The Norwich game - a suggestion
Monday, 20th Aug 2007 15:04

With the League Cup game against Norwich coming up soon, we make a suggestion in which Dale could maximise the interest in this particular historical fixture.

I know the game is just over a week away at the moment, so you could argue that it's too late to change anything now, but its not been 4 full days since the draw was made.

I think it's fair to except a crowd for this game in the region of between 3000 and 3500. That's being optimistic as well given the size of the crowd for the Stoke game. Taking into account the mixture of adult and child prices, let's say there is an average admission price of £12. So gate receipts for this game will be about £40,000 (again if we take the optimistic attendance figure), which after expenses and the shares given to Norwich and the FL might leave us with around £15,000.

Now of course, we at a club like Dale have to fight for every single penny which is out there, and we can never afford to be extravagent, but equally, we can't afford to take every single paying supporter for granted. We cannot assume that for any game, people will just turn up. In this day and age, you have to convince people to attend rather than just feel that a team on the pitch is good enough.

Now the Norwich game in itself has the potential to drag people in due to the nature of the game, but again we have to convince people of this. We can't just assume that the people of the town are going to turn up because we played them in 1962 - for many supporters that year will mean absolutely nothing. So we have to bang the drum as loudly as we can.

So here's an idea.

We resurrect the entire 1962 final and we do this by charging 1962 prices. I have no idea how much it cost to get in back in 62 but I reckon that you're probably looking at something like between 2p and 5p (its all that £ s d stuff which have never understood).

Yes, we'd lose out on the £15,000 we could make out of gate receipts, but the publicity we could get for the game would be absolutely priceless. We'd have all the papers and TV companies coming down to interview the club about the game, and we'd be able to beat the Centenary drum as much as we possibly could.

You can even seen the pictures now. The likes of Alf, Jonah and Muirhead all dressed in the 62 Toffs shirts, with handlebar moustaches on their faces as we go back to the future. The press would lap it up as we go to town. All the nationals would be down for this, especially in a week where there is none of the big 4 playing and therefore no big news stories.

We could get the Ob on board. Wouldnt take too much effort on their part to produce 1962 pullout special this weekend. Only 4 pages, and they could get a sponsorship at the club for their part in publicising the game.

Handled properly, this 3000 crowd could easily become a 5000 to 6000 crowd, and the club gets so much good will and publicity out of this, that they become flavour of the month. Of course, all these additional punters will bring money with them too and will spend it in the bars, food kiosks, programme sales and club shop. Nothing to even stop you hammering them with fixture lists at the turnstile which perhaps has 2 for the price of 1 voucher for the next home game - a case of getting them in and keeping them in.

it's not a fixture which will sell itself. For too many, its a game against an ordinary Championship side, and maybe even a game with less interest than the Stoke game did. So we have to really push this one out, or it will become another wasted opportunity which with the best will in the world, much of the Centenary has been if you ask me.

I'm sure we can afford to take a gamble on this, and I can't see Norwich complaining about missing out on £15,000 if they are seen to have agreed to a massive price reduction for their supporters.

And of course, we get a big crowd behind us for a winnable fixture, who's to say we won't win and then get our true reward in Round 3 (where a trip to Old Trafford beings £1million+ gate receipts for each game)?