same at Barra....last years crowds were always around 1200/1400 ... this year we are struggling to break the 1000 barrier and in a better league as well ??????

The Detroitsoul Man thinks the Watcher talks sense
If Carlsberg did sense then it would taste like what the Watcher has just posted

The problem is, what happens if you go for a year or so and become accustomed to getting in for free, then on your 16th birthday are asked to pay full whack. Free tickets devalues the product, as demonstrated by a number of clubs on the other side of the hills.

The idea I like of letting registered players at community clubs in for free from the earliest ages to U16s.

16 is the make or break point anyway, hopefully they'll have become so attached to the club and the game that they'll keep on watching and buy season tickets for years and years after.

I've said before I started with a junior membership card or something along those lines (which came about from my friends at Leigh East having them) where I paid £1 to get into the games, that started from being 10 years old, by 2004 at 14 I had a season ticket and had one every year up until recently.

Of course, some will fall away as they make new groups of friends at college, find that Sunday's are better spent hungover now they've tasted beer or they'll be shacked up with some love bird they found.

But there's 10 age groups at East and Miners alone to target, plus the rest of the junior clubs in the area, Golborne, Westhoughton, Atherton Dragons etc. It just seems daft to me to not even attempt to tap into those kids that are on the doorstep.

From Jnr school through to my last year at Manchester Rd I went to all the Leigh matches with complimentary tickets given out at the schools along with Steve Donlan and Steve Taylor and many more of our school friends we went to many away matches and paid coach fare and entrance all because of the the free tickets we all got from Leigh at a early age put me and many others on a lifetime of following Leyth..
Give all the school kids free tickets and put em in the South Stand