alwaysright - there is plenty i have not even begun to raise in this thread, however, i actually do have the same passionate point of being priced out of the pub - i say tongue in cheek keep up...that is all part of the social cleansing that i so speak on many occasion but joking aside taxation can be used as a form of that ie raise beer, cigarettes etc, everything that is a pleasure to the working man, then raise the issue of health awareness as a disguise. Oh Thatcher and successive governments had it all thought out. Then we turn pubs into family restaurants, change our National game, then take our jobs...ask the miners about that one. It becomes the destruction of a class like the Favela's.
brb - you took my bait ! I mentioned the Orient game as an 'example' of the type of venue in which I would rather not choose to drink. I would rather go to a more 'comfortable' pub ( you must remeber the very lumpy chairs ). I would like to have better service ( remember the difficulty we had at the bar ?). I would have liked to have visited the loo without needing to be able to swim ! A nice choice of bar food would have been good......... Well, I know that I'd rather not go to the Coach & Horses, but visit one of the very sociable pubs in the villages close to me - where I can take my family for drinks with a meal ( admittedly not as often as I'd like ) - and then other times spend money on cheap supermarket drink and snacks and share it with friends in my home. Can you see the comparison I am making with football ?
Yeah but the Coach and Horses is a bit extreme, especially when i'm still paying over three quid a pint.
brb To add weight to your argument ( just for a bit ) What possessed Bromley to charge £15 for the Gills match - when Dover's admission price was only £5 ? My two sons drove down to Dover to watch the game - and spent money on 'catering' in the ground - none of us bothered with the Bromley game.
The answer to the question "do we need a bigger stadium" is no if we're purely talking capacity, but the answer to the question "do we need a new stadium" which this thread has sort of migrated to is undoubtedly yes. If we want to hope to attract a larger fanbase we will have to offer better facilities and a better "match experience". Yes, it's all marketing speak which frankly leaves me cold, but the fact is that what we're offering at the moment off the pitch is obviously not enough to tempt more people to attend.
As I've previously said, Priestfield itself is in a part of the town which is very unattractive to anyone who doesn't live in the area. I myself live outside of Medway and it becomes increasingly difficult to convince people to try watching a game at Priestfield because of where it is. Although these may not be full time Gillingham fans, if the stadium was in an area that was more appealing, then I genuinely feel that more people would go and watch us play which would sort out the capacity problem. As previously stated, we've not tapped into the 1.4million residents of Kent enough. Charlton came into our territory with a intiative idea of offering cheap coach travel to the Valley. I have no doubt that if we did something similar we could attract far more many people into the ground and justify a 16, 20 or 24,000 seater arena.
Too right it will be, like a political armageddon, the biggest debate ever on cultural and class reform by the government and Sky 1992
Once again the members of the not606 Gills board have proved you can have sensible debate without resorting to petty insults.
