Listen pinner, I pay more than my share towards the club so I'm entitled to "spout" what I want.

I don't need to explain myself but just for you pinner I will. I'm talking about the marketing of the club not the likes of sir mac who's done a outstanding Job and even he has recently stated we gave been poor on the marketing sign.

The people aint just going to hand over their hard earned money as we head in to another recession, they have to sell the club and jump on every opportunity to make profit.

Simple things like a keep sake match day ticket for the first ever game at langtree park, opening late on Thursday for late night shopping and opening on Sunday to try and capture the Xmas trade.

I run my own very successful business ibknow from "fact" the product has to be appealing to it's customers and I don't think saints of the field marketing of the club is as good as it can be.

For example, they didn't even have the decency to try and let fans who bought season tickets after the 10th that they wasn't available on the 1st as they had told us. That IMO is shambolic!

Thinking more about your comment that I don't deserve to beca saints fan, I don't think saints deserve me as fan.

The marketing of the club is awful and dont be fooled by we've got a fresh start nonsense.

We've been to final after final since the super era started and was still losing hundreds of thousands of pounds year in and year out which is astonishing.

I've never known any club in any sport playing a full season away from home due to building a new stadium, that is financial suicide and we was lucky a very rich friend of McManus was on hand to remove all bank debt.

Now this bit is way out of line Pete. Sure, in an ideal world the club should have posted something up somewhere (website, Twitter, Facebook would be only options given limited time) to let fans know about the 10 November problem but to criticise Mike Appleton like you are doing is way out of line. That guy has been fielding questions, nasty comments and God knows what on the website, Twitter and Facebook for months now and so far as I can see he's the only one employed to do all that. So cut the bloke some slack. We're lucky that he's there or else we wouldn't have known a damn thing about anything during the transitional period.

Oh, and if you have problems with marketing, complain to the marketing bloke. He's on the board now. I can't remember his name. But he isn't the same person as Mike Appleton who has the less than joyous job of advising us of everything via the varous media.

Ive not mentioned mike Appleton at all and if he's totally run off his feet with nasty comments then all ain't as good as you say.

All the club Medes to do was post on Facebook, twitter or on the website and then you could see they had tried but the fact is, they didn't!

You have mentioned him though because he's the one responsible for letting people know stuff via the media - website, emails, Facebook and Twitter, including match reports and programmes (paper and electronic), etc. So you may not name him but you are criticising him and while that is your prerogative you are going way OTT and it is frankly unfair given all that has been going on.

Marketing, however, is another guy's job. Marketing has never been a strength of Saints and it could be one reason why we didn't get a grade A licence (as it is one of the RFL criteria).

My only gripe with mike Appleton is the fact he didn't inform the the paying fans that they couldn't collect our season tickets on the 1st. I know of four people who made the trip in to town to collect them but got there to be told they not ready. Those people wasted their time ding thst and his knows how many others did. Some may have even finished work early to go, got the bus or taxi which is also money wasted.

And im glad you agree on our shocking marketing team at saints.

I've read three threads this morning, and on every single one of them you have come along spouting your $hite and derailing them, harry pinner is right, saints don't need fans like you.

You'll get your ticket in good time, friday is only a training session it is no big deal really is it?
Oh, and I've got my ticket

Will you come on here and wholeheartedly apologise for all you're comments if the tickets come in time?

I think that complaining about something that hasn't happened yet is OTT.

Without a shadow of a doubt I'll apologise for it if they do arrive before Friday but I certainly won't apologise for saying it was a disgrace they didn't let the paying fans know that tickets wasn't available for collection on the 1st like they told us,wasting fans time and money.

I also won't aplogise about my comments about the clubs marketing.

Fine then go support another club. I don't expect you to explain yourself to me, you said enough in your first post on the subject to tell me all I need to know.

Y'see this is the problem people are having with you though Pete, you didn't say that, you said...



Try thinking about what you want to say before letting it all spill out in what just seems like anger-fuelled drivel to others. People will just treat you with equal contempt.

