Season tickets

Interesting read in today's season ticket newspaper. They have a five year plan to become self financing. Does that mean KD is going to stand down in five years? I hope not, but we should be aiming to getting closer and closer to breaking even without a sugar daddy.

I suppose that is one reason why they have doubled adult season ticket prices. If the number of adults doesn't drop by half then they have made more money. I know I will probably get one, mainly because if I don't I can see me drifting away from the sport as I probably wouldn't part with £24 on selected home matches. It is cheaper to get a season ticket if you go to 9 home games next season.

Anyone thinking of switching to behind the sticks to save £100?

matt01 wrote:

Interesting read in today's season ticket newspaper. They have a five year plan to become self financing. Does that mean KD is going to stand down in five years? I hope not, but we should be aiming to getting closer and closer to breaking even without a sugar daddy.

I suppose that is one reason why they have doubled adult season ticket prices. If the number of adults doesn't drop by half then they have made more money. I know I will probably get one, mainly because if I don't I can see me drifting away from the sport as I probably wouldn't part with £24 on selected home matches. It is cheaper to get a season ticket if you go to 9 home games next season.

Anyone thinking of switching to behind the sticks to save £100?

I almost certainly won't get one Matt, It's a choice between going from 5 to 6 day membership at the golf club so i can play Sundays or a season ticket for the Giants, up to now i have done both, but with the Grandson playing more and more on Sundays that will probably decide it for me, Apart from that next year will be 60 years for me and i have seen too many false dawns, I just don't believe it any more so i will just pick my games and pay on the day.

To be quite honest i am becoming very disillusioned with the whole game, On Sky ( the main source of income ) the game is presented by a bunch of clowns, The reffing is the worst of any sport i know ( and shows no sign of improving ) The players are fitter and faster but are able to play far less time ( forwards ) that may be a good or bad thing , i don't know but it means in many cases that players are getting ever more money for ever less time on the field, It may be that i am getting cynical in my old age, But my mate who went to today's game texted the score to me and i was quite unmoved by the result or the way they had played, At one time i would have gone home and stirred the goldfish bowl or chased the Budgie round the house with a newspaper ( joking, but you know what i mean ) today nothing, at the moment i don't see them winning another game this season and it doesn't bother me, so i reckon It's time to call it a day as far as season tickets go.

I do want them to win and do well, I always shall but i reckon i will be picking my games from here on in, The other thing is I don't ever see them being self financing and K Davy will not cough up indefinitely, To announce increases like they have today on the back of the last 3 months performances gives an indication of the situation
The answer is to pull more fans and this season was the best chance they have ever had , they now need a miracle, I truley hope they get one.

Sorry to hear that. A fan for so long, but I suppose if we do well next year you might be walking up and paying on the day to a fair few games. Fingers crossed.

The price increase does smack of a bit of taking advantage of the loyal fans. The club have tried to get more people in and the offer did that to a certain extent, but not enough to make it worth while continuing such cheap tickets, however in previous seasons season ticket holders have been given a cheaper renewal price. I know they have the November deadline before the prices go sky high, but if they had offered say £175 for existing season ticket holders it might have helped to retain a few more of the current holders.

I wont be getting one either.

Too much money for me. I could buy one but i am paying for something I can't really afford.

However I will be paying to see what I can, maybe even getting a half season ticket. So alls not lost with me really

Like a lot of things nowadays they offer a money back guarentee. I think they should offer something along the lines of...If the Giants don't win 75% of their games then you get 50% of your season ticket price back. What do you reckon

I reckon "I saw your face --and youre a believer!!"

C`mon Ponner --you know how its run !

Theyve cocked up with the hype and spin --and now its claw back !!

They should have maintained status quo with an index linked increase and no one would have turned a hair !
Should have sent NB and KB off when it was leaked - and given PA a probationary period till end of season --and taken stock then

Didnt need panic --but needed careful thought about what to do - and it seems we dithered and dallied instead

And now we`re going back to ticket prices that folk would have adjusted to gradually instead of a price hike on the back of dismal performances -and no silverware and no improvement on the previous season (as of now!)

A grand final win COULD clinch it --but truthfully can you see iy at the moment ???

The loyal passionate fans will on the whole swallow this increase, some will take a pragmatic view and see if they attend all 13 home games the price is just over £15 a game which is still good value, especially if you also go to the magic weekend, buy a shirt and take advantage of all the other benefits of a season ticket. Those who miss the odd game, don't by shirts and can live without their live RL fix will think twice before separating with their cash. Some will, some won't. Time will tell if the numbers fall significantly or not. The spin will point towards not too big a fall from the current 5000+ season ticket holders, but how many of those are full paying season ticket holders anyway? I bet a significant number are free kids, cheap kids or young adults.

