The Kraken

I simply don't agree that its a better range; you're getting opinions of ten people at a time, so a very closed groups. Forums invited many more opinions than that, and more importantly the results went out directly on local radio for all interested parties. Much more open, much more diverse, much better.

Again, that's your opinion, for the people that went I'd suggest most found them valuable. I know I did. Of course most fans didn't go, but does the fact that they were broadcast on local radio not suggest that there was a significant local interest? As for your comment on plenty of other ways to gauge support reaction; what are they, and why are we not doing them?

That makes no sense. Whoever wanted to pose a question could previously turn up at a fans forum if they chose to do so and ask it. If they didn't want to ask a question themselves they could listen in on the radio to hear what was being said. So every "average fan" had an opportunity, if he/she wanted it, to ask a question. Now, less than 1% of fans get that opportuunity; and they're not even necessarily fans that would have chosen to go to a fans forum. How in any way is that better for the average fan? This is only open to season ticket holders. we have 15,000 season ticket holders amongst a database said to be around 80,000. So unless you own a season ticket you can't even hope to have access. I'd suggest you should try judging it not on what you would like, but on what has previously worked best for an entire fan base. The dinners are a very nice thing to have, but they are in no way an adequate replacement of the fans forums.

You've never been to a fans forum if you think that's how it works. You didn't by any stretch have to be affiliated with a supporters' group in order to pose a question; another myth used to defend the scrapping of the forum. If fans forums are such a bad idea, why do so many other clubs take part in them?

Yes, because football message boards are a completely accurate representation of real life, aren't they? The fans forums previously held were well organised and, once the vociferous troublemakers were identified and barred from attending, they were actually very productive. I don't know why so people try to claim otherwise just to defend the fact that they've been shelved.

I'm answering your question, "what information are you missing?". And basing it on a comparison with the fans forums, which we used to have and you claimed in a previous post were not better than the fans dinners. Given the dinner was last night, it's disappointing that the only information to come out of it was some long term ambitions and 3 or 4 tidbits of information that don't really answer anything. So you can see, there's a lot of information that's "missing", and for people who weren't at the dinner its massively difficult for me to see how this format is not much worse than the previous fans' forums.

You ask "What information are you missing?" As far as I can tell, the one poster who has reported his attendance didn't even seem to ask a single question all night. It looks like the highlight for him was that he got recognised by the chairman and spent an evening of awe and wonderment at such a revelation. The first few of these dinners actually served a purpose; they answered some questions and in some small way started to fill the gap of the fans forums being discontinued. But I'd like to hear if any actual questions were asked of NC, rather than they seemingly just ate and drank for free whilst listening to his dream for us to win the title with 8 homegrown players.

It could possibly be reasoned that this is an issue between DataCo and the Echo. Unless DataCo have made a specific request that the Echo are refused access to the ground, though I'm not sure whether they would have any authority to do that. In any case, absolutely right, it is a very minor issue and quite why the club and newspaper can't come together for a common solution which is in both party's interests is a bit puzzling.

Calm down, Sherlock Holmes. The only way a lot of people knew about the Echo ban came from the thread I re-posted earlier in the this thread, which only raised it's head a wekk or two ago. Prior to that others (including myself) had no idea that the Echo were still banned. Indeed a moderator from this forum claimed on that thread that, to his knowledge, the Echo still had full access. If the information is not easily found in the public domain (and the Echo are hardly going to advertise the fact that their reports are somewhat compromised by lack of access), then not everyone here is enough of a nerd to go around snooping for a story that may or may not exist.

I too assumed it had all been resolved and that they were all getting on with it; there were a couple of threads on here not so long ago that suggested that was not the case. I believe Steve Grant confirmed it. EDIT: turns out the thread was only on page 2. http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?33703-Relationship-with-the-press&p=1184315#post1184315

And you'll find my opinion of him is not far from yours. It doesn't mean I don't think there are some other areas of the business which, though relatively trivial in nature, couldn't be significantly improved.

Where does this precious notion of wanting to hear nothing bad about the club come from? Surely you can understand that pretty much all people can recognise the great job that Cortese has done for the club overall? Wanting some answers or resolution on some relatively trivial issues doesn't equate to an attack on the club; it's ridiculous to assume that's the case. And just because there are indeed a handful of nutters who will criticise the club come what may, it shouldn't be enough to detract from the rest of the population asking some thoroughly reasonable questions.

The key word of JRM's question perhaps being "still"; as in why the local paper is still banned, it smacks of pettiness from an owner who IMO should rise above such a minor transgression. Especially given that the information was already in the public domain when the echo went to print, it was hardly groundbreaking news.

Agreed. To suggest Cortese or the club have been "faultless" is naive at best.

