dadadadada wrote:
difficult to say seeing the brand has been severley tarnished for most of this decade ... what really concerns me is when you go to something like Auskick and see very few kids in Carlton jumpers
I think where we really missed the boat was in the early 90's. When Essendon* went to the MCG we should have gone too ... we had a strong team with players that would click turnstiles yet we chose the backward step of staying at Princes Park.
Princes Park was great whilst other clubs were playing at their home grounds but once Essendon* made that move it was obvious to everyone bar John Elliott and his yes men that the MCG was the way to go ... the MCG bought families to the game for Essendon* and their attendances were going up three fold.
John Elliott kept saying he was aiming for 40K members ... how was he going to get that playing in a 30k venue ????????????
I hope with Judd on board now that it gives us some stimulus as a club. I think the board needs to develop a sub committee that purely looks at kids and how best to market them. You can't group kids with other supporters as the former are more impressionable.
We talked about the Northern Suburbs being our heartland - we have to put this into actions.
It should be our business for players to ATTEND as many AUSKICK sessions as they can in all these areas, and I am not talking about the isolated one or two. There should be a program put in place to ensure this happens regularly. With players giving 1 or 2 signed jumpers as well, and passes to Carlton Games.
To quote Rachel Hunter - it wont happen overnight - but eventually it will have an effect.