Not a lot has been coming out of the Club as of late.
In the past week some supporters have got a little irate about the information coming out of the club, some have asked the question as to why things like the retained list and season tickets have been left so late to make an announcement whilst on the other side of the fence others have taken the attiutude that they will tell us when they tell us and its fine, both arguments have their good points but the upshot is that its creating friction and division amongst supporters, I have always maintained that if one supporter goes to a game because of something they have read on here then it has to be positive, so it therefore follows that if one supporter stops going to a game because they are hacked off because of arguing on message boards then that surely has to be a negative.
Let me put forward a statement, its not an original one by myself and some of you will have heard it quoted before, both by myself and elsewhere.
" Professional sport only exists due to the interest of the general public ! Why would you want to deny them access to information that they want to know!"
That statement is on the wall of many sports organisations in the USA and it should be in a similar position on the walls of sporting clubs over this side of the pond.
The boom in football over the past decade or so has not been fuelled by a boom at grass roots level, indeed less people are playing the 1 a side game than ever before and preferring shorter smaller sided versions, indeed a glance at your local park will show very few games of football going on between two scratch sides with jumpers as goalposts, times are changing.
The current boom is fuelled by the media and the increased access to that media, be it through SKY TV where we have 24 hrs a day sports news or through the internet where within minutes we can find out information that only 15 years ago would have been very difficult to get and would probably have involved at trip to the local bookshop to browse.
Across the country the general public whether it goes to games or not is better informed than it has ever been about the game and with that comes a thirst for more knowledge, at least thats what the sports clubs hope, because when the public arent interested be it in their local club or the national game, then bad times are ahead.
The downside of all of this media coverage is that it makes it easier than ever to ignore you local fotball team and become an armchair fan of Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool, if you live in Yeovil, why spend the best part of £20 to see your local side play the unknowns of Hartlepool when you can spend that money on beer and watch a big wide screen TV showing your favourites playing in thePremier league, its not cold and the only wet you will get is inside as you pour lager down your throat, usually at cheap prices.
So this being the case it is surely in the interest of every football club in this country to do its best to get the interest of its target market and keep the interested, think about it, whenever a big film is released its accompanied by a massive advertising campaign, on TV, in the papers, on the internet, even in the cinema's themselves, Why ? because advertising works, its about putting the product into the consciouness of th people and keeping them there and making them want to go and see it, much money will be paid to achieve this exposure.
Football clubs are no different, OK lets accept from the start that there is certain info that has to be kept secret, ie transfer negotiations, contracts etc, even training ground bust ups, but after that there isnt much that couldnt be put out to the people and most of it large proportions of it they want to know, some of it pretty trivial, but when they read it, it whets their appetites for more, it makes them want to go and see a game.
Pirates of the carribean 4 is getting a few ropey reviews, but people will still go because they remember the first three and how good they were and football is pretty much like that as well, you go because of how much you have enjoyed it in the past not because of what might happen in the future.
I could go on about the benefits of putting a football club into the public domain for a lot longer but Im sure that you have got the drift by now, in fact the very fact that you are reading this is because you have an interest in Southampton Football Club and that interest extends far beyond the information on the official web site.
As I have mentioned earlier producers of films spend millions to get their product advertised, football clubs however have to pay very little, they have in the first instance the local media, ask any company what they would have to pay the local paper to give them three pages of in effect advertising every day plus a supplement on Saturdays and indeed extra on Monday's and they would confirm it wouldnt be cheap, likewise find out what a 30 second advert would cost in the middle of the prime time news programme each evening or for the local radio to dedicate a whole afternoon talking about you and your product, well all this is available for free to most clubs in the top four divisions.
Oh and add to that the coverage the national press will also give you and you have to say that most business's in the country would snap that little package up if it was offered it for free.
So this all being the case why is there such a blackout on news from Saints, what cause does it serve not to make announcements quickly and efficiently and more to the point keep the fans appetites whetted, a look at any other club website shows that even in the close season they still pump out a few stories a day, Saints have put out six in the last weekprior to Monday evening and over half of them havent really concerned the football club at all.
OK its a difficult time for those running the website in that most of the playing staff are on holiday etc and I accept that they cannot speculate about transfers etc, but there is still plenty of other topics they could cover including building up the new kit launch.
I write this story not to make mischief or any other issue with the club, but purely because i want to see Saints succeed and I want to see a full St Mary's week in week out and if there is any way I can help the club achieve that aim then I will do so, I like many others are interested in what is happening at St Mary's I want to see the new kit, I want to see the fixtures etc and more to the point I want to see the club using all means possible to not only use the tools in the media it has at its disposal, but in truth I want to see a united football club again, one where everyone is united in that common goal, be it the Chairman, the staff, the players, the supporters, ex players, corporate(or potential) corporate sponsors and lastly and not leastly the local and national media.