'In 2007 Collingwood is the only Victorian club with more members than Carlton with Collingwood increasing their membership numbers by 1.4% to 38,587 in 2007. Carlton’s increase by 23.2%, to 35,431 saw the Blues total membership leap ahead of Essendon* (32,759), St Kilda (30,394), (Geelong (30,169) and Richmond (30,044).'

http://www.carltonfc.com.au/Season2007/ ... wsId=47167

This is very positive news for the club. To think that we have nearly 3,000 members more than Essendon* is something that very few would have thought possible just a couple of years ago.

But like anything there is still more to be done. With some more good off-field news over the off-season and another Collingwood failure in the finals, you never know and extra 3,000 members and the Blues could be number one in terms of members for Victoria.

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|♥♥♥♥♥♥| http://www.blueseum.org |♥♥♥♥♥♥|

I was going to post this too Jars, but you beat me to it.

This is great news for the club; and a great effort by the club.

Especially this:

Bodes well for the future.

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I AM DISENFRANCHISED

I reckon a large number of that portion is due largly to Fev too.

He might be a dick head, but he is fantastic to kids DESPITE which team they go for.


In fact, i reckon if you asked most kids who support the Carlton footy club their top two would be Kouta & Fev.....BOTH are a chance NOT to be at the club next year.



But a big CONGRATS to all at the CFC. This is an amazing feat and one that WILL NOT go un-noticed by the rest of the AFL world.

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"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit"
- Aristotle

If Pagan stays it will be a tough ask to get another increase. In fact, if Pagan stays, Fev continues to misfire, and results continue to go pear-shaped (more 12+ goal hammerings) then watch that number drop sadly.

These numbers have come off the back of 2 wooden spoon finishes.

These numbers are clearly the direct result of our OFF-FIELD improvements in BOARD (Richard Pratt), ADMINISTRATION (Greg Swann) and positive spin with regard to the younger talent on our list like Murphy and Gibbs.

To a lesser extent is it due to our on-field performance (although our brighter football played prior to the Hawthorn and Fremantle games) may have helped rather than hindered.

Watch what the postive spin that a new coach, Picks 1 and 3 in the 2007 National Draft and more positive news like the 9 pub program and player development program and anything else that Greg Swan can plug into the equation will do.

We have been crap on field for 5 years and we have seen record membership - another poor 8 games will have little impact if the other things are put into place.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Essendon* truly are our bitch

Well said Agro & Blueboy.

Seriously this is a magnificent achievent! Will crack the 40k mark easily over the next couple of years when the team has more on-field presence.

Agree Surrey Blue.

It would be interesting to know how many members from last year did not sign up this year.
With a bit of on-field success such as Collingwood this year, then our memberships numbers would easily exceed 40000.
Off field, it's all looking good.

Note. Essendon* web site claims 36348 members

When we start winning games we will overtake Collingwood.

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It is not as bad as you are lead to believe.......it is %$#^& worse!!!

Makes a full-time move to the MCG (when it can be done) a no-brainer

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"I had to eat"

As I asked in the thread for the board members, how do we keep that momentum going?? It's a monumental tsk to keep those numbers growing. By turning out 10 goal beltings week in week out it only makes the job even harder. If the return of the prodigal son in Pratt has dredged up a record membership from dormant supporters, what damage will our poor form and yet another false dawn do to next year's membership drive.

Both my kids are obviously CFC fanatics (as if they had any say in it!!). We live in the heartland of the Aints and there arent too many Blues kids at my kids school. My poor 10 yo has to suffer all of the taunts and jokes of the other kids at school whenever footy comes up because he barracks for the blues. He stays with the blues because I encourage him, without my insistence I'm sure he'd have swapped over to a more 'popular' team at this school by now, if only to avoid getting teased at how sh1t his footy team is.

Despite how committed all of us TC Tragics are, not all of the 35K+ members out there will be prepared to stump up the $$ year in year out to go and watch floggings. Many kids wont like getting teased about how their heroes just got belted by Hawthorn by a record score etc.

