Is it me or are all the press releases identical? BBC teletext, Daily Telegraph, Quins website, NRL website. All virtually identical word for word.

Journalists = ctrl+c, ctrl+v
Lazy...but at least it's out there. Even the Telegraph had a match report

Gutterfax, so it was you in the pink dress......blond dreadlocks at the bar after the 'footie' but sneaking into the Shelia's loo



Still you have a good excuse, you managed to get a great quote



Well done ol' shemale

love the image...but alas, it was my missus in the loo who overheard it.
Still, quotes like that should be listened to and not just taken as read. Apparently the ladies involved were at their first game and have been in london for 2 years

I thought it was an excellent afternoon and was surprised (pleasantly) by the number of Aussies there. All comments I overheard were along the lines of 'great day', 'what a good way to have spent an afternoon', etc..

I think the issue of the perceived distance of Twickenham from Central London is one that marketting needs to find a way round (and not just for Aussies!). I live in Essex and up until three years ago thought it was too far to travel. But desire to see a live game overcame the reluctance to travel - and having done it once realised it's quite an easy journey really and we get to 6 or 7 home games a season. My partner is now a Quins RL fan.

There's obvously other exiled RL fans like me around, who once there I'm sure will come back again. Although I'm not too happy with 'all in one stand arrangement' as my tickets for Wigan (Jester) are not where I would have chosen to sit, but I'll reserve judgement on that until after Saturday. Also aware that topics been done to death.

Nice to see the stewards were as relaxed as usual on Sunday

Fantastic day. The prematch meal idea worked really well. Decent food, lots of people trying it out, and good pre-match interviews well done all concerned. I would've said there were around 7,000 there as well. Manly were magic in the second half - especially Steve Matai. It was good to see Jamie O'Callaghan score against Manly's full strength team.

What on earth was going on with the bloke on the PA system though? Jamie Lee-on? Michael Roberts? Our next home game against Warrington?

"Crowd full of Aussies, we've just a crowd full of Aussies..."

I was very impressed with Manly in the second half. And just a little disappointed with some of the errors we made for a couple of tries. Not sure they really needed any help as the speed of play and passing was excellent. We failed during second half really to hit them and put thenm on their back. Too often they dominated the collision or managed to land on their front despite two or three tacklers thus speeding up their play.

Thought we got penalised a lot in second half which was probably more being outsmarted than a dodgy ref. Still feel we look very passive at the ruck. Other teams seem in attack to make far more effort to suggest they are being slowed down than we do.

Would have thought a lot of the fringe players will have learnt what standards they have to aspire to and Brian will have learnt more about what work is required to support those players development.

Interesting comment.

During the regular season, we don't really see it. Yet, when we play a team who are the current Australian champions, so some would expect them to be better, that makes it the case. ie. Not the ref, but the others being better in the ruck.

But its not about marketing a friendly game to 400 Aussies, its about the numbers that come week after week to SuperLeague games

I would be fascinated to know how the club plan to turn this success into bums on seats week after week

I think we do see it but we are perhaps penalised evenly across a game say against Leeds or Saints. My comment is the contrast between the first and second half of this game. The ref was not inconsistent in his approach to what was happening but the difference in how we coped with the increased ruck speed when they had their first string on was.

Edited

I had an Aussie lass and Kiwi lass behind me for the duration of the match. Both girls loved it, the atmosphere, band, etc and said they would come again. Of the 2 newbies I brought, one will definitely come every home game once the football season has finished and the Aussie guy can't make the Wigan match but will try and come to various home games. Interesting point, the Aussie guy lives in Twickenham and didn't know about the game, saw nothing in his local paper. Only picked it up by chance by seeing a banner outside the ground whilst he was driving past a couple of weeks ago. Also noticed that not one of the pubs had a poster on the outside door as we used to when we played 1997-1999. Maybe the pubs are not allowed to advertise yet I am sure they have a poster up advertising the union games on the Cabbage Patch door from time to time.