I shall certainly be getting one.Even at that price we still get the greatest game on the cheap.I rcall going to ER for an international,and noting the silly prices soccer fans were asked to pay to watch that dirge.I was amazed,and yet there are thousands prepared to pay that much and a whole load more.

The new season ticket prices are a good deal compared to most other clubs, but... and it is a big but, they are significantly up on previous prices on the back of a disasterous second half of the season (I was told a "league table" for the second half of the season we would be tied bottom on 6 points, that is how bad we have been)

On top of the price rise fixture scheduling is another issue. I generally miss a couple of home matches due to holidays and missed one on a monday night this year. Then there are sky friday night games and some saturday evenings. Due to various other commitments it is doubtful I will get to more home games this coming season than last, so my calculation is based on 9/10 games maximum, perhaps 3 of which I could watch live on sky.

I will probably renew, I know I will be at about 2/3 of next years games, home or away, but there is no particular incentive for me to rush out and renew, I certainly won't renew before I see if we have signed a couple of decent props.

The current team have a very good set of backs, yes another half would be good, but will have little or no impact without the ball in field position, more teams will come and try to rough us up like Bradford & HKR did and like Leeds will try in a couple of weeks. We simply must be able to nulify that, we wont with hookers and second rows playing prop. Nobody will just let us play rugby, we have to earn the right to in the physical battle.

I want to see a much better balanced squad rather than the "emperor's new clothes" squad we got this year.

defleppard wrote:

I shall certainly be getting one.Even at that price we still get the greatest game on the cheap.I rcall going to ER for an international,and noting the silly prices soccer fans were asked to pay to watch that dirge.I was amazed,and yet there are thousands prepared to pay that much and a whole load more.

I can see your point of view DL but for me It,s also about if we do still have the greatest game, You couldn't pay me to go watch Soccer but there was i believe over 15,000 at the Town game last night, On a good week in League you might get 60,000 fans for the 7 super league games, i would imagine Man U will get that on their own, so you have to start and ask who is watching the Dirge them or us, too you and me there is no question, but to a few hundred thousand every weekend you would get a strong argument, and strong as you loyalties are you have to admit that for the last 3 months we have been watching dirge.
In my 60 years i have seen similar and far worse from fartown, but it has almost always been because the were up against a better class of player or team, now we are supposed to be on a par and we have shown that we can play, unfortunately we have also shown that we can turn out dirge, K Davy has chosen exactly this time to announce the new prices, which seems to indicate to me that things are coming to a make or break point otherwise he would have chosen a more opportune time, That said if he walked away tomorrow i wouldn't blame him and i don't think anyone else would either, ( hope I'm wrong about all this )
The bottom line of all this is that a club has to stand alone at the end of the day, sooner or later any club's so called Sugar daddy will call time and if the club isn't paying it will go to the wall just as Bradford have done ( and they get crowds that we are someday hoping to get ) Though it's very doubtful we ever shall, and so through envy, or spite, or revenge, or whatever reason, large numbers of Fartown fans are hoping Bradford disappear or at least are relegated, despite them being probably our best gate of the season and therefore taking money out of KD's coffers.
It's stuff like this and other things i have mentioned in earlier posts that are putting me off, the whole game seems to me to be losing that family image that it had , yes it may be a faster game in better stadia but it has definitely lost something, It used to be you went to watch both sides, and although you wanted your side to win you clapped the other side when they deserved it, I never see that anymore, It's all blaming the ref or the linesmen or something else, and the reffing, on field and Video, appalling as it is , is appalling for all teams, It's a disgrace , It's spoiling the game and it's not going to get better.
League has sold it's soul to Sky It's basically controlled by them ( very badly ) and the sad thing is that without Sky we would be back to amateur Rugby faster than a Rat up a drainpipe so we are now in a position where they say jump the RFL say how high, the worst thing of all is we will never beat the old enemy again, and even worse not many fans care if we do or not, There is little or no appetite for International rugby anymore, people care about their club and that's it. There used to be big crowds for Yorkshire Lancashire games , Fartown won the Yorkshire cup so many times i've lost count, and all with big crowds, used to be 25,000 and more for CC semi's, now the top games might get 7,000, all because nothing matters now except Sky and Super league .

