Friday Freebie: Every Club Is Important, Every Fan Is Important
100 up, all hail the century
Welcome to the Friday Freebie, the piece coming at you from www.footballwriting.co.uk. If you like what you read here then please consider taking a monthly subscription for just £5 which opens up to 8 more articles per month and an archive now over 850 more.
If you feel you can’t commit to that, please feel free to ‘buy me a coffee’ or make a donation here. Alternatively, sharing these free posts across your social media and Substack accounts is just as important for me.
This is in fact the 100th free piece to hit your screens or inboxes, quite the milestone but at a point where I am planning to scale down to two pieces per month. The reason being paying subscribers should take more of the time I have and also the reason why free subscribers have had offers sent out to encourage a move, the choice ultimately is yours.
Ok, on with today’s milestone article. The tweet you see below, almost all of you will recognise the name of the poster. Jeff Stelling is well known as a fan of National League side Hartlepool Utd, Pool gaining a lot of free publicity on Soccer Saturday for many years, no one can begrudge them that at all.
Not long previously before this tweet he remarked with praise ‘Idris Kanu different level’ as the Barnet winger put in a top performance in the 2-0 win over his side on Tuesday evening.
Maybe it was a little bit of jealousy, I mean Pool have been bang average all season and haven’t really troubled the play-off places, frustration as well that a smaller club is outgunning his own with ease.
Going after Barnet over supporter levels was in poor taste. For a broadcaster as reputable as this, a cheap throwaway comment not surprisingly didn’t go down well with Bees supporters including myself, nor a few other neutrals either.
For context and those who don’t know Barnet haven’t played in their home borough for nearly 13 years. It might only be seven miles down the road, but the road network to do that short journey is nothing short of painful, taking well over quadruple the time to get there.
I travel up from the South Coast for home games, a round trip of a minimum five hours. The journey goes well until I get to the last 11 miles which takes at least an hour to navigate whichever option I try. The point is, it’s in an awful place to get to compared to the old ground of Underhill.
Now had Jeff put that context in for good measure then you start to understand why and that’s not the all of it either. A referendum was due to be held over a move to The Hive or to stay put, it never happened. Some as is their right took offence to it and have never stepped foot inside a complex that is fantastic for the club size but extremely limited for a permanent stadium home.
The club might well have tapped into the local youth football clubs but very little into the local community and hence a fanbase has declined in that decade and not grown as it should with a new generation of supporters.
There is also very little to entice away supporters. Underhill had it close proximity of pubs, the town centre was a short walk from the tube station, drinking and eating at the ground are really the only option and that extends to home supporters too.
We are Barnet fans are well aware our fanbase is small, some clubs notably in Essex seem to have a fixation on our numbers and think we shouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the table with small support, not sure what performance on the pitch has to be with how many are in the stands but there we go!
There is a #BringBarnetBack campaign (website link below) currently underway with plans submitted, or indeed very close to being, from the club to return Barnet to the borough and in fact a goal kick away from Underhill, which if it comes to fruition then the future looks that much brighter.
That is the context Jeff Stelling could have used on his platform to actually make a difference instead of bashing a club in his own division, a club who have risen to the top of the league currently looking down on the rest.
Now, Barnet are not alone in the fact clubs sitting higher in the table than others don’t attract the support compared to others and maybe it’s passed him by that some are traditionally bigger than those around them in league positions and always will be.
Our pyramid is a mix of capital clubs, big towns, and small villages, that is the beauty of the system that allows such movement up and down and not just confined to cup giant-killings.
Some will attract owners with money that propels the club on the pitch but doesn’t increase the size of crowds in every aspect, some of that I’ve seen happen in Essex ironically.
Funnily enough, many comments underneath his tweet mention the campaign but I’ve yet to see a response from the man himself, pity really, a huge chance to redeem himself there.
Anyway, as a club we move on towards the goal of returning to the Football League, the journey many are trying to take in the National League including Hartlepool Utd, 25,000 fans don’t win you promotion, nor do 2,500, on the pitch does the talking, that’s all it takes.
If you enjoyed reading this piece, then please feel free to ‘buy me a coffee’ or make a donation here.