Yes our marketing side has underperformed over the years, especially when directly compared to some other Superleague teams, but with all that has been going on at the club for the past few season's, financially, business wise and in terms of the stadium project, we've no doubt not had the same amounts of money as certain other club's have had to dedicate to the areas of marketing that we're talking about here.

To my mind the club doesn't do a bad job on marketing, they just don't do a fantastic job. Some things to do with the final season at KR where excellent, the heritage shirts and associated merchandise, the events that were held were good and the special programme etc were well produced. Did they milk the opportunity for all it was worth? Honestly no, but then some people would have taken a cynical view if they had done anyway.

The season at Widnes was an unfortunate situation and whilst it may have cost us in certain areas this may have been off-set by the club not having to spend the small fortune in maintenance and repair bills needed for the old ground to scrape through for another safety certificate.

The club has HAD to do things "on the cheap" for years because of the poor financial state the former board/s left the club in. Part of the reason we have been building the new stadium is to provide the club with a surer footing for the future, a future in which we hopefully will be able to channel more money towards marketing etc.

There are a lot of things that go unnoticed by us fans when discussing this topic, we tend to pick out and remember the things that we reckon are bad and happily criticise yet we fail to commend the club with equal gusto for the things they get right. How's about the fact that we never seem to fall short in attracting several shirt sponsors/'partners', or how about the several buses that operate from the town with massive pictures of the players splashed all over them?

If we want the club to improve its communication with fans we need to communicate better with them, we need to stop bitching about them all the time on websites, in the local papers and social media outlets, and provide them with constructive criticism alongside constructive praise.

I didn't say they were shocking. I said marketing has never been a strength at Saints.

And Tony, that is historic. The Council is just as bad. I'm rather thinking that there is something in the water in St Helens which disables the marketing gene. Either that or all our good marketing people leave St Helens for more promising climates.

Saints are good on the corporate side, of late anyway. To pull off the Typhoo shirt sponsorship was very impressive in my view. However, I'm of the view that such corporate nous has more to do with our Chairman and former Chief Exec than it does of our marketing ethos per se.

Mike isn't marketing but media communication, which while tied in is a different beast. But the club is poor on the non-social media side. Only with the build of the new stadium have ads appeared in the Star. And for the many fans who are not Internet savvy there has been no direct communication in years. My parents and other relatives (all of retirement age) have only known about things going on at Saints because I have told them. Even though they are all season ticket holders of many years' standing, the club has not thought them worthy of direct communication in years. That is a poor showing really given the amount of money retired people like them will have poured into the club's coffers over their many years of support.

But still, while it is frustrating that Saints are generally not up to speed on their non-corporate marketing strategy, it isn't worthy of the bile Pete has been emitting recently. Nowhere near worthy.

I've no doubt that is the case. As you've no doubt experienced during your recent period of unemployment there is a huge drain of jobs in the town that don't involve driving a HGV. I doubt there are many businesses left in the town that have a marketing department nor could offer the sort of salary a competent marketing bod could get by commuting to Liverpool, Manchester or elsewhere.



Again I suspect this is the case, put the marketing focus primarily into making the club attractive to investors and sponsors and use the sport side of the club as the key marketing tool to the fans.

I've no doubt the club will improve its communication and marketing to/with the fans in the near future. The recent restructure should help things and the stadium & facilities should serve as a very visual marketing tool in itself.

Mike App does a sterling job in his specific role, I don't know whether he has any support in his position, but at the end of the day he can only do so much.

I honestly don't know what the Marketing team/dept. is like size & structure wise, whether that too is one or two people or a whole group. If the team is small and has to split its time between marketing to sponsors & investors as well as to the team's 1000's of fans I can understand why it may not do things like regular mailshots to fans or weekly poster advertising for games around the town etc as such things take a good deal of time & expense to plan and execute whereas an email mailshot is likely free and takes a bit less time (though this obviously doesn't help the older & non tech-savvy). Of course if we have a large well structured marketing team then it does raise more questions.