a few pics of potential posters on club web site. . if we are to move onto Super League its now that we ALL have to get committed. . or perhaps we just dont bother?

Matt Calland wants to sign players for the next two seasons, some of our existing players are already in discussions but for every new player we sign, we need approx 150 new lottery members at £1 per week or 350 new supporters at each home game

Bearing in mind that Matt thinks we need 6/7 players thats 900 new lottery members or another 2000 on each home game

Can it be done? only you know

mike

Sounds about right that , in this competition to be able to spend at the max SC without external input you need around 4,000 paying speckies

that is also the figure you need to be able to retain any sort of fan base when/if a club goes up and spends a year getting walloped

Preaching to the converted on here Mike. Im sure everyone that posts puts more money into the club other than the enterance fee. We need new fans i agree. But an old fan who doesnt go regular mentioned to me at work the other day that other than the games on sky they dont know when the games are on etc.

Hit the nail on the head there, we can`t keep sitting in the Shay saying why don`t more fans come down we`ve got to go out and make everyone aware of the Halifax team .I would volunteer to go down Woolshops with a stall if it is OK with the club. I am sure plenty would volunteer to do things if we were asked there are plenty of good ideas to make the public of Halifax more aware on this message board for instance.I f there is anyone out there with any good ideas that are pepared to do something about it why don`t we have a get together to see what we can come up with.
I agree with Mike we will not get anywhere just "treading water" but on the other hand it`s no good doing "same old same old "either because people get fed up of volunteering to do stuff when the ideas are not taken up.

I think some of the things Keighley have been doing this season are quite good, and a bit unusual too.

Using the Mascot, Freddie the Cougar as a main part of the marketing, tied in with a Healthy Eating theme, they started out by having Freddie going for a run around Keighley each morning in the few weeks before the season, usually with Barry Eaton, quite an obvious presence for the club when a bloke in a big furry suit is out and about. Amongst other things they've done they have Freddie out around the town on Saturdays handing out kids tickets ect.

Perhaps having Halicat up in the town on Saturdays could be useful, certainly get the kids interested. Handing out flyers and stuff, Its a low investment thing (already got the Halicat suit only needs some flyers printing) and may get either some new fans involved, but at least make people aware that there is a game coming up.


Also, inregards to someone saying they don't know when the matches are, how about putting an A4 stand in the window display at Harveys with a sheet in saying when the next game is. plenty of people must glance in as they walk past?

its a fact that less than 20% of our season ticket holders do NOT buy lottery tickets in the Clubs Cash fax lottery

so working on that basis and with around 1000 adult season tickets theres the 800 new lottery members we need to progress to super league


richard will be trying to sign up new lottery members at the game on sunday. . if every committed fan signed up we'd be on our way

brew good idea re harveys consider it done

hope it will increase the crowd

mike

Keighley were good years ago they were the benchmark for everyone, they were actually doing Super League before Super League and then they got shafted by the RFL. I feel sorry for them I hope they can get it together again.

He`s had several good ideas there Mike I especialy like the one about the Mascot out and about if there are good ideas lets see how we can get them to be done.
I also wish we could get more people to join the Supporters Trust so we could maybe make the money work more productivley for the club. Malcom does a good job with the money that the 100 or so members provide and we are grateful for it but we could do with some more.

What is needed is a much more robust campaign to galvanise supporters into helping to increase crowds .We should have a name for it and try to encourage people to support it and encourage their ideas.
I remember we had one a few years ago called "raise the roof"it raised a good amount of money it needs a catchy name .I`m sure the posters on here could think one up.

the most powerful tool we have to increase the crowd is the current crowd. . if everyone of us brought just one more person the crowd would be almost double

if some people dont know when games are, perhaps we could collect them and bring them along

i think that, the last couple of games apart, anyone coming for the first time for a long time would enjoy the watching the way the team is playing right now

free kids tickets is a difficult one. . . over the last four seasons we've given away thousands and thousands . . have they helped the crowd increase?. . i'm sure so . . but not in correlation to the numbers we've printed and passed out.

we all will know of kids who have started coming along, theres lots more of them now (the junior cheerleaders are an example)

we've done kids for a quid most of the season, but when we have to increase it to £5 for a shared gate cup match, we gets lots of folks moaning that we've put the prices up!!!

And its still troubling that we have only hit 3000 a couple of times this season and we're winning


as previous posters have said god help us if we got into super league and started losing. . the 3000+ would i'm sure rapidly reduce back to the 1500


its a real problem. . . perhaps summer rugby has put the mockers on our game. especially if as promised global warming ends up with us having proper summers again!!! everyone will be bar b quing and off to the coast

I think there are plenty of good points here but not entirely down to the crowd although I think they have an important part to play I believe our most powerful marketing tool is the players. I wish we could afford more fulltimers to send them out and about around town.They have already started to turn things around on the pitch but it takes time to build the trust back up after years of people being disapointed.

If EVERYONE brought 1 more then it surely would be EXACTLY double Mike lol?!

I agree though, more needs to be done in town, such as the halicat and brew's idea.

I hate to suggest things like this but whats to stop us going out there and poaching fans, advertise IN Hudds, bradford, keighley etc (re-poach in the first two case), we've lost 2000-3000 fans in 5 years somewhere, they haven't just gone missing, they more than likely visit the Galpharm or Odsal on a weekly basis now - its not very 'sporting' or fair to, but its a dog eat dog world at the end of the day and if this mean improving us, and/or our fan base then it should be done, and done now whilst we are winning games.....

Just sounds a bit negative.

How about a night with the speccies down the shay, if we get a lot of fans down we could an ideas night.
Making sure the ideas flourish.

why dont we bring back the take that tribute act to get em packing in?

Talking of players, ive just been reading a report put together by Frank Watene on the work the players do in the Community

This year 1500 schoolkids will take part in Mission Nutrition a healthy eating programme being delivered to every school in calderdale

TAG RL festivals. . again 1500 school kids already taking part in this

Black History week . . . Frank plus Bluebase are putting together a learning through Rugby project which will archive the involvement of Black and Ethnic people in the history of Rugby league. It will include youngsters from a number of different Calderdale schools taking part.

Northern Rail Cup taken on a schools tour by Ben and Frank

Haka day at North Bridge recently. . . 30/40 folks learning the Haka

Summer schools holiday programme. . . lots of Skills and drills for many Calderdale schoolkids throughout the 6 weeks holidays

Fostering . . . Players involvement with Calderdale Fostering Campaign

Adult health . . . involvement with Mens health forum

Cheerleading. . . approx 60 junior cheerleaders now have regular tutition from the Club

Youth Media development. . . Calderhigh school take pics at games will be interviewing players will be putting on podcasts, have involved RL refereees, Huddersfield university,

Disability sports . . . players helped train/launch Halifax Wheelchair RL team

These are just the key programmes that YOUR players are involved with every day of the week. Mainly its Frank with Ben Shad Said and Rob taking up most of this work

n addition so far this year the players have made almost 50 personal appearances at Junior RL clubs, at Fund Raising events, for hospices, hospitals etc Theres another 19 such appearances due this month with the Gala next week

The point I'm trying to make is that theres a huge amount of PR / community work undertaken by the Clubs players. .often it doesnt appear in the Courier (generally cos it happens too often to be newsworthy) so many fans probably have no idea of just how involved in Calderdale OUR players are

And then of course we are training at least three times a week and more often than not four times. . . so part time they may be, but we get extraordinarily good value from them

mike