Where have the crowds gone

[gafferbee]

Having said all that, I'm encouraged by recent results and I hope to be back soon. Life is busy, but I'm hopeful.

Spot on. Sadly we've been let down repeatedly over the years and the balance has shifted. Instead of turning up and cheering on the team and hoping that they'll respond and win, more and more are presumably just waiting until we have a good team we can watch.

There are obvious flaws with that approach, but it's logical on an individual basis.

Personally, I'd say all the rest of the OP's points don't matter much at all. A good team playing attractive football is all that matters.

The most recent relegation hit hard. I felt betrayed by the club from top to bottom. It was reckless, careless and negligent to allow it to happen. I suspect it drove away many fans for now, and even if (when) we go back up again it will be harder than ever before to revive that inner sense of belief that our club has a glorious future ahead of us.

So people don't come as much as they did before.

It's been 15 years of mostly crap football and a constant churn of players and managers coupled to expensive tickets and a bitch of a journey to get to games. In short, it's not been fun for quite some time.

It's going to take persistent attacking, winning football to turn it around coupled with a charm offensive from the club. Like stop sending people threatening legal letters.

[HertsBee]

As the clubs budget is probably worked out according to the amount of home fans, how about a deal for away fans. Say for instance Woking, where we charge their fans £15 and agree that they charge us the same. It proved recently when Maidenhead fans boycotted coming to the Hive because they were being charged £22 so less than normal came, but if it was £15 many more might have been there. It is expensive doing an away day game so every little would help. Also why not try a Friday night game maybe against one of the nearer clubs like Woking, Bromley, Sutton or Ebbsfleet, because to them it would only be like a Tuesday night game, but we wouldn't be clashing with any of the big clubs either playing in London, or being on TV. So many very valid points have been brought up in this thread(not all negative and some good solutions) that a direct dialogue with TK to see and hear his views would be useful, but who would be the people to speak with, as there doesn't seem to be a proper body to represent the fans.

[b4life]

I can sympathise with the Maidenhead supporters. I mean, it's hardly the most affluent area is it? I am sure their fans must have been struggling for a few extra quid to come to a proper ground and sit in a quality stand with a great view and a bar available to them too. Poor mites. At the next home match please support my collection for the poor Maidenhead supporters.

[StephenM]

I was gob smacked last season after a brilliant packed out attendance for the Brentford match. I really couldn’t believe the following weeks attendance which was back down at its usual low figure. Honestly I was gobsmacked to see the fall back to the usual crowd size.
It wasn’t as if we played poorly or got knocked out by the false Bees, quite the opposite. Really puzzled about that.

This isn't unique to Barnet, you can guarantee that every non league club who has a big occasion goes back to the regulars the following week. It's annoying but it's a fact.

[Norfolkbee]

The biggest problem with Barnet down the years has been their failure to kick on after promotion. Fry's team started to do it until the off-the-field antics kicked in. We had a decent team around the millennium until Cottee came on the scene, which, in TK's defence, was probably a case of him trying too hard to put a marker down.
As for 2005, I really thought that, with a couple of additions, PF had the makings of a squad capable of pushing on. Quite surprising it never really materialised.
The seasons following the last promotion were just a damp squib. A shame as the new ground should have been a stepping stone to a bright future.

[ninestein]

The last promotion under MA should have been the one. To win the NL on live TV with a full house, the feel-good factor was there. Compared to 2005, We had the better stadium, the revenue behind it, and all the resources got wasted on Lisbie, Batt, Tomlinson etc. No additional quality put into the starting XI. A stuttering season, and suddenly the momentum was gone.

[X-Bumble]

It proved recently when Maidenhead fans boycotted coming to the Hive because they were being charged £22 so less than normal came, but if it was £15 many more might have been there.

Do you happen to have any actual evidence to back this statement up?

I'm not criticising, I'm genuinely interested?

[ninestein]

Did they really boycott coming, or were there always going to be that many of them turning up? Sounds to me like it was all words on their part.