That's all well and good, but there is currently no way to ensure that a particular question is posed to the club. And no formal way for the answer to be given either. in the short term it would be very benficial if one attendee were to visit the message boards and try to gauge what questions people would like to see asked. Of course this is never going to cover what everybody asks, but it will ensure that the attendee becomes aware of the most pertinent questions that many people would like to see an answer to.

I think the dinners have some value, no more than that. They only represent a very, very small cross section of the fanbase. It's completely unknown how the attendees are selected. All attendees seem to be ST holders (I believe); if this is indeed true, while this does reward loyal customers, it completely writes off a cross section of customers who may have certain issues that therefore can/will not be brought to the table. The only way these events can be recorded or aired to the public is by attendees memories, and through the medium of message boards; given that these boards only go out to a bare minority of all customers, a massive selection of fans are still missing out. There's no doubt that previous fans forums have suffered in some way from the vocal minority. But that's not to say that overall they still weren't a very good thing, or that the format couldn't have been improved. A select group of invite only dinners that go out to a tiny, tiny percentage of fans is no adequate substitute IMO.

Fans' forums are always going to attract their fair share of nutters. However, as customers, in a forum like that they have every right to have their say; I don't think it's your right, my right, or anybody's else's for that matter to determine whether they should ask a question that they at least deem legitimate. And the club always have the right to not answer any question they receive, for whatever reason. Some people do need to moan; but those types of people are very quickly highlighted as such and generally given short shrift. A lot of people just want some honest answers to some honest questions, and with no fans forums and no other available avenue to now use there is no dialogue with the club. Which is why I don't see the consignment to history of the forums as a good thing, no matter how much some people are inclined to moan and no matter how well we are doing on and off the pitch.

The non-mailing out of tickets is the issue; because I have heard that not all bubble games have worked like this in the past. For instance West Ham v Cardiff, Cardiff fans who lived in England could choose to have their coach tickets sent to them and rather than get a coach from Cardiff, pick up the coach from a service station on the M4.

Just because the team are flying high and the club are clearly doing a lot of things right, it shouldn't mean that supporters/customers shouldn't be able to question certain decisions. If nothing else, to understand why a particular decision has been taken. The fans forums of the past at least served the purpose of making the fans think that their views were at least being heard. Fans forums are not exclusive to Saints; they're very common across football. It is not running the club down to ask a few probing questions, and I don't quite understand why people are so precious that they think a hard-nosed businessman like Cortese needs to be shielded from some nasty things that fans might say. The topic of discussion at fans forums is very rarely the actual activity on the pitch, it's everything that surrounds the on-pitch action. Just because we're doing well on the pitch I don't see a reason to whitewash the situations where we could be doing better. It certainly can't help to at least encourage discussion about it. For instance, I would be very interested to hear a reason why coach tickets for the Pompey game cannot be mailed out; this will potentially inconvenience a significant number of people who want to go to the game. There has been no reason offered by the club, and I can't actually think of one either (other than it was a police order to do so, which I think unlikely). Opening a dialogue for these issues between club and fans can only be a good thing.

It doesn't stop it being thoroughly odd though. We had a faux rivalry with Brighton last year. This year they've got Palace back, and we've got that lot down the road. I can't work out why there's an abundance of divs from both sides who want to keep whatever ridiculousness we had with Brighton still going. Their fans acted like a complete load of bellends last season, but that just showed how small time they were that they cared so much about a wind-up, flippant comment from Nigel Adkins. Move on, for goodness sake.

Yeah, that's what i was getting at. Having lashed out on a new ground, a TV game would be the perfect opportunity for them to showcase it. They's also be bringing in a fair wedge of money from TV rights; and there's no guarantee that moving the game to St. Mary's would bring in thousands more to the game; an extra 1,000 tickets sold at £15 each is "only" an extra 15K, and they'd get much more than that from TV rights. Much better IMO to reward the players and fans with a packed house at home; plus it gives them a better chance of turning Brizzle over and getting a shot against one of the Premier League sides.

I think the FA are much stricter on switching ties these days than they used to be ten or twenty years ago; there now has to be genuine concern as to the safety of the crowd for a tie to be switched. Lots of clubs used to reverse the fixture as a method of increasing revenue from the tie and, after putting up with it for only so long, the FA tightened up their regulations. In saying that, a switch to a local ground (i.e St. Mary's) may be a better way to get around it. Whether Totton would want to do that though is another matter altogether; they have a new stadium and were they to be rewarded with a televised ficture they would have a brilliant opportunity to bring revenue in and also showcase themselves at a club on national TV.

Edit: never mind, already done.

I do, cheers. The others posting on this thread do too, I guess.