This may all sound like the moaning of some old guy whose best days are behind him, and It's fair enough, But as far as i can see if i am being honest, The Giants with the backing of a Multi Millionaire have proved themselves to be also rans , they look no nearer to winning anything, and most fans are now looking forward to yet another clean slate with more new faces ,who this time are going to do the business, I don't blame them I've been there more times than i can count ,but i've just run out of enthusiasm, There will be no more season ticket for me , i shall go to the games i fancy and i really hope they do well but i won't be holding my breath, i just have the feeling they have missed the bus, Hope I'm wrong.

One of the things I miss is mixing with away fans on the terraces/stands. Having a good chat about the refs, players, the game in general. Still things change, the game evolves. Some for the better and some not.

I don't think we have definitely missed the boat, but this current implosion may well have set us back badly on both the playing front and keeping/getting new supporters.

matt01 wrote:

One of the things I miss is mixing with away fans on the terraces/stands. Having a good chat about the refs, players, the game in general. Still things change, the game evolves. Some for the better and some not.

I don't think we have definitely missed the boat, but this current implosion may well have set us back badly on both the playing front and keeping/getting new supporters.

I truly hope you are right Matt, but they have made some massive mistakes, both the people on the recruiting and player contract side and players on the field, It's a long time since they have had the chance to make the grade like they have this last few seasons, I remember Flying Prop saying, Who remembers losers, and they don't put the runners up on the Trophy, He was absolutely right. I guess next years season tickets will be a good indicator of what our capabilities are.

The main thing from my angle is a lot of the problems have been caused (IMO) by decisions taken at high level

The supporters didnt take em --but we are now being requested to be part of the rescue contingencies

Weve released/ transfered some GOOD players

Weve signed Good replacements but in some cases not got much mileage out of some
Other replacements have not shown me they`re any better

We had the big on pitch announcements re reduced price tickets--and "frozen" ticket prices in an attempt to reach the magic 10000 figure
It didnt happen

Notice the increase in prices was a little more subdued

So if the balance sheet doesnt look healthy-- we didnt cause that either

The procrastination over the Brown brothers affair did no good at all --and team moral seems to be rock bottom as a knock on maybe

If not i strikes me that something else behind the scenes has had some repercussions that neither us or the Examiner have any knowledge of

I have no argument that they should inform us of internal politics --but when we can only "guess" whats going/gone on --we have to make our own decisions what we do ourselves
In some cases like Bo and me its not particularly financial - its a lack of return on what we pay out
In some cases -in the present climate --it could well be that some who dont want to watch from behind the sticks dont bother cos they cant afford the touchline stands

All of the above "assumptions" have I think contributed to the"low" we`re now facing

And not putting too fine a point on it -- an egg cup during NB`s reign would I think have solved a few question marks

We`re (barring some divine intervention) at another "maybe next season " scenario yet again and it does after 50 years or so get a little tiresome

Some of the faithful ARE the senior giants and such, and a few more who are getting tired of the never ending (it seems) "false hopes" and the increased prices (however reasonable they may be if consistent effort was shown on the pitch) and there may not be sufficient ST`s sold
The return may be the same --but from LESS numbers
Exactly the reverse of the INCREASE we were wanting !

We the supporters arent party to all this !
So who is?

The club took a gamble on cheap deals to increase the crowds it didn't entirely work out, now they are taking another gamble that doubling the season tickets won't seriously damage the increased crowds. Who are the people responsible for taking these gambles? Is it the board in general or has someone presented a plan to them?

matt01 wrote:

The club took a gamble on cheap deals to increase the crowds it didn't entirely work out, now they are taking another gamble that doubling the season tickets won't seriously damage the increased crowds. Who are the people responsible for taking these gambles? Is it the board in general or has someone presented a plan to them?

May be some time before we have any aswers to those questions Matt, My own feeling is that like PG, none of the blame for this situation can be layed at the Fans door ( not that I'm saying anyone is trying to do that )

My gut feeling is that KD has put a time limit on how long he will continue, He is a very successful man and yet he has not enjoyed that same success with the Giants, He must share some responsibility for that , he has done the hiring and firing
of the backroom and high profile people , IMO they have not taken the club to where he was expecting them to be, and we all know that you can only get people through the gates on promises and cheap deals for so long, I just feel that the Egg timer has been turned over for the last time, and if they don't make that step up like Warrington did, it will all be over.
I desperately hope this is all rubbish, but it is beginning to look more and more realistic to me, I just don't see an announcement of a big increase in prices ,on the back of half a season of rubbish unless things are coming to a head.