[lemming3k]

The problem is regulars will miss a few games, realise they don’t miss the game day experience as much as they thought they would then find something else to do and that becomes a habit like going to the games was.
I actually think it becomes hard to get them back, but like others have said only winning regularly will do this.

It's surprising how much this is overlooked. Once you lose the fans they find other things to do, which quickly become commitments and enticing them back takes a lot of effort and probably a bit of luck.

The fact is a lot of people felt let down by the club at some point and stopped attending. There are likely a lot of reasons for this feeling;

Long term poor football - The main issue. Consistently competing at the top and playing good football will undoubtedly bring fans, new and old.
Prices/membership - For example at one point the terrace was announced to be £20. Regardless of the reductions and corrections since, the damage was likely done at the point of announcement.
Closing the terrace (particularly at short notice) - As above, anyone who just wants a cheap standing ticket at a game quickly becomes a stayaway.
Fans feeling like loyalty is a one way street - For example the Brentford away ticket sales.
Stewarding/club actions - Stories of people being thrown out for errant beer cans or denied access for an alleged double scanned ticket doesn't help the club.
Toxic atmosphere - Quite frankly fan attitudes are an issue. The idea that 'stayaways aren't proper fans' isn't going to encourage them to come back. I doubt a single fan walked away and instantly stopped being a Bee.
Likewise it certainly isn't enjoyable to loudly hear things like the abuse of Rossi, or how rubbish we are after 10 minutes when it's 0-0 and someone misplaces a pass. Point 1 may go some way to rectifying this as everyone starts to feel more positive.


There's no denying the football has improved this year, or that the club has tried to take corrective actions to some of the above issues. However it only takes one or two missed games to lose a fan, and the club has probably been a bit cavalier in assuming fan loyalty will trump everything. It clearly doesn't.
These things also add to missed opportunities to gain new fans, for example having Spurs on the doorstep for a while could have been used and marketed to bring in fans; instead we seemed to shy away in the face of a more attractive competitor. Or maybe we just have so much external revenue that attendance doesn't matter.

The community feel has been eroded, but I'd say over time with the right attitude from the club and fans and some good football we will see attendances rise again. DC is a good manager and can really begin turning this around. We will know how far the club has come when he has a bad spell and everyone is still behind him.

[Norfolkbee]

The last promotion under MA should have been the one. To win the NL on live TV with a full house, the feel-good factor was there. Compared to 2005, We had the better stadium, the revenue behind it, and all the resources got wasted on Lisbie, Batt, Tomlinson etc. No additional quality put into the starting XI. A stuttering season, and suddenly the momentum was gone.

It was easy to see why things went wrong after the last promotion - too reliant on Akinde coupled with poor recruitment.
However, the struggles of the class of 2005 are less easy to fathom out. Our best efforts always seem reserved for Cup competitions, which left me thinking that PF was a master at setting teams up for KO competitions, but never quite got to grips with what was needed in the Football League. Other managerial appointments were awful, although we started well under Hendo. Edgar just offered a bit of light relief and hope.

[#Beebot]

Re Maidenhead they brought half what they brought last year with their team sitting in the playoffs now compared to bottom 4 this time last year.

[#Beebot]

The last promotion under MA should have been the one. To win the NL on live TV with a full house, the feel-good factor was there. Compared to 2005, We had the better stadium, the revenue behind it, and all the resources got wasted on Lisbie, Batt, Tomlinson etc. No additional quality put into the starting XI. A stuttering season, and suddenly the momentum was gone.

It was easy to see why things went wrong after the last promotion - too reliant on Akinde coupled with poor recruitment.
However, the struggles of the class of 2005 are less easy to fathom out. Our best efforts always seem reserved for Cup competitions, which left me thinking that PF was a master at setting teams up for KO competitions, but never quite got to grips with what was needed in the Football League. Other managerial appointments were awful, although we started well under Hendo. Edgar just offered a bit of light relief and hope.

