Comments on: Ebbsfleet and MyFC vote to stay alive

By: weenie

weenie — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:49:04 +0000

Actually no – Halifax were apparently never in contention and didn’t want MyFC’s money. At least one fan was quoted as saying they would rather see Halifax “destroyed” than in the hands of a load of internet nerds who know nothing about football. I’d like to say Halifax’s loss, Ebbsfleet’s gain!

By: Gary Andrews

Gary Andrews — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:51:55 +0000

That’s interesting, and not wholly surprising about Leigh (and God, Genesis was a predictable fiasco). I’m guessing Halifax (who I also heard rumours about) were rejected for similar reasons.

By: weenie

weenie — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:24:46 +0000

Previousmember, we still have those that ask awkward questions and have ‘way out there’ opinions – the difference is that much of the sniping and bitching has gone, although on occasion it does manifest itself, such is the nature of a diverse membership. And as for the yay-sayers, without them, nothing would get done or get achieved if everyone disagreed with everyone!

It’s true what you say about the membership and yes, we do need more members on board all the time – more members = more money, and unfortunately, that’s what it boils down to.

Gary – Leigh was high up (and would have been a great choice for me) but I think the due diligence revealed that there were financial difficulties that even MyFC couldn’t sort out, hence their descent into Leigh Genesis and subsequent plummet down the football pyramid.

By: Previousmember

Previousmember — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:09:04 +0000

Unfortunately BillB you still need to attract greater numbers of new members, bickering or not, it unfortunately all comes down to the numbers. All the determination in the world won’t get past the fact that myfootballclub needs to turn over a lot more members if Ebbsfleet are to even stay a full time side, let alone challenge for promotion. It could also be dangerous to not have people questioning the wisdom of decisions if everything is as rosey and yay saying as it sounds. I realise that bickering and negative comments can become corrosive and ‘unhelpful’ especially when they become personal but sometimes differences of opinion allow better ideas to evolve and creeks without paddles to be avoided.

By: BillB

BillB — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:22:13 +0000

Speaking as a first year member who has renewed, I feel that this year’s ‘confirmed membership’ shows clear signs of being more committed to promoting Ebbsfleet. The continual bickering and negative comments that were flying around for much of last year did little to encourage anyone- let alone the players. This year we have a smaller but more dedicated core group who can put their energies into building a club we can all be proud of. I’m glad that some of the moaners and snipers have gone. Those of us who remain can roll up our sleeves and get on with the job in hand. Helping the fleet move up and out of this division and onto the next.

By: Previousmember

Previousmember — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:52:36 +0000

Perhaps it would also be intersting to know how many active members did not renew? There were many members still active on the forums who were not going to renew and did not care that Leeds were not the club purchased. The Leeds excuse is wheeled out far too often by people with their heads in the sand. The real problems with the model still exist and have still not been addressed. As long as there are happy positive paying yay sayers around who dare not ask difficult questions to anyone the model will continue, albeit a slightly smaller version of itself each year.

By: Gary Andrews

Gary Andrews — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:28:07 +0000

Ah, ok, thanks for clearing that up about the renewals team. That’s definitely interesting that the distance to Ebbsfleet was cited as a reason. I know this is going into hypotheticals, but it would have been interesting to see if things would have been any different if MyFC had brought a more central club (I heard Leigh was very high up the list).

I didn’t realise Moyles was involved in getting the Leeds fans to sign up. In the long term, he probably didn’t help things.

Weirdly, despite MyFC’s current issues, I think there’s some very promising stuff bubbling around the surface and it’ll be interesting to see how things develop.

By: weenie

weenie — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:11:51 +0000

There was/is a Renewals team who did contact members with the sole purpose of getting people to renew and if not, asking them why not, and they conducted a survey of sorts. The main reasons for not renewing apparently was that Ebbsfleet was too far away, or that the member didn’t have the time to commit to support MyFC/EUFC or check the website. For many, I’d guess that it was a one off thing that attracted them to MyFC and they’ve just moved onto the next thing, eg Twitter or whatever takes their fancy.

People forget that the original 25,000 members who signed up had no idea what club was to be purchased, so it was almost guaranteed that there would be disappointment for some people. Around 10,000 of them were Leeds United fans, prompted to sign up by Radio 1′s Chris Moyles, who thought they could buy Leeds United – um unrealistic but it caught the people’s imagination. So straight away, those people wouldn’t have renewed.

It’s just one of those things, people lose interest and move on, maybe there were things that MyFC did that they were unhappy with, maybe it wasn’t what they thought it would be etc.

Nobody has tried this model before for club ownership so there are bound to be things wrong. It can only improve and it is improving.

Currently, we have a lot of initiatives to try to get the membership engaged but as with any community, some people want to muck in and be involved, others like to stay quietly in the background.

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:25:08 +0000

@7 (Nowich 1). Gosh, pedant much? I know only members of MyFC can vote. It’s been repeated in other articles, and when I refer to fans voting I mean MyFC members. That should be pretty self-evident (obviously we’re not talking all fans here…). Anyway MyFC members are also fans, so the fans vote. But fair enough, we have that clarified here, even if we both know that, at least we’ve cleared up any potential misunderstanting.

Daish as coach or manager. Interesting. I know his title’s head coach but most people seem to refer to him as the manager. If it makes you happier, I’ll refer to him as coach. Anyway, care to put me right on every other bit you think I’ve got wrong?

The problem with getting rid of the critics, is those critics helped pay the bills. While a lot of the critics often went very OTT (at times you’d think from some of their comments that the MyFC board were the new antichrist). Yet there have always been criticisms that, I think, still remain valid (and many of the worries have come to pass) and have been expressed in the comments already.

@8 (Goose). That’s actually a really interesting point about finding out why people didn’t renew I’m not sure what the site is doing on that front, but it would be interesting to see what’s being done to boost membership after the first year slump (although the publicity surrounding the recent votes will have probably helped).

@3 (Left Back). I can see a lot of clubs trying it on with daft bids for MyFC players (if I were the Fleet board I’d have recommended rejecting the £10k bid for Charles out of hand). Good on your membership for standing up to the other clubs. The test will probably come when a bid that’s juicy enough to be tempting without being stunning gets put through.

As a general point, while there are still various issues around the MyFC model, and there are a lot of ex-members who have complaints, it’s also heartening that those who are still members do seem to really enjoy it.

By: Goose

Goose — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:06:34 +0000

I am a member of MyFC and have to agree with some points that the “whingers” (as some folk call them) have made re website being a bit more “user friendly”.
I renewed my membership for the second year so that I could see what is going to develop in what will be a watershed year for the club.
The only complaint I woud have so far this year is that as a member who DID renew for year two I (and I assume all other members who renewed) appear to be “targeted” to try and make up the shortfall of those who didn’t renew by buying additional years membership, season tickets and club merchandise.
Why are MyFC not chasing those that didn’t renew to find out WHY and why are they not also trying to bring in NEW members by means of advertising etc. ?
I know that funds have been slashed for this year and advertising can be a costly venture but how else are the club going to attract new members if they don’t let the rest of the world know that we are here ?