These are all the comments received relating to Football Communication at our recent meetings.
Communication – Football
- Last minute details of youth team / academy fixtures. These should be advertised in advance – why don’t we know? Who are the players?
- Communication gap Sunday to Thursday
- No Comms from manager before Tranmere game
- Does anyone research other Clubs websites and media output for contents? if not, why not?
- We know nothing about the player injuries or why players don’t play etc
- Captains voice – has been silent. Could they nominate a spokesman?
- Getting to know the players – why has this stopped?
- Quigley played for Stockport B team this week – why didn’t we know he’d gone back? This fuels negativity on social media
- Daily Reports – we don’t know anything about players and their backgrounds
- Survey the Fanbase – how do they want to receive information?
- better questions after the games? Why are the subs so late?
- Could fans be involved in the questions ie win the chance to do this?
- Could College students be involved in media output?
- Where are the academy playing? Why don’t we know?
- Better online content – its so predictable
- Squad pictures aren’t available for all players including Danny Lloyd who signed Nov/Dec
- Why weren’t we told when McNulty’s assistant joined?
- How can we improve the output on a reduced budget? Use students – T Levels
- Regular features from the Club – what do they do on a daily basis?
- Survey fans what and how they want info from the Club
- Updates on ticket sales – how are they going
- Regular comms to the database – not everyone gets emails
- Base the output on what fans want
- The clubs weekly newsletter could be much stronger – interviews with players or injury updates. The period around 2005/10 we seemed to be more proactive in communicating directly with fans.
- More interviews, more player content, injury updates, quarterly business updates so we know where the club is commercially, maybe some features on the Academy, training etc. The newsletters from Spain pre season were great for example. More of that – at present it seems like a new vacuum
- How much influence does the Board of Directors have on Football Communication in terms of “okay to say this”, “don’t say this”
- Post match interviews need to be conducted once the manager has collected his thoughts
- Club needs to give manager some media training
- Communications in general away from the matchday needs to be more focussed on attracting new support
- Create interest around the academy so players coming through already have a profile eg Ethan Brierley
- Can content from the Community Trust and other Rochdale related content be put onto main club media channels?
- Audit and update the website to remove irrelevant past data
- The Current website is an EFL template.What happens when we lose our league status?
- Injury updates
- Qualty of media output – not cut and paste
- Player involvement on non football matters eg fun!
- Tik-Tok advertising
- Club need to step up and improve comms and take more responsibility. Our director should be more on the ball
- “I think this is an area which needs improving. Communication in general (including on the footballing side). If I am honest, I feel more distant from the club than I have for many years.
- As an exiled member, I feel that we are valued less than others. This feeling has mainly come about from the last few fans forums. They are so important to the fans, including myself. Yet they are so inaccessible to exiled members. Conducted on a midweek. Not streamed live. We had the opportunity to email in questions, but not hear the answer. I found this incredibly frustrating and had to scroll message boards to find out what was said. I shouldn’t have to rely on the fans who could attend to hear what was said. There is plenty of room for improvement on this in my opinion.
- Specifically on football related issues, I think our website is very good for communicating important information to fans (such as ticketing news). A good range of interviews with managers/players are provided online too.
- I understand that sometimes there are times where communication cannot be fully open or transparent, but at the minute, there are lots of unanswered questions on footballing matters such as, what is the plan for our new manager, what ambitions are there for us after relegation and how can the released/retained list be made without having a permanent manager. I guess these questions will be answered in the coming weeks”
- “All fans want to hear as much information as possible, I think. I think we seem to get some basics wrong in interviews, especially post-match. Very often the interviewee (player, manager, chairman etc.) is out of focus, while the background is in focus; sound quality is poor, especially post-match if it’s windy – a clip-on radio microphone would easily reduce this problem. I remember before we played Stockport in the FA Cup a couple of seasons ago looking on their website and media outlets and being really impressed by the professional, polished quality of their content with long(ish), detailed and probing interviews – it was, and still is, streets ahead of us.
- In addition to pre and post-match interviews, new signings etc. it would be good to know about all manner of football related info. such as grounds staff or a tour of the new training facilities etc.
- It would be good to hear from more players, not the same few and in different contexts. It is also good to get to know players and staff to feel better connected to the squad/club. “
- Communications never cross reference other Comms by the Club. More joined up work connecting, Club, Academy, Community Trust, Events etc
- Media training to all – will come across better in Comms. Fans can pick these apart at the moment
- Communication directed to away fans needs to be better, needs to be Fan Led
- Where does the Club think it can improve comms?
- Liase with other Clubs (or plagarise). Look at other ideas
- Better support for Sponsors on Social Media after games. Other Clubs display pics of sponsors before and after games. When its corporate, they will retweet this themselves and add publicity to our hospitality
- Need to get the basics right – Bentley / Chadwick pics were still on the website three weeks after their dismissal
- Better links between Club official media, Community trust, Supporters Trust – eg former players, live podcast event with Trust not advertised
- Filming MOTM presentation for use on social media
- “Dale Events” now has 54 follows. Does the Club’s Official Twitter even know about @RochdaleEvents?
- Digital content creator – needs to be filming up in the hospitality areas to show what fans can do in hospitality
- Reduced media exposure will require more effort to get noticed in the media. Will Radio Manchester cover us in the National League?
- Responsive newsletter – ease of finding the part of the newsletter that you want, might not want to read it all
- Club need to make sure the mailing list is up to date and everybody is on it
- Weekly emails – not everybody is receiving them, hit and miss when they are sent out
- Promote more content aimed towards away fans – communication, signage on Willbutts, “visiting fans are welcome”
- Feels like little is being communicated right now. We have gone backwards this year
- Feedback & comms from The Trust is excellent. The Club, virtually non-existent.
- “There is a communications vacuum. It can’t be hard for the Board to produce a news article every couple of months on key issues and challenges, revenues and matters that are under review. Clearly there are many things that have to remain confidential, but communications can update in the status of known plans, for example, whether they are still in talks on future ownership.
- But the news on the state of the club are all a bit sporadic or worse, silent. The media team output is poor and nowhere near the standard we saw 10 years ago. If we want an engaged and supportive fan base they need to feel engaged. Team Rochdale did that and it meant a lot of news being provided by the club.”