Irving takes inspiration 26/04/2024

[rick]

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dartford/s ... ok-305743/

Dartford chairman Steve Irving takes inspiration from Chatham Town as he weighs up options for increasing attendances at Princes Park next season

Chairman Steve Irving has vowed Dartford will be working hard to increase attendances at Princes Park.

Some sections of supporters feel their club are being overtaken in that regard by other non-league teams who are more connected to their fanbase, and their views are being taken seriously.

“I think we’ve got to take note of some of the comments supporters have made,” stated Mr Irving. “Constructive comments are always good.

“There have been some very good ones recently and we’re shortly going to announce admission prices, season-ticket prices and changes to one or two things that are going to go on around the ground to try and encourage people to come back through the door.

“The attendances have dropped but they still sit over the 1,000-mark, which we’ve always had. People like to throw at us that the crowds have been decimated, but they haven’t.

“There have been one or two poor crowds but the average tells what it was, and that was over 1,000.

“We’ve got to do more, we’ve got to do better and we’ve got to look at some of the clubs around us who have doubled and trebled their attendances, the likes of Chatham and Hastings and others who almost overnight have started bringing 1,500 or 2,000 people in.

“So, we need to learn from them which we will be doing in the coming weeks.”

Dartford reduced admission prices for the final four home league games of the season.

They also made it free admission for juniors, in contrast to the previous membership scheme which was introduced after a small minority of youngsters caused problems at matches.

On dropping the prices, Mr Irving noted: “It certainly worked as the first two games we had 1,300-plus.

“It’s a bit of a loss leader at the end of the day, doing what we did cost the club money in terms of lost revenue even with the higher crowds.

“Even at 1,300 it’s not made up for the difference between the admission prices and the free entry for the kids. But it’s something we felt we had to do to improve the atmosphere at the ground.

“This thing about us banning kids, we never did. We just wanted them to behave, go through a membership scheme and come and enjoy the games.

“If it carried on as it was, we were at risk of getting big fines from the FA and the league because of their misbehaviour. It was only a small element as well, which was the thing.

“The membership scheme was only designed to keep an eye on who they were, and if we had to deal with things, we had a mechanism to do so. But we were accused of banning them and we never did ban them.

“The last four games we did what we did and it brought a lot of the kids back in which was great to see, and they behaved which was brilliant.

“I was at Yeovil for the last away game and there were officially 115 Dartford fans there. There was a big crowd of youngsters and they were absolutely brilliant, they sang their hearts out and behaved well and we need them back next season.”

Mr Irving also paid tribute to the club’s women’s team and academy sides, who have enjoyed success on the field this term.

He added: “We’ve got some fantastic sections - the women’s team have been outstanding, they won their Cup Final on Sunday 5-1, they’ve got the Kent Cup Final next Sunday and are second in the league.

“That’s a highlight in a rather dark season. We’ve got to work with the management team there to make sure we give them every opportunity to progress.

“The Academy won the National League Alliance this year, two or three sides in the junior academy have won leagues and cups, reached national finals, so of course the future’s bright.”

[KentC]

Not that there was any doubt but incase there was this shows 100% they read the forum. Nothing wrong with that btw

[rambo]

Steve I am glad the Board are thinking about change and initiatives to improve attendances and await to hear what the plans and changes are
I would be like to comment on two points
Please do not sugarcoat the attendances in the last two seasons. It had been disappointing to say the least. You well know that all the season tickets are counted whether people turn up or not ( I missed 4/5 games because I could not. E bothered to watch trashy no effort)
When I first started watching the darts in the mid 70s the town housed 40000 people and the gates were over 1000. The town I believe house way over 100000 so the gate should be a minimum of 2000
The quality of football is dire and the quality of food on offer is even worse
You must accept I am right and work to fix this abysmal situation
The second point is you were totally wrong to pick on the young people . Whatever you say the fact is they were banned because they disappeared overnight and from that moment our season and club died. I accept a few young people may have misbehaved but the behaviour of the few should have been dealt with by stewards instead of kicking out 200ish youngsters.
Perhaps , you can work on improving the verbal behaviour of adults in the stadium
This is not a rant against you Steve whenever I say you in this post I mean the Board
I am you can make a difference next season as believe me I have seen no evidence yet that the decline of DFC has not been halted or reversed
I wish you luck

[Bagdhad Billy]

Steve I am glad the Board are thinking about change and initiatives to improve attendances and await to hear what the plans and changes are
I would be like to comment on two points
Please do not sugarcoat the attendances in the last two seasons. It had been disappointing to say the least. You well know that all the season tickets are counted whether people turn up or not ( I missed 4/5 games because I could not. E bothered to watch trashy no effort)
When I first started watching the darts in the mid 70s the town housed 40000 people and the gates were over 1000. The town I believe house way over 100000 so the gate should be a minimum of 2000
The quality of football is dire and the quality of food on offer is even worse
You must accept I am right and work to fix this abysmal situation
The second point is you were totally wrong to pick on the young people . Whatever you say the fact is they were banned because they disappeared overnight and from that moment our season and club died. I accept a few young people may have misbehaved but the behaviour of the few should have been dealt with by stewards instead of kicking out 200ish youngsters.
Perhaps , you can work on improving the verbal behaviour of adults in the stadium
This is not a rant against you Steve whenever I say you in this post I mean the Board
I am you can make a difference next season as believe me I have seen no evidence yet that the decline of DFC has not been halted or reversed
I wish you luck

I like this post! There does seem an air of not actually accepting that the crowds were down and that the youth disappeared due to the clubs actions in the statement. I’ve said for a while we should be hitting gates of 2k however the people of Dartford want to be entertained and incentivised as soon as this happens they will turn into a loyal following like we all did back in the day…

[Spike]

The crowds were down a few hundred each year of Dowson's tenure, of that there is no doubt. Plus it was true that many season ticket holders stopped coming so it was definitely a bit worse than the official figures would have revealed. It is also true that whilst the club did not BAN young fans, they certainly sent out a message that they were not welcome. That might not have been the intention, but it was certainly how it was perceived. The message that came across was that a few fans had misbehaved so all youngsters were tarred with the same brush and would have to put their name on a register. It came across as a punishment. Yes, I know they only had to go and join the scheme for free, but the fact is that many potential newbies were put off by this and simply chose not to bother. We should be finding ways to entice people in, not putting obstacles in the way.

When it comes to PR, we are absolutely hopeless at Dartford FC. If there was a league for that, we'd be getting relegated twice this season. Truth is, the club's attitude to young fans has been p*ss poor and it needs to change. If there are one or two troublemakers then the stewards need to deal with them as individuals and not just carpet bomb everybody under 18. An incident at the Truro game summed up this attitude perfectly, when some foolish plonker amongst a large group of youngsters threw a screwed up piece of paper onto the pitch and the steward reacted by saying if he found out who did it, he would "throw the whole lot of them out". Now apart from being morally unjust, this doesn't even make any sense. I can recall teachers using the "if the guilty person doesn't own up I will give EVERYONE a detention" peer pressure method to extract a confession, but this steward threats were doing the exact opposite and made absolutely zero sense.

What we should be doing is welcoming the youngsters with open arms, possibly giving massively discounted or even free season tickets if possible, which then gives us the added bonus of being able to rescind the ticket for the one or two numpties who transgress. Young fans are vital to our future. We've been plodding along as a club and have taken our eye off the ball. Radical changes are needed as we strive to find ways to reignite the club.

[DA Mikey]

An incident at the Truro game summed up this attitude perfectly, when some foolish plonker amongst a large group of youngsters threw a screwed up piece of paper onto the pitch and the steward reacted by saying if he found out who did it, he would "throw the whole lot of them out". Now apart from being morally unjust, this doesn't even make any sense.

Wish I’d seen this, definitely one for the scrapbook of the mind.

[Park Life]

An incident at the Truro game summed up this attitude perfectly, when some foolish plonker amongst a large group of youngsters threw a screwed up piece of paper onto the pitch and the steward reacted by saying if he found out who did it, he would "throw the whole lot of them out". Now apart from being morally unjust, this doesn't even make any sense.

Wish I’d seen this, definitely one for the scrapbook of the mind.

I did and spoke to the youngsters to explain the consequences of their actions, they were fine after that.