The 2005 summer signings were awful and did little to improve the squad which was a big part of it.

[ninestein]

I think the recruitment by PF once we re-joined the league in 2005 was no better than when MA took us up. Fairclough's signings didn't improve on what we already had. Ross Flitney in goal was no better than Scott Tynan. Adam Gross at LB was no better than Simon Clist. It's a nice gesture to show faith in the team which got you promoted, but in hindsight, both occasions were a bit of a let-down.

PF actually re-invented the side a bit after the initial season. The recruitment of Bishop, Sagi Burton and Josh Wright on loan actually gave us a nice balance, along with Jason Puncheon. There were some games where we did score quite freely, but we were still inconsistent.

The downturn in atmosphere came about when Underhill was reconfigured to have the away fans in the top of the East Terrace. Coupled with the new South Stand being built, the vocal element was broken up a bit. The dire football which followed the initial Hendon half season just killed it, apart from the odd game here and there where there was something to play for, like Swindon in the JPT, or the last day of the season matches.

Moving onto now, we had certain hardcore of fans who came over to the Hive. From memory we had around 3,000 for the opening game against Chester. I suspect a lot of them were curious about the new stadium. Several years on, maybe the novelty has worn off, and now we're down to the basics again of how we perform on the pitch, and is it worth the travel time etc. Until this time last year, the football was hardly an improvement on what most people witnessed in the dying embers of the Underhill era. Hardly going to entice people to keep coming in the long run.

The big challenge now is convincing people to try us out again, and how do we reach out to them? Is it down to the club to do all of the work, or should we as supporters have a part to play in promoting it outside this forum? In my opinion, we should all be doing it.

In this day and age, we can't rely on the local paper to tell the public how well we've played, as the coverage is minimal. Maybe it's time to brag about our victories and how well we're playing on Facebook, Twitter et al.

[Norfolkbee]

The last promotion under MA should have been the one. To win the NL on live TV with a full house, the feel-good factor was there. Compared to 2005, We had the better stadium, the revenue behind it, and all the resources got wasted on Lisbie, Batt, Tomlinson etc. No additional quality put into the starting XI. A stuttering season, and suddenly the momentum was gone.

It was easy to see why things went wrong after the last promotion - too reliant on Akinde coupled with poor recruitment.
However, the struggles of the class of 2005 are less easy to fathom out. Our best efforts always seem reserved for Cup competitions, which left me thinking that PF was a master at setting teams up for KO competitions, but never quite got to grips with what was needed in the Football League. Other managerial appointments were awful, although we started well under Hendo. Edgar just offered a bit of light relief and hope.

The 2005 summer signings were awful and did little to improve the squad which was a big part of it.

Flitney came with a decent reputation, which he never lived up to. That said, he was only signed because Tynan was stalling on a new deal. The other signings completely pass me by, although Gross springs to mind.

[jerroll]

The last promotion under MA should have been the one. To win the NL on live TV with a full house, the feel-good factor was there. Compared to 2005, We had the better stadium, the revenue behind it, and all the resources got wasted on Lisbie, Batt, Tomlinson etc. No additional quality put into the starting XI. A stuttering season, and suddenly the momentum was gone.

It was easy to see why things went wrong after the last promotion - too reliant on Akinde coupled with poor recruitment.
However, the struggles of the class of 2005 are less easy to fathom out. Our best efforts always seem reserved for Cup competitions, which left me thinking that PF was a master at setting teams up for KO competitions, but never quite got to grips with what was needed in the Football League. Other managerial appointments were awful, although we started well under Hendo. Edgar just offered a bit of light relief and hope.

The 2005 summer signings were awful and did little to improve the squad which was a big part of it.

Flitney came with a decent reputation, which he never lived up to. That said, he was only signed because Tynan was stalling on a new deal. The other signings completely pass me by, although Gross springs to mind.

Flitney
Gross
Norville
Bowditch
Soares