Todays attendance and moving forward

[MrFrost]

Excellent turn out of just over 13000 home fans today, far better than I think any of us imagined.

Now, can we carry this forward. Does anyone know what the reaction was from the newbies?

The club have reduced the Barnsley tickets by £5. While obviously still alot more expensive than todays game, we should try and create the same interest as there was with this game.

We would need to get 1000 less fans in to sell out the home en for this one, as Barnsley will no doubt take the full allocation.

A good result against Palace will help, but I think we should all take up the Donnybob challenge again.

[DonnyNoel]

I think you're right about the Dingles bringing more - its always been a decent game and they're on a good run of form. I think a key point for me going forwards would be not to focus on the price of a ticket individually if we're wanting to get the kids in with a parent. Today it will have cost a parent £12 to bring two kids to the game and we need to find a balance between adults and kids prices that allows us to get plenty of youngsters through the gates with their parents.

[dknward2]

i think that if we had won we could have seen a near sell out against Barnsley but the last min draw means i think maybe only 10% of the extra fans that came today will show up

[DonnyBazR0ver]

We would need to get 1000 less fans in to sell out the home en for this one, as Barnsley will no doubt take the full allocation.

I very much doubt they will. Been on their forum and many were boycotting at £28. Some may changed their mind with a fiver off and, on the back of another good win today there'll be a couple of thousand.

[MrFrost]

No what I meant was they will claim the full allocation. Whether they sell it is another matter, but there wouldn't be an option against Barnsley of us taking part of the North Stand if demand required it.

[hoolahoop]

Demand won't require it Frosty so don't fuss about it.

[MrFrost]

We all should be taking up the Donnybob challenge again.

[Snods Shinpad 2]

MrFrost wrote:

We all should be taking up the Donnybob challenge again.

x2

Let's keep the momentum going while it's here. A big local derby, then two £15 games coming up vs Boro and Ipswich gives everyone something to sell.

As you say Frosty, we should all be doing a Donnybob not just for these games, but every game.

It was great to see the ground buzzing today. Hats off to the club for listening and for actually putting effort into promoting the game and actually doing a pretty decent job of it. . It's easy to criticise and there are things that could still be improved, but it's great to see that the issue on this occasion seems to have been taken seriously, and I hope it becomes routine for the club (and us) to approach every single game in the same way it approached this one. That being to do everything possible to get as many bums on seats as possible.

Special thanks also to the ticket office for constantly updating the ticket sales, probably for no other reason other than to keep us saddos up to date. Well done to the club for using the Facebook site and the OS to keep ramming the message down peoples throats (I even got an email on the eve of the game promoting the offer), and a big thanks and Rob and Gartom for the work that has obviously been going on behind the scenes.

Finally JR. How do we go about getting him put up for a knighthood?

Shame about that tw@tting equalizer, but you can't have everything.

p.s two already Donnybobbed here for the Barnsley game.  

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Well said.

Again I was so heartened to see so many young uns/teenagers there. I thought they'd deserted us for slobbing around Frenchgate on a Saturday.

I thought the bar staff in the Lakeside suite did an admiral job. Good to see they've sorted the issues out with Sky TV etc.

Note for the future. I'd like to suggest a childrens entertainer do a spot in the bar to keep the little ones from getting bored and it would add to their match day experience.

I hope the team get a good result at Palace and it'll be a good test to see how many we can get down there at full price.

My concerns remain the same about the normal kids match day prices.

Junior 12-16                £13                   £10
11 & Under                  £9                     £4

[Berkshire Rover]

Fantastic effort by all involved, and yes we should keep it going, the club shop must have made a mint yesterday, loads of people had new scarves and those annoying blow up hands etc.

Good to see some acknowledgment from the club on the OS about the crowd too.

I hope we do get some insight from the club now as to how the finances have worked out for the last 2 games.

One other area to look at going forward (and I know it's been raised in the past) is traffic management around the KMS at the end of the game, the roads were still chocca at least 45 mins after the final whistle, that is something else that can deter people from coming again.

Overall though massively positive effort, let's hope it leads to long term change!

[Dutch Uncle]

Snods Shinpad 2 wrote:

MrFrost wrote:

We all should be taking up the Donnybob challenge again.

p.s two already Donnybobbed here for the Barnsley game.  

'Donnybobbed' - had to laugh at the expression because over here in Holland \"Bob\" has also become a very commonly used verb meaning to be the one who stays sober during a night out to drive everyone else home. An advertising campaign some years ago had a slogan something like 'it's OK Bob will drive' aimed at getting every group to (presumably by rotation) select one to stay sober each night. Now it has progressed to common usage e.g.  'Shall I Bob or will you?' ('Bob jij of Bob ik')

Donnybob - great initiative and a great new word - shall we contact Victoria Coren to put it in the Oxford Dictionary  

[Donnybob]

Do you know, I think I'm gonna write to John Ryan and set HIM the Donnybob Challenge...

Gartom, give me an address, will you?

Mr. Ryan could make a lot of mileage out of a challenge like this in the papers and instead of saying 'We've got bad support!', he could perhaps say, 'We've got bloody good support and I want every one of those loyal and fantastic supporters to take up the challenge and put 12,000 fans in the Keepmoat every week from now until the end of the season.'

Come on John, take the challenge!

And now a few reflections on yesterday:

It was great to see so many young kids and mothers in the stadium but the price was too cheap. Because it was only a tenner and a quid they felt it was hardly worth getting there for the kick off so folk were wandering in and looking round for their seats for a good 15 minutes, blocking my view of the game. They also left ten minuts before the end so maybe we sould just play half hour each way in future? ;-)

And  I do hope the  bladder of the guy who sat on my right is better today because he must have asked me to let him pass at least 5 times during the game... Just for his eyes - beer, cold, go figure!

Serious now. We've lost two genrations to our rivals (and Leeds), not to mention Sky TV and the Premiership circus, but we are making inroads. Less than ten years ago a crowd of 3-4,000 would have been seen as good. The average now seems to fluctuate between ten and 12,000. That growth should not be dismissed or sneered at but to take things to the next logical level we have to invest in the future rather than the present.

Those kids at the 'Moat' yesterday are the future of Doncaster Rovers and we need them to be asking their mums and dads to take them to matches more than the other way round. The entire match day needs to be built around this with events in and around the complex starting from mid-morning. Kids coaching on the adjacent pitches, or junior level games, competitions, five-a-side knockouts - all on match day at an affordable price.

An empty seat earns the club nothing. A seat filled with a kid might be worth £50K over the lifetime of that kid in ticket sales, merchandise and refreshments. That kid might also grow up to take the Donnybob Challenge, too.

And wouldn't it be nice if some of the people who came along through a Donnybob invitation shared their experience of the day on this web site? A bit of fresh blood on the site would be more than welcome especially if they felt they could contribute without being challenged, 'Where were you in the tough times?' and branded as a glory hunter. We need to get over that.

Get those kids committed to the cause. It's as good as a pension.

[RyRovers]

Maybe the club should start selling a Family ticket now £??.

[SkellowRover]

RyRovers wrote:

Maybe the club should start selling a Family ticket now £??.

What about a family season ticket too?

[Snods Shinpad 2]

[DonnyBazR0ver]

That's brilliant.