Bo has hit the nail on the head imo. I've watched Fartown for over 40 years & we are still as far away from winning a pot as ever. Like other fans, I could put up with the drubbings when we were struggling for a legitimate squad, but what's the excuse now? Well I still think the problem IS the squad.

I still think the squad we have had in NB's reign just wasn't good enough. His 1st season was our best chance for a trophy imo & we just couldn't get there.

The problem is that we have inferior players in key positions who wouldn't get a place in a Wire/Wigan/Leeds/Saints team at all. The quality (or lack thereof) of some of our squad is actually depressing. We have some great youngsters, our three quarter line is excellent & we have a superb half in DB & players like EC, Bruno & Chan up front doing the business too.

BUT......LOD & DOOF.....hardly ever played for us & taken alot of cash out of the cap. Other trophy winning sides' overseas players play week in ,week out & contribute hugely (look at Furner,Buderus,Hoffman, the Monaghans etc etc).

And then we carry far too many substandard passengers (Grix, Fergy, Moore etc) who just simply aren't good enough.

I wouldn't blame KD for walking away & I'll always wish him well. All I can do is buy a season ticket to give the bloke some of his money back & out of loyalty to the C&G.

KD has said the club has a five year plan to become self sufficient on the finance side of things. That to me says he will at least want to seriously cut back his involvement in the next five years. I will be gutted because overall he has been fantastic and brought something I thought I'd never see when I was watching on the Fartown terrace. Unless the plan is smarter than simply doubling season tickets and crossing fingers that fans continue to come in increasing numbers then I can't see us being able to sustain a super league club in five years time.

Sparky has made some great points there and has said what some of us have been saying for quite some time, If you have serious aspirations to be a top side you don't let players like Hodgson and De Vere before him go and then replace them with a huge squad of players, a lot of which are as Sparky says average or not even good enough to get a game. We have one or two decent forwards, Crabtree never stops trying but i would be prepared to gamble that were he to go to Saints ,Wolves or Wigan say, then he would also be a lot more aggressive and assertive, Chan also would improve massively if he were to be with a better side, I totally agree with Sparky about Fa-alogo and LOD, they are just draining the cap to sit in the stand for half the season ( more than half in LOD's case ) yes he has been unlucky maybe, but that doesn't help win us games, Pay them off or whatever, there is no room in the modern game for men who can not make it on to the field, they will never have a good game from the stand.
Whatever they are costing would surely be enough to get a quality SO and a decent Hardman for the front row, IMO there are two things in League that are absolutely essential, 1 the pack must be able to at least hold it's own ( ours has been getting a good hiding most of the season through being to lightweight) 2 you must have two good halfbacks , we have one and nobody even half good enough for the other , and we haven't had for a long time, K Brown had a good spell at one point but to be fair he has always been a Centre.
So unless the Giants stop messing about buying average players from here there and everywhere and concentrate on two or three quality men, all today's younger fans will be waiting half a century for the good times to come back, just like myself and others have been, That's if there still is a Giants.

sparky wrote:

I wouldn't blame KD for walking away & I'll always wish him well. All I can do is buy a season ticket to give the bloke some of his money back & out of loyalty to the C&G.

This pretty much sums up things from my point of view.

I don't mind seeing the team lose if all 17 are giving it 110%,but this year,and maybe towards the end of last season that has not always been the case.

Sir Ken hopes to have us self sustaining in 5 years,good luck to him,I have talked to quite a few who say they won't renew ST's next year for various reasons.Said it before,it was a superbly generous offer this time from Ken,but was always worried that a big jump in price next time would put plenty off regardless of the cheap deal they had been given in 2012.

Pleased to say that I will be introducing a brand new ST holder in 2013,a guy that has never seen the game live before this season,but is already hooked.

Plus I like the social side of RL,a few beers with the lads,which is another important reason why I will definitely re-new.

I'll be renewing - cant do without my weekend Rugby fix, no matter how bad it is !

£ 199 = 2 PINTS a week absolute bargain
for a "supporter" cheap as chips

..............................but I know what Ive enjoyed most since May Boomer!!

So how much do all of you recon yesterdays game was worth??
o ye of little faith

It WAS at least two pints Boomer !!

I`ll let you know the balance at the end of October !!


(and youll be telling me that you never had a doubt next ( if I didnt know you better!!!)

Just got an email saying I can still be one of the first 500 season ticket holders. Can't believe we've not sold 500. When is the seat deadline again?