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Post by james1977 on Sept 15, 2011 9:44:58 GMT
Last time I saw a begging letter like this it was posted on the official site of a certain defunct NE hockey team. I know Panthers will occasionally say 'bring a friend' or something like that but to state, ..makes it sound like they are desperate. Are Coventry running a bit low on the moolah? |
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lee
David Clarke
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Post by lee on Sept 15, 2011 10:02:23 GMT
thats obviously a warning that they are struggling.
unfortuantely simply telling the converted that attendances are not high enough won' t work. it may bring in a few extras as people convince their friends to come. but its wider advertising thats needed, and possibly some promotions on tickets etc to bring people in for that 1st game, which may then see people return for other games.
that and competitive teams, i am a huge panthers fan and i love ice hockey but even i find it a bit of a chore to go to games v fife / dundee / newcastle etc... they are just not entertaining when compared to games v blaze, sheffield, cardiff and belfast etc.
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Post by james1977 on Sept 15, 2011 10:19:04 GMT
even i find it a bit of a chore to go to games v fife / dundee / newcastle etc... Don't have to worry about those games anymore. |
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5+game
Terry Kurtenbach
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Post by 5+game on Sept 15, 2011 10:29:21 GMT
If coventry are in a tight spot, what about Hull afterall they are owned by Coventry are they not?
A couple of seasons of not winning has obviously hit them hard in the supporters stakes.
I really cant see this league lasting much longer. Apart from us and Belfast who else is they that would say are finacially sound.
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Post by james1977 on Sept 15, 2011 11:00:06 GMT
If coventry are in a tight spot, what about Hull afterall they are owned by Coventry are they not? According to Andy Buxton Hull are completely self-funding and are not a drain on Coventry at all. The alarms bells probably went off in some people's heads when Coventry announced they were staring the season with only nine imports. Now I've heard the excuse that they instead signed an 'import quality' Brit in David Phillips but wouldn't a team wish to sign both if they could afford it, especially considering they don't have an especially brilliant selection of Brits as is? To be honest though I believe that Coventry are yet another team that will struggle because its fans are fickle. They are one of the most successful teams in EIHL history yet after a poor run towards the end of last season the fans have seemingly abandoned them. Once again are we seeing a fanbase built predominatley on sucess walking away, damaging the club in the process? |
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lee
David Clarke
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Post by lee on Sept 15, 2011 11:14:43 GMT
Coventry announced they were staring the season with only nice imports. no wonder they have no Fight in them  |
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seedy
Pat Casey
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Post by seedy on Sept 15, 2011 16:04:53 GMT
to be honest I thought it was obvious they were struggling after that first game. One of the Blaze fans on here on TCW (Tom?) was saying they have diversified and are running bars under the blaze business....
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Post by pantherfan007 on Sept 15, 2011 16:26:02 GMT
If it does end up with just us and Belfast, at least we'd be guaranteed a top two finish every season.
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dp
Jim Keyes
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Post by dp on Sept 15, 2011 18:22:26 GMT
To be fair to Coventry fans it's probably not about the lack of success last season.
If you think about what they were raised on - teams full of characters with skill, toughness and just pure entertainers.
Compare that to the practically non-contact rubbish we have to put up with these days and it's no wonder fans are finding other things to do.
I have to say, I thought pretty seriously about whether to renew my Panthers season ticket this season, and that definitely had nothing to do with lack of success.