Perhaps you could play friendlies every week and do away with the drag of having to take part in Super League altogether? That should do it.

ooh, touchy

The result of the Manly game is that a point has been proved. If you spend cash wisely and badger the press and media insesantly you, WILL get a return on investment. Lessons have to be learnt from this episode. We have had a marketing Guru from the RFL helping out for a while and as a result of the RFL paying for the marketing (and reaping the rewards I may add), he has been able to demonstrate that with a bit of smart planning and a massive effort from those staff we do have backstage, we can get a result.
Data was collected and Nigel and Brian managed to run out of forms. Alison is entering these onto a database and these people will be contacted and invited back.
The key is data...........in every business. Tesco embraced email nearly 10 years ago and look at where they are.
Chris built the facebook group, which now has 430 members. If each of these people were asked to bring a mate and they did....430 extra fans. Capture their data, ask them back and to bring their friends...etc...etc..etc..
Ady built the events page...900 odd respondees.......same again...Data is key.
It doesn't always work (as the Fundraiser on Thursday showed) but it can be done on a shoestring. Believe me, if we start getting 8,000 to every game, the London press will be calling US

I agree 100%

My point is not whether the club are capable of doing it, the question is whether they WILL do it week after week after week.

I say again I have been a Quins ST holder for 5 years until this year but since the end of last season I have received more marketing material from Leeds Rhinos than I have from Quins. The link to Leeds is that I ONCE purchased some tickets over their web site

There is definately a lesson in there somewhere

Well, the newbies I brought certainly all enjoyed themselves, though I doubt they'll come back week in, week out. More likely, they'll be interested in attending the odd big game - for example, I'm confident that they'll all want to be at the Four Nations match, but it looks like I'll be heading out on my own this week.

Ditto - I bought a ticket for Rovers @ Leeds online last season, since then they've emailed me every week and posted me season ticket mailers, and recently a merchandise brochure. There's a club that's making an effort.

That said, the stuff was pretty poor - there was no call to action or a "PS" on the letter, and the copy didn't have enough questions or other DM tricks. Nor was it well targeted - I bet there's a massive correlation between a number of previous events attended and sales of merchandise, and no doubt there's a negative ROI on mailing that brochure to my segment (ie single purchase) so I shouldn't have been sent one. Which all goes to show that there's an opportunity for Quins to not only do what others have shown works, but to do it miles better.

Well I've just received a newsletter from the club entitled "Thank you from Harlequins" that has a pic from the game and a plug for the next three games.

Not a massive deal but 100% better than last season.

Who ever is writing the copy needs a crash course in marketing mind but hey it's a start.

I have subscribed 4 times with 4 different email addresses....and I feel very inloved


No emails since SOTIC took over the e-hosting/e-marketing from Digital ink

I think that this point is very relevant to us building our crowd. One aim of our marketing this year should be to create a bigger sense of 'event' around some of our less glamourous home fixtures. We can usually get a fair crowd in for the bigger games against Wigan, Saints etc (due in large part to the away following I know) but struggle to sell the other fixtures against the likes of Wakey, Castleford, Salford etc.

One of the really pleasing things about Sunday was that the whole event had a terrific buzz about it, as my son said to me 'it's a bit different from the Halifax friendly isn't it!'.

Creating that buzz for all of our home games is easier said than done of course but with some imagination, some local media support and some decent marketing spend (as pointed out in various replies on this thread) it surely can't be impossible.

Great day, great crowd. We must have made a killing at the bar! Only negative was the marketing of the Wigan game. I only heard it mentioned (in a mumbly inaccurate way) over the tannoy a bit ater the final whistle, when quite a few had already left the stadium.

Huge amount of Manly fans who are unlikely to come back but im sure we've added a few new fans no problem. Everyone enjoyed it, good effort.

Kylie tribute was a bit fat though