Saints have announced that they are going to subsidise the trip to Swansea City as a thank you to those who have followed the team on the road this season in such great numbers.
Earlier in the season it was announced that each Premier club would be receiving £200,000 to use for the benefits of away supporters, virtually every other club in the Premier quickly announced that they would b using it towards either cheap travel for their fans or in bearing some of the cost of away tickets.
Saints reaction was absolute silence, some supporters wrote to the club and asked what Saints intended to do with their share of the money and received curt e mails back, the tone of the e mails was not only dismissive but not entirely truthful.
"I can advise that the away supporters initiative was created for clubs to use to improve the experience offered to visiting fans. This could be used either for our supporters travelling to other clubs, or supporters visiting us.
The £200k was not a donation by the Premier League to all clubs in the league, this is a top end figure that they suggested should be put aside to improve this experience. The £200k is paid for entirely by the club..
Currently SFC have put money into improving the away fans concourse areas and provided supporters with a family fun day as part of the Fulham match day experience. "
Such was the contempt that our former CEO held for the club's supporters not only was he willing to distort the truth about where the money came from and what it was to be used for, but he was not willing to actually spend it on Saints supporters but use it to paint the away concourse.
Richard Scudamore the Premier League Chief Executive made in quite clear back in August just why the money was being provided and what it should be used for when he announced that a total of £12m would be given to clubs over the next three seasons, in response to a 10% decline in away attendances over the past five seasons and that the installment for 2013/14 would be £200,000 per club, therefore the statement send to supporters who wrote in was untrue, it was not paid for entirely by the club but by the Premier League fund. Of course it could be said that Saints would have got that money if it wasnt earmarked for Away Fans benefit, but as Scudamore stated, it had been set aside from the main pot and given to clubs to use for the benefit of away supporters.
This was perhaps typical of our former CEO who over the term of his office showed scant regard for the supporters, putting obstacles in front of them at every turn to actually supporting the club, whether that was the withdrawal of the season ticket installment plan at short notice, stopping selling season tickets 2 weeks before the season (what business refuses money from people who want to buy their services ?) or the introduction of car parking charges that punished people wanting to spend money on tickets or shop in the megastore, in the case of the parking charges after the first yar he reduced them down from 30 to 15 minutes, clearly of no real benefit to the club just done to spite the supporters by a man who held nothing but contempt for them.
Now it seems that the new board under Katharina Liebherr recognise that a football club is nothing without its supporters and that although the bulk of our income at the moment is from the Premier league riches and TV money etc, that might not always be the case as was shown the last time we got relegated, the fans money is still a vital part of any clubs budget.
Whether our former CEO spent the entire £200k on the away section and the Fulham fun day at St Mary's is unclear, if he did so then perhaps the new board could be excused for doing nothing and making it right next year by using the fund properly, but to their credit they arent hiding behind this, they are showing that they value the supporters and want to give something back.
For the Swansea game they are selling Adult tickets for the game for £5 and £1 for concessions, assuming an allocation of around 2000 and their normal ticket price of £35 this could mean a cost of £60,000 alone just to subsidise tickets, although in reality it will be less than this due to concessions being a lower differenciation.
But they are not stopping there, they are laying on coach travel for the same £5 & £1, given that adult prices would normally be around £25 again this could cost the club another £40000 if everyone took up the offer.
There are some who have expressed concern that with only supporters who have attended 7 away games guaranteed a ticket, that this is an elitist offer, in some ways yes, but it is rewarding those that have spent good time and money travelling the length and breadth of the country to follow the team and they deserve to be rewarded, its an easy club to join though.
But its not the cost its the thought that counts and this gesture shows that there is a new regime and a new way of thinking in place and that encouraging supporters to support the club is at the forefront of that thinking, that can only be good and although at times the right words were said by our former CEO about the value of the fans, the way in which he treated them with the aforementioned restrictions, shows that overall he didnt care about cultivating the next generation of supporters, indeed he didnt seem to care whether he had a full or empty stadium, it seems he felt that he was being bankrolled from elsewhere, be it the Premier League riches or Katharina Liebherr, indeed in hindsight his entire business plan did not appear to be based on anything else, not only a recipe for disaster for any football club but perhaps showing that having no long term plans in place for income to the club, he perhaps didnt have any long term interest in Saints himself.