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Post by Spoonerdudes on Sept 15, 2011 18:24:03 GMT
If coventry are in a tight spot, what about Hull afterall they are owned by Coventry are they not? According to Andy Buxton Hull are completely self-funding and are not a drain on Coventry at all. The alarms bells probably went off in some people's heads when Coventry announced they were staring the season with only nine imports. Now I've heard the excuse that they instead signed an 'import quality' Brit in David Phillips but wouldn't a team wish to sign both if they could afford it, especially considering they don't have an especially brilliant selection of Brits as is? To be honest though I believe that Coventry are yet another team that will struggle because its fans are fickle. They are one of the most successful teams in EIHL history yet after a poor run towards the end of last season the fans have seemingly abandoned them. Once again are we seeing a fanbase built predominatley on sucess walking away, damaging the club in the process? to be fair, its not that simple...quality on the ice has been a problem for nearly 2 years now...last year just was the cherry on top. Blaze while in the BNL were known as always the bridesmaids, never the bride...took us at least 3 years after the move to Coventry to get to the top of that pile. We have been lucky to have used various tools to attract top players...we were one of the first to offer the Uni deals and that has helped, but nearly all teams have that link up now. the cold reality is that we dont have the fan base that yourselves or the other arena teams enjoy... that extra 100-1500 bums on seats...makes a difference in the profit columns...and the extra financial muscle you guys enjoy |
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Post by Lord of the Rinks on Sept 15, 2011 18:36:45 GMT
If it does end up with just us and Belfast, at least we'd be guaranteed a top two finish every season. And a few double header weekend in Belfast. ;D Funny how Coventry didn't send out this message when they were winning trophies and had a good team.  |
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Post by Spoonerdudes on Sept 15, 2011 19:11:15 GMT
If it does end up with just us and Belfast, at least we'd be guaranteed a top two finish every season. And a few double header weekend in Belfast. ;D Funny how Coventry didn't send out this message when they were winning trophies and had a good team. Because we were attracting a lot more people then.... Also locally , there have been a lot of job losses over the past 5 years.....people pick and choose their games.... When we were first attracted to the Ice Hockey, it was a lot cheaper than it is now...... |
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Post by james1977 on Sept 15, 2011 19:25:49 GMT
to be fair, its not that simple...quality on the ice has been a problem for nearly 2 years now...last year just was the cherry on top. So I take it thats a "yes, Coventry fans are fickle and walk away when things aren't going their way" then? Why not? Coventry (pop. 305000) is a larger city than Nottingham (pop. 285000) and unlike Nottingham only has a single football team to compete with for fans, rather than two football teams and a rugby club. Arenas are more expensive to use than rinks, the break even point for an arena is far higher than it is for a venue the size of the Sky Dome. Nottingham has the second highest unemployment rate in the UK. |
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dp
Jim Keyes
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Post by dp on Sept 15, 2011 19:56:14 GMT
James - I think you've twisted the stats there slightly to be fair!
The City of Nottingham only has a population of 285K, but that doesn't include most of Nottingham! Greater Nottingham has a population of nearly 700K, and Nottinghamshire has a population of over 1mn.
Also, I'm sure I read the reason for the high unemployment rate is because something like over 40% of the unemployed are students, against a national average of about 5%.
I'm guessing a bit on those stats because I can't be bothered to look them up.
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Post by Spoonerdudes on Sept 15, 2011 20:04:44 GMT
to be fair, its not that simple...quality on the ice has been a problem for nearly 2 years now...last year just was the cherry on top. So I take it thats a "yes, Coventry fans are fickle and walk away when things aren't going their way" then? maybe some are...maybe some aren't...but you do have a bigger fan base than us, that much is fact..Why not? Coventry (pop. 305000) is a larger city than Nottingham (pop. 285000) and unlike Nottingham only has a single football team to compete with for fans, rather than two football teams and a rugby club. Coventry is a small city 13th biggest....you maybe per population count ranked smaller...but do you honestly expect most people to say that you are smaller than us ? to be honest isnt Nottingham more of a conurbation...there are some sizeable towns in the surrounding area ..and this is what i refer to as a bigger fan base...don't forget...Blaze aren't originally a Coventry team..they were Solihull Barons many moons ago.Your footie teams are well documented as having a better history over the years than the Sky blues.....we have always struggled to fill the grounds even back when we were in the Premiership...thats due to our location to Birmingham....
Arenas are more expensive to use than rinks, the break even point for an arena is far higher than it is for a venue the size of the Sky Dome. The skydome is not a facility built for Ice hockey, when it was being built, it was originally designed for the local Basketball side to have it as its home, and play games out of it, but due to extreme humidity problems, it fell through...thats when the Blaze showed an interest. we dont have the luxury of a 2 pad facility like the NIC and we are lucky to have a good working relation ship with Planet Ice...but it still costs us.....yes the arena teams have more outlay with these costs....but again...you have always had that fan base to draw upon...even when you are going through a bad run of results...your hardcore fans will bring 3000+ i would guess to any game...those numbers will bring in more capital than we do.
Our hardcore following i would guess is between 1200-1600... you forget...you have been playing in the top reaches of the hockey world a lot longer than we have...we went bust when Barons became the Steelers..and dropped to the bottom leagues...its taken us over 20 years to get to where we are now.Nottingham has the second highest unemployment rate in the UK.
you were asking what has happened to the club to cause this downturn...i gave you some possible reasons....If you are going to pull it apart every thing i mention just to prove your own view point, thats up to you....