And for the record, my 10 yo's favourite player is Jarred Waite, mainly because he is one of the few players that we have who seems to have some repect/currency in the primary school footy card swapping playground. There arent too many 10 yo's getting excited about project players. Unless your hero has the school bully acknowledging his skills then he might as well be a nobody to 10 yo's. Our 'resurgence' has brought out the masses, but unless we do something to keep the momentum going we might be making things harder for ourselves in the future.

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"Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?" Billy Connolly

Heaven forbid I use St. Kilda as an example.

However they bottomed out and in 2001 they used the system.

I will never forget that picture they used in the Herald-Sun lining up all their recruits:

- Reiwoldt, Kositsche, Hammill , Gherig, Voss et al.

They created some momentum from that time.

On the field we may have not bottomed out as yet, off-field we certainly have and our stocks are rising - our rise in membership reflects that.

We put into place some of those things and use the off-season properly with some Top 10 Draft Picks - some shrewd trading, snare a prize in the Pre-Season Draft, appoint a new coach and your 10 year old son will see something special sooner rather than later.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Check out what those whingers over at BomberBlitz have to say about this..

http://www.bomberblitz.com/forum/index. ... opic=34716

This loser's post in particular makes me laugh



He can say what he wants, but the FACTS are that even during our 'crap years', we've still managed to beat them more often then they've beaten us...After the countless times we've made total fools out of them in recent history, it must really burn Bombers fans deep inside to know that Essendon* WILL ALWAYS BE OUR B*TCHES!!!

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James Hird and Essendon* FC - #FOREVERDRUGCHEATS

After we get a little push and shove, when it comes to membership we are the most loyal team in the AFL.

In terms of crowd attendances we are not so loyal but this will change when fans can enjoy the winning feeling again.

I worry about membership in the future. Kids will not choose Carlton as a team to follow. Carlton supporters at school would get teased like I use to tease St.Kilda supporters.....this could hurt us in 10-20 years time.

Have a look at the social club and it is not a young crowd.

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It is not as bad as you are lead to believe.......it is %$#^& worse!!!

See my post above, already happening.

I know there are great things ahead. there's no need to sell me the stay onboard message because I'll be stumping up the memberships even if we get the next 10 wooden spoons but all 35K arent like me. The point is that kids have the time horizon and foresight of 'what's happening at lunchtime'. I've been telling my son to watch out for our kids developing for 4 years now and honestly, the message has been lost on him. He's expecting Marc Murphy to have a couple of training sessions and then go on and win 3 Brownlows. That's Kids!!

There's also not a lot of point telling them, keep sucking up the abuse from the other kids for another 3 years and then you'll be able to look them all up again and laugh in their faces.

I know there's no point going on, and I am sure everyone would love to see us winning premierships right now. My point though is that the club needs to be careful not to take the loyalty shown for granted. Too many false dawns will only drive people away and erode their trust. We have built some momentum and we need to find a way to keep it rolling, 100 pt beltings on-field will do more to eat away at the momentum than anything else.

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"Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?" Billy Connolly

Mainly by the misguided few who believe we have currently have a playing list that can take us to the top 4.

This is clearly not the case. The glass might be half full for the cream cheese and spinach bagel brigade - but a good dose of reality wouldn't hurt them either.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

http://news.realfooty.com.au/record-yea ... 2-nem.html

The figures for the two Perth clubs and the Crows are pretty daunting.

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The Crows would have even more members, but they can't fit them all in to Footy Park.

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I AM DISENFRANCHISED

I think the figures for Essendon* are wrong, they have over 36,000 members.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

"We and our clubs are in the privileged position where more than half a million people across the country are paid-up and proud members of an AFL club," Demetriou said.


So no matter how much you flower up and damage the AFL brand with your arrogance, incompetence and general all round corrupt behaviour you can just keep adjusting your KPIs and feed the AFL Commission crap about attendances being up, ratings being up and award yourself a $250,000 pay increase.

You are a flowering turd Demetrispew.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill