A Gesture to Applaud: Stoke City Shows the Way for Fan Travel

[JA News]

A Gesture to Applaud: Stoke City Shows the Way for Fan Travel

As a proud Swansea City fan, it's not often you find yourself looking enviously at Stoke City, but today, my hat is well and truly off to the Potters. Their dec

jackarmy.net

 

[Ringwood]

Stoke's location makes this process very workable. Nicely situated on the M6 they have good access to the North West , Yorkshire and across the Midlands so maybe coach hiring costs makes this viable and Stoke values the away support.

As an outpost, this arrangement for us would be quite expensive especially now with Plymouth and Sunderland gone we travel the most miles for away games in the Championship. Throw in we used Bristol based coaches which is bizarre at best they can undercut local operators.

Our away support as always been underpinned by exiled fans to a degree going back to the 80's with regional groups travelling to away matches.

What the club could do is provide free of subsidised travel for certain away matches where logistically is would be costly to attend. The club could rin fence Boro, both Sheffield clubs, Norwich, Hull ,Ipswich and Blackburn as a gesture to fans to boost away support.

We chuck thousands per week on players we don't play yet the club should cast a commercial eye on helping fans..

 

[3swan]

Stoke's location makes this process very workable. Nicely situated on the M6 they have good access to the North West , Yorkshire and across the Midlands so maybe coach hiring costs makes this viable and Stoke values the away support.

As an outpost, this arrangement for us would be quite expensive especially now with Plymouth and Sunderland gone we travel the most miles for away games in the Championship. Throw in we used Bristol based coaches which is bizarre at best they can undercut local operators.

Our away support as always been underpinned by exiled fans to a degree going back to the 80's with regional groups travelling to away matches.

What the club could do is provide free of subsidised travel for certain away matches where logistically is would be costly to attend. The club could rin fence Boro, both Sheffield clubs, Norwich, Hull ,Ipswich and Blackburn as a gesture to fans to boost away support.

We chuck thousands per week on players we don't play yet the club should cast a commercial eye on helping fans..

Agree with you and the thoughts in the article

At worse the club could guarantee to cover the loss on a guaranteed one coach.

They mentioned cancelling for a couple of games last season due to low numbers. How much would they have had to cover a half full coach.
Didn’t they or the owners cover the full price for 8? Coaches for QPR?
P.R. !!!!!!

 

[Ringwood]

The club could lease a coach or two say over a 6 to 12 month contract, hire a driver or two . The coaches could be used for 2 or 3 away games a month and be utilised by the younger squads.

Outsourcing supporter coaches on an ad hoc basis will always be more expensive.

Maybe the club haven't met the criteria for the coach operator in terms of requirements on numbers last season to justify an ongoing partnership so potentially it's the coach operator not wishing to carry on especially as they commit to a 150 mile round trip on top of 400 mile trip carrying fans.

There are quite a few games this season where a train is preferable or car/mini bus is a better option like Bristol C, Oxford, Soton, Portsmouth, the three London clubs and the Midlands.

But cutting supporter coaches completely surely isn't the best policy in the long run.