Not going to change the reasons... |
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Post by sparkymark75 on Sept 15, 2011 21:39:00 GMT
Money being tight and unemployment probably applies to almost all teams nowadays. Another advantage that Nottingham and Belfast have is owners that have the money and business know how to market their product.
Most of the other teams barely have the money to recruit and run their teams, never mind a marketing budget.
Kirkcaldy has a population of less than 50,000. The lowest of all the teams in the EIHL (and probably quite a lot of the EPIHL). And whilst fans don't just come from Kirkcaldy, Fife's population is around 350,000. So for us to get a crowd of 1,500 to 2,000 is purely based upon us having hockey for so long. I'd love to see the crowds we could get if someone with some marketing know how and a bit of spare cash to spend on it was to put the effort in.
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Post by heja on Sept 16, 2011 1:50:15 GMT
IMO the biggest thing that has happened in Coventry to make the funds a bit tight, it Cassidy, yeah I know they have not sponsored them in 2 or 3 years but they pilled a hell of alot of money into Coventry.
I believe I read/heard somewhere that they would 'sponsor' a few players directly, or in other words pay their wages for them. (might not be true though)
Since they stopped being the Cassisdy Coventry Blaze, i think they had one good season after that but since then they have almost noticably a different team.
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Post by Spoonerdudes on Sept 16, 2011 15:00:59 GMT
IMO the biggest thing that has happened in Coventry to make the funds a bit tight, it Cassidy, yeah I know they have not sponsored them in 2 or 3 years but they pilled a hell of alot of money into Coventry. I believe I read/heard somewhere that they would 'sponsor' a few players directly, or in other words pay their wages for them. (might not be true though) Since they stopped being the Cassisdy Coventry Blaze, i think they had one good season after that but since then they have almost noticably a different team. You could quite possibly be Right there Heja...Cassidy had their sponsorship on the Ice hockey...the Rugby and also the Sky Blues all at the same time....Then of course with the Property Market collapse......Boom ! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2011 17:44:43 GMT
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iginla
Chick Zamick
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Post by iginla on Sept 17, 2011 21:34:37 GMT
They could certainly start by saving money on coaching staff for one thing.
By general opinion, they have the so called "best" head coach in Britain,so why do they need Chabot and Soderstrom behind the bench too ?
As for Andy Buxtons comment they have previously over achieved,i don't think so,not when you look at the calibre of players they have had in the last few years. It has until last year certainly been comparable with Panthers,Sheffield and Belfast.
Thommo seems to have lost the "Neal Martin recruitment factor" lately so he's made some poor signings of his own the last couple of years and the team has suffered and that then impacts on their crowds.
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Post by NickThePanther44 on Sept 17, 2011 22:54:32 GMT
Coventry also had one big advantage in the first few years of the EIHL by having some of the best and most experienced Brits around. They still do but that advantage has lessened due to several of the other teams like ourselves developing and stealing their own crop. The former ISL teams at the start of the EIHL were obviously very light on quality Brits.
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Post by Spoonerdudes on Sept 18, 2011 6:26:32 GMT
They could certainly start by saving money on coaching staff for one thing. By general opinion, they have the so called "best" head coach in Britain,so why do they need Chabot and Soderstrom behind the bench too ? As for Andy Buxtons comment they have previously over achieved,i don't think so,not when you look at the calibre of players they have had in the last few years. It has until last year certainly been comparable with Panthers,Sheffield and Belfast. Thommo seems to have lost the "Neal Martin recruitment factor" lately so he's made some poor signings of his own the last couple of years and the team has suffered and that then impacts on their crowds. which i explained in one of my earlier posts....had a nice little chat with Mr Martin a few years ago when he played for us. AT the time the Blaze had ( and still do ) have the Uni places to attract players..but at the time, not too many others did...he explained that that was the clincher in the deal for him beacause he wanted to get his Mba in Business..and the course he was given was worth in excess of 7K...for a player in the final years of his career..you can understand how much of a draw that is! |
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Post by dodit on Sept 18, 2011 12:14:36 GMT
If it does end up with just us and Belfast, at least we'd be guaranteed a top two finish every season. And we still wouldn't win the league. |
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