term gains in football generally end in disaster.

Long term thinking is positive.

bit of balance is required, money to first team so they can compete and money towards community project which will reap benefits in the future

[FoolPhysio]

Lets look at ICT as the model for what RC can achieve - a place in the top flight and the boost in income that it can provide.

In order to get there ICT had to look and act more as a professional club, in order to be taken seriously by the SPL and SFA as contenders and not just as relegation fodder doing the perpetual yo-yo in promotion / relegation / promotion ad nauseum. But were we ever likely to make a significant increase in our fan base to go along with it? Answer, no, not really. So income may have increased a bit due to our ability to not only enter but stay in the SPL for an extended period, but we also needed to be conscious of the fact that we could get relegated as in fact did happen. The mettle of both the club and the fans has been tested by the determination to go straight back up to where we "rightfully" belong, and I feel we are all doing our part to achieve it. The point here is that the Club had to factor in that the core support is the principle source of income, but it is not just what we bring in to the club but our share of much larger fan bases which we gained from the SPL.

As pointed out in other threads, our spend had to be tempered not in what we are earning now, but what we may be earning next year and beyond - exactly what any sensible business should do, along with provision for continegencies by putting surplus aside and not splurging it all. But football is no different from any other business. There are those who plan ahead and are able to thrive, those who plan but become victims of circumstance, those who plan but get tempted by short-termist thinking and those whose whole basis is short-termism and want it all now, not later. And we can all name clubs who fit into all of those profiles, just as we can name business in just about any industry who are similar. And there are businesses that we think of as customer focused and those we think are simply wanting to take what they can get - question is, is the former more successful than the latter?

Dross C*unty could learn quite a bit from us, if they chose to do so, in how we have managed to move from two moderately successful Highland league teams into being consdiered as SPL regulars - we must have been doing something right, even if there were mistakes being made by the Club in underestimating the effect that certain actions and decisions would cause dissatisfaction if not disaffection.

Fact is, while the regular attenders and stalwarts felt they were being treated less as friends and more as consumers, ICT profile overall was being boosted and I know from speaking to other clubs fans that there is a genuine soft-spot towards us, and that comes mainly from the interactions they have with our fans. How much of that is the Highland sensibility and how much is the lack of generational animosity that other more established clubs have built up against each other I don't know, but we are what makes this club great and I think that they (the Club) are now realising that. But to maintain reasonable income we need to be in the SPL and the longer we were out of it, the harder it would be to get back and the less likely we could stay in even when we did.

We ARE an SPL team currently taking a one season trip in the First Division - if C*unty wants to be like us, they'll need to get into that same way of thinking!