Leadership. As great as our Chairman / CEO are going drilling down into the footy program to determine the gaps, and now resourcing these gaps, they have reportedly told the footy dept there will be less distractions. Code, less fan engagement, ‘we’ will satay away and let you focus on footy and there will be minimal disruptions / time required for media, fans etc. so that’s leadership which creates a culture of being ‘closed’ and that means the engagement of fans suffer.
I also think all those around the Ckub during the era the club engaged fans well means a vacuum emerged where current exec team have no sense of what was done well. Leadership saying don’t distract footy, that feeds down to exec teams etc.
Yes, winning is everything but all the clubs surveys of members say the club needs to do better engaging fans and supporters, the membership offer and delivery is sub standard and they want more. Thsts why Vozzo’s presentation at AGM spent considerable time focussing on need to refocus on ‘community’.
So, I don’t agree only 5% want more engagement from the club. They want it all…
That’s what they need to do for their interstate members and supporters. Essendon probably has 400,000 of its fabs outside Victoria. How do you connect better with them? How do you get them interested and wanting to be involved and connected? An interstate membership provides crap value. They do nearly bugger all. So, those sort of concepts are terrific and should be run by our interstate supporter networks, with club support and involve past players attending venues etc.
I’m not a great estimator of this sort of thing, I would have guessed more like 1,000. Certainly long lines for the players. Also from checking my emails today I realised members got a $30 voucher for the Bomber Shop on Friday, which might explain the queue a little better!
As for Windy Hill, one knockback from the bowls club does not need to end the story. It’s definitely a preferred retreat after a flag. The alternative could be East Melbourne around Clarendon and Wellington, spilling out of the old Hilton and into the Fitzroy Gardens. We did play at the EMCG for 40 years.
And if they were delivering on this sort of thing they could possibly generate more income from membership, merchandising, hospitality to allow it to reduce the price increases on memberships and invest in the Hangar facility to make it a bit more accommodating.
I’m a non-Melbourne based supporter and am pretty comfortable with the balance of priorities the club is running with at the moment.
There has honestly never been more Essendon content available in the history of the world- 24/7 anytime. It is remarkable when I think back to the 90s and I’m downloading a 2.5mb .avi at 3.5kb/s Video of Lloydy taking a speccy.
Now I can get on Kayo and instantly stream any quarter of a match I want…it’s a pretty, pretty good time to be a consumer of sports content.
But sure, maybe the club should be putting out more ‘sick burns’ on twitter and perhaps we can strap a go-pro to Brad’s head whilst he berates Jones for going on a bender at the Sorrento Pub.
I do agree that improving the Hangar experience is a good idea- gotta keep our wonderful tribe of training reporters happy and comfortable!!
That’s all fine and good but realistically apart from the super die hard fan and people local to that area no one wants to go to the arse end of the airport to watch footy and have a cheap meal. You need somewhere close to the game for before and after drinks.
You mentioned that we haven’t heard from the coaches recently but you may have missed the very lengthy piece by Jake Niall in The Age following an interview with Brad Scott in the last week.
It may been posted on BB.
It’s an excellent article.
No, I read that. Thanks. However, that’s it though. I thought a bit of an overview of last weeks camp and coaches interviews from the club on Family Day would’ve been examples of what really engaging Clubs would’ve delivered. Anyhow, as I said, they’re aware of the gaps, now let’s see if they can make progress.
If the club cleared half of the second oval for parking and built stands around the main ground it would probably start looking and feeling like a football club.
I noticed he was out on the ground watching match sim yesterday, something he doesn’t always do. He’s quite hands off during these sessions, leaving Gia and Stants to run the session.
Yup. The training facility sucks absolute ass from a fan perspective, let’s face it. Then community/ club feel that comes with being geographically entrenched within the suburbs (and not hidden away in an industrial estate underneath the ■■■■■■■ airport) is a massive loss that whoever planned for the new center overlooked, or underappreciated. The club lost a huge part of its soul when it moved to Tulla.
I want to see an Essendon team this year not drop their heads during games when it doesn’t go their way. I consistent 4 qtr performance with their mindset.