By Will Warner
August 4 2002

I feel that the Supporter’s Club needs to turn itself back into an organisation that supporters, both young and older, want to belong to. They will want to belong to it because they will gain something out of it that will enhance their supporting of the greatest rugby team in the world We need to focus on three things; information, travel and social activities. If we get these right everything else will take care of itself. Something that has become very apparent to me organising the coaches for the past two seasons is that our supporter base is very wide. Part of the reason that our coaches are hard to sell is that supporters have to come a long way just to get to the Stoop before a long coach journey. However, we can still do more to improve the away match day experience for our supporters. For starters, I hope that in the not too distant future we can offer late returning coaches to go along with our existing ones and I believe that there’s merit in further considering alternative starting and picking up points.

At the moment with European travel not enough of us go to make charters and big trips viable, but we can make information available to help people book. The hotel I’m staying in for Beziers was found by someone who gave me the details. In turn I found flight details that others have used. This informal grapevine needs to be formalised so that perhaps we can start to negotiate discounts with hotels etc.

Socially we have a vast amount to do. I would hope to see a situation whereby we can run several events a year. I would have in mind everything from quiz evenings, getting some ref’s down to explain the finer points, possibly someone from the RFU to give their idea of the future, events involving the management and possibly players to our own end of season bash and awards?

Lastly, I feel we need to consider very carefully what information we provide for our members and in what form. I dare say that to fully gather the requisite information it might have to be via the dreaded questionnaire! Information will need to flow both ways from the Supporter’s Club Committee to the members and vice versa.

I don’t profess to have all the answers, possibly just a few of them. I’m sure that the right atmosphere can be created so that the massive skills base that are our members can provide a lot more of them in harness with our talented and hard working committee.

Will Warner
(alias Sleepy Hollow)