This trip to Botswanna is not based on the quality of football. Fans have been going over to Tilburg for years a steady trickle also to Sparta Prague. This is a supporting matter. A well thought out tour should see hundreds supporting the team instead of the small crew of the usual suspects. No demands being made just a call coming from a wider section asking for the club to start considering support more. BCFC have made a lot of noise about listening and here is a chance to see if they get it.
More consideration should be shown to fans. It is highly probable more City fans will go to the next trip to watch Willem II than will follow City in Botswanna.
Despite the lip service the club may have paid the fans recently don't be fooled into thinking there's a sudden change of attitude. Im fully aware of a statement from David Lloyd giving examples of changes the club has made on the back of fan requests. What he fails to point out is that some take years to implement, no doubt due to financial considerations rather than a sudden altruistic idealism. For me Botswana is something different. It may pay dividends, it may be a waste of time. I'm certainly open minded to it. One thing I would point out, is there is no real history of the club doing tours, or anything worthwhile in pre season. Tours seem to be s recent thing. You have to go back a long way to the last one since the lsst few years. Sweden in 99? Willem presents an interesting opportunity, and while it is probably not going to happen given the clubs fear of the type of fans involved. Look at the paranoia just getting the EE open.
'One thing I would point out, is there is no real history of the club doing tours, or anything worthwhile in pre season. Tours seem to be s recent thing. You have to go back a long way to the last one since the lsst few years. Sweden in 99?" Latvia with Gary Johnson has been done quite recently? A fair few went on that one.
I have attended recent tours and one in the eighties [Scothland]. The club don't do many, and City seem reticent to base them on a princilpe of getting as many fans on board as possible. Dates are announced late, and finally when a tour is announced relatively early it is in South Africa. The highlighted part of your post I think is relevent. Tours to Latvia and Sweden were poorly attended, but amongst those that did travel fans from the Eastend clearly were the majority. This sub section/culture is the part of BCFC the club gets the least. Willem II presents an interesting opportunity, it presents something that is almost unique in the UK. There are few clubs I can think of who have similar fans links e.g Swansea Den Haag. Again this link has been fostered by that particular stand. It will be interesting to see if City really want to be bold and audacious, different and more European. The benefits are obvious. I too wait to see if the change of attitude will be backed by real actions.
Just a final thought from me regarding club tours. My understanding of how they work is the home clubs pay towards the costs of the team doing the tour and this is based on the expected crowds at the games so for club tours in Europe the higher division the club is in the bigger crowds could be expected so a higher fee obtained to defray costs. Now we are a L1 club perhaps we have to look at emerging markets to help both the Home clubs and our club defray the costs, we will probably be a bigger draw for fans in Botswana for example as the first English team to tour than Holland or Sweden where we would just be another lower division club doing the pre season.
I'm still to be convinced about Botswana, but if we end up winning the Botswana Cup and then end up with promotion out of the third tier, I'll eat my words this time next year. I know football is far more about global markets than it has ever been, so I'm sure there's a large element of goodwill and exposure in this. But are goodwill and exposure in south west Africa going to get us out of L1? And we're not even going to what might be regarded as one of the stronger African footballing nations, like Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal etc. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I'd have sooner seen a tour playing European opposition who'll be more similar to what we'll face when the new season starts. I hope I'm proved wrong about Botswana, but this trip seems to have more to do with SL's ego than being of real footballing benefit.
