Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:44 pm  

Deadcowboys1 wrote:

Not sure its reasonable for a curious AFC fans to drag themselves to Ealing to watch us, maybe if we were playing in EFL's newest member Sutton Utd's ground or if we were playing on Tooting Bec Common it might be. Everything from August onwards might depend on how well we do & how well AFC do. Not sure AFC's support will hold up if they struggle. You see far, far more Chelsea shirts on a Saturday in Wimbledon than AFC ones.

I agree 100%. The point I am making is that there seems to be an expectation in some places that 1K+ dons fans will magically become London RL suppliers, and start attending games once we start playing there. My point is I just don't see it happening, as just because we are playing at the same ground will not automatically make the football fans come again for the RL. Maybe we get a few when no football is on, but for instance in my family, my wife would let me attend a game on Sat or on Sunday, but not both, she would get very annoyed if I was gone all weekend on sports games. I assume thats the same for most people

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:24 pm  

Imagine if we had stuck around at Brentford. We could have grown the fan base and a partnership with the footbal club and maybe now be sharing at their new ground.

If anyone (specifically DH) thinks a move to Wimbledon will provide an instant fan base they only need to look at what has happened when we have moved in the past.

The definition of insanity springs to mind.

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:28 pm  

Victor wrote:

If I was a Dons fan, reading this forum would not impress me.

I wouldn’t worry about that.

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:11 pm  

crashmon wrote:

I agree 100%. The point I am making is that there seems to be an expectation in some places that 1K+ dons fans will magically become London RL suppliers, and start attending games once we start playing there. My point is I just don't see it happening, as just because we are playing at the same ground will not automatically make the football fans come again for the RL. Maybe we get a few when no football is on, but for instance in my family, my wife would let me attend a game on Sat or on Sunday, but not both, she would get very annoyed if I was gone all weekend on sports games. I assume thats the same for most people

Not sure if its good or bad news Crash but I'd assume we play the weekend they are away. So you might be OK (or not as the case may be).

Now if we had a team as good as that which finished runners up in SL under Tony Currie then quite a few might get the bug. Or Tank Gordon's team come to that.

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:12 pm  

Victor wrote:

If I was a Dons fan, reading this forum would not impress me.

MK Dons fans might find it amusing.

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:14 pm  

crashmon wrote:

if it was the otherway and Wimbledon came to trailfinders and we was the landlords, I would not go to any Football games,

Don't lose any sleep about Any Club wanting to go to Trailfinders! lol, Rugby League was my fist love! West Ham has been for 50 years, I was a member of a Rugby Union club for years, been to many matches at Twickenham, and big Lancashire Cricket follower, of all of them worry more about Rugby League & it's future

Such a small word IF? but when it comes to leaving a ground such as Brentford? Not many of us see The Future!

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:20 pm  

When we were at Brentford, the bees fans were shaking buckets to raise funds to try and turn their club around.
We were in SL with a 3,700 average, they were in the 3rd tier with 5,700
2 decades on and the difference between joined up thinking and the control of a poundland oligarch are frightening.
Top flight football in a new stadium with a wealthy tenant and a back-office/development system that is the blueprint of the future....or a monkey flogging shirts off the back of a wagon?

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:06 am  

As a very new fan, we first had season tickets in 2017, I haven't experienced the decline of the club over many years. So I can't comment on that. It does strike me that the warning signs on the field were there in the few games we played in 2020 - we struggled to overcome Bradford away and were overpowered by Featherstone(?) in the last game before lockdown.

Off the field the Wimbledon move looks like its the victim of some bad luck and poor judgement. The bad luck (or maybe poor judgement) was the second wave of CV19. I guess if we had started the season with spectators, which was the government's plan until the Autumn things may have been better. Mind you practically every viral expert was predicting a second wave. A former colleague is a deputy chair of a major NHS trust and he told me the winter wave was fully factored into their planning.

Having said that we embarked on this season with a combination of an unattractive pricing package for season tickets (we had three bronze tickets at Ealing so a £300 price hike was quite eye watering) and no idea where games would be played. I may have missed something but although the Wimbledon deal is done I don't think we've had the rubber stamp from Merton Council or the date of the first fixture to be played there.

Our circumstances are a little complicated - my wife was advised to shield from CV19 and as a consequence is very nervous about using the tube. So can we drive to Wimbledon? It appears not and coming from Essex we're looking at two hours each way by public transport.

I'm not knocking the club for wanting to use Wimbledon - and maybe for us we just become occasional visitors on weekends free of rail engineering - but it does strike me as madness to move grounds, hike prices, and then revert to the ground where you were originally playing in the middle of a pandemic. You need to attract people back who during lockdwon will have found other things to do. Most people I have spoken to have have re-evaluated things in certain ways so you can't assume as a business that people will return to exactly what they were doing 15 months ago.

The irony of course is that the individual tickets at Ealing (£20/£15) make the £240 season ticket look terrible value. We'll carry on supporting the team and we will get to the games at Ealing that are left. After that we don't really know.

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:48 am  

I think I detailed out the increase in cost and time in another forum which I won't requote here, but basically for 3 of us, the ST cost increase plus the cost and time to get to wimbledon on Public transport vs driving to ealing worked out at being 6 times more expensive and taking 6 times as long per game (this is not just the ST price, but comparing the price of parking for one car vs three people train and bus tickets).

When you also consider the product we are going to see if worse than before its not hard to make the call we did

Re: SUNDAYS GAME : Thu Jun 17, 2021 1:08 pm  

So we have taken the plunge and took advantage of the 4 games for £60 offer. £15 per game is too good to pass up, but feel for those ST holders this season who are actually paying more for the next 4 home games than we are. (although they have better seats so not as bad).

Hopefully a few more like us will have taken up this offer, as where I won't pay £25 to watch mid table championship RL, 15GBP is more aligned to the product on offer (and we can drive and park as well which is a bonus)

One final point, I though we would be give an assigned time to arrive at the ground, but it seems we just got the tickets without any specification of what time we should arrive. This tells me London not expecting many people this sunday vs Whitehaven