...as mentioned before I am a Fulham supporter, I asked questions about our former goalie Ian Black, and thanks for your replies, but I now have another question. How active is your supporters club? What does the AFCSC (?) do for you the supporters, i.e is it an effective lobbying group between the fans and the club? Do they provide a useful link - and is there any necessity for such an organisation in your point of view..?

Mate I think you'll struggle to find a good relationship between our board and our fans!!

...appreciate your reply boboisared, but do you not think an active supporters club can represent an important collective voice (rather than a fragmented one with lots of different factions possibly contradicting each other), when trying to make opinions and grievances known..?

...appreciate your reply boboisared, but do you not think an active supporters club can represent an important collective voice (rather than a fragmented one with lots of different factions possibly contradicting each other), when trying to make opinions and grievances known..?

The board and the fans have a very trying relationship. Basically a lot of our teams bad performances are blamed on our expectations!!

...sorry to be a pain guys, but isn't engaging in a collective dialogue a way of building bridges and gaining (gradual) trust, in the long term it must surely gain more than lots of frequent battles without a positive conclusion..?

 

Aberdeen must have around 30 active supports clubs which are all separate and do their own things. The only contact our supporters club in Edinburgh have with the AFC is to order away tickets, and sometimes get invited to some general panels.

I thought the afctrust might have been good for the supporters and the club but is has not turned out that way.

 

The Trust is designed to allow supporters to have a greater involvement in their Club and it will also allow for money to be raised to help the Club. It is envisaged that the Trust will be an enormously supportive vehicle for the Club and its supporters.

 

What ever happened to the Association of Supports Clubs?

What ever happened to the Association of Supports Clubs?

 

I am currently in the process of trying to get this started again but it must be said, the response from the majority of supporters clubs has been very, very poor.  I've got the support of one or two people at AFC but it would appear that the elusive Chris Gavin needs to be brought onside.

 

The supporters clubs seem only too keen to moan when there's something wrong, but they seem to want to remain faceless rather than front things up properly.

 

To answer the original question - there is too much of a gap between the club and the supporters.

...sorry to be a pain guys, but isn't engaging in a collective dialogue a way of building bridges and gaining (gradual) trust, in the long term it must surely gain more than lots of frequent battles without a positive conclusion..?

 

 

We hoped to do this when a fans' representative (Chris Gavin) was taken on to the board at Pittodrie... And that was the last that anyone ever heard of him.

 

Our board is full of tokenistic gestures, but at base they know that they have got a hard-core of loyal supporters which will rival that of Rangers and Celtic when times get bad for them (see Celtic's 12,000 attendances in the 1980s, for example). Why worry about your customers when you have consistently treated them like shite and they have kept coming back for more?

 

Collective dialogue is great when you're talking about people with fairly similar amounts of leverage, but when the power imbalance is so skewed, it takes an extremely visionary board to see the merits of sharing that power out a bit.

 

When I think of the term "visionary" in the same sentence as our board, I can't help but choke snotters out of my nose in contempt.

LBNo11 - a brief run down of our supporters and board relationship goes something like this:

 

Quite some years ago the powers that be decided to bring a fan on board (literally) so he could be the voice of those in the stands and provide us with a direct link to the boardroom.  His name, as legend has it, was Chris Gavin and he has not been heard of, or seen, since this happened.  Numberous attempts have been made to contact him but it appears that he's vanished off of the face of the planet.

 

In fact any attempt at contacting the club regarding any ideas, questions, problems or complaints are usually met with the usual silence.  Another alarming thing that seems to happen is when life long season ticket holders decide they've had enough and reliquish their tickets, nobody thinks to pick up the phone and ask them why.

 

There are a group of fans who call themselves The Red Ultras.  These guys took it upon themselves to create a bit of atmosphere and colour at the games and spend a fair amount of their own money doing so.  I believe (although I've only read about it on here) that the club are only too happy to advertise their displays after they have taken place but have made it very difficult for them to do these beforehand.  I'm not sure if this is still the case now they have sort of established themselves, but the club were only too happy to ban flags, streamers, etc... and left those supporters to fight their own battles when the regional/local press had a pop at them.  One such occasion was when A4 pieces of paper were scrunched up and thrown towards the pitch before kick off (landing mostly amongst the fans).  That's right, A4 pieces of paper which could have contained golf balls, knives, claymore mines...... apparently.  Those scoundrels.

 

Then, as discussed before, there are loads of other supporters clubs who do their own thing and have about as much a relationship with the boardroom as you do with me.

 

In fact you've had more than they have, as I've bothered to reply to you. 

 

All in all, I think the general feeling is that the club don't give a fuck about the fans unless you're wearing a tie but they do like to serve us up a shite product each week and complain that it's our fault for not buying tickets.

...it sounds like you guys have got it bad. It does sound to an outsider though that your second biggest enemy is apathy. Have you boycotted buying new replica shirts home away (3rd kit) etc.,Stop buying programmes, in stadium drinks and food etc., Turn up to games of course, it is our release (even if it is often painful) but by hitting the accountants where it hurts, they would have to take notice. Get all the AFC supporters groups together as a collective, make your intentions known and stand firm, demand dialogue - without you the fans there is no club.

 

All the problems mentioned make me believe more that a supporters club is important - as long as there are clear rules that put main supporters club officials annually up for re-election, this way corruption and apathy can be reduced.

 

Thanks for all your replies, I would like to hear more points of view as to pros and cons. Good luck AFC fans...

 

 

...it sounds like you guys have got it bad. It does sound to an outsider though that your second biggest enemy is apathy. Have you boycotted buying new replica shirts home away (3rd kit) etc.,Stop buying programmes, in stadium drinks and food etc., Turn up to games of course, it is our release (even if it is often painful) but by hitting the accountants where it hurts, they would have to take notice. Get all the AFC supporters groups together as a collective, make your intentions known and stand firm, demand dialogue - without you the fans there is no club.

 

All the problems mentioned make me believe more that a supporters club is important - as long as there are clear rules that put main supporters club officials annually up for re-election, this way corruption and apathy can be reduced.

 

Thanks for all your replies, I would like to hear more points of view as to pros and cons. Good luck AFC fans...

 

 

 

Apathy is the word to sum up Aberdeen fans. We've had too many occasions of protesting outside the main stand, and now people have just accepted that things won't change - certainly not in the near future.

Apathy is the word to sum up Aberdeen fans. We've had too many occasions of protesting outside the main stand, and now people have just accepted that things won't change - certainly not in the near future.

 

People have to accept that the 80's were a one-off.  Football's changed.

 

 

It's on

People have to accept that the 80's were a one-off.  Football's changed.

 

 

Who said anything about the 80's?

You couldn't have picked a more suitable word if you tried.

 

The problem is that the club is so far in debt that nobody dares to stop buying merchandise or tickets because we don't want to see the club go under.

 

Then we have the problem that the supporters clubs are really just running so they can organise tickets and buses.  I very much doubt (although I have no first hand knowledge of this) that they'd be up for joining forces and actually doing something about it.

Who said anything about the eighties?

 

I did.