Supporter liaison: 3rd November

Football for Women and Girls

As part of the club’s equality objectives, we had a meeting with a group of female supporters on Thursday evening to talk about their experience as Cherries fans and to see if there were areas where we can help to improve their various touch points with the club.

We spoke about a range of subjects from ticketing, entering the ground and retail to what is important to them as supporters, and how we can encourage more women and girls to engage with us as a club.

I have a number of actions to go back to the group on and, in turn, they are going to complete a questionnaire to assist us to focus our future plans in this important area.

AFC Bournemouth and the Community Sports Trust is making really good progress in encouraging young girls and women to take part in playing football and it makes sense to ensure that in all the club’s activities we are as welcoming and inclusive as possible. If there are any women or girls supporting the club who would like to also complete the questionnaire please contact me via liz.finney@afcb.co.uk.

A surprising proportion of the women at the meeting came to football on their own and it was great to hear how genuinely safe they felt in doing so, despite initial worries, and how friendly other fans had been to them.

One supporter did mention that the exception to this are games against Chelsea and Liverpool as there are concerns about away supporters gaining tickets in home areas and the effect on feeling safe this can have.

This led on to discussion around the club’s matchday disciplinary procedure which deals with infringements of the ground regulations, including discriminatory behaviour, which the club is currently reviewing and it was useful to receive the group’s views and opinions on this.

There were also lots of ideas around our International Women’s Day themed match against Tottenham on 10th March for us to develop where possible. We do have the game against Huddersfield Town themed for International Men’s Day, so suggestions from fans on how to celebrate this equality date in the calendar are welcome.

In the meantime, we have resolved to meet again and if there are any women or girls supporting the club who would like to find out more or be part of the next meeting, please contact me.

Matchday Bans

I was able to report to the meeting in advance of this post that the club has unfortunately had to recently issue club bans to a small number of supporters. Pertinent to Thursday’s meeting, two of these are around the sale of tickets to Chelsea supporters.

We would like to stress the problems this can cause in terms of safety and security and that, with the stated backing of supporters on this particular issue, the club will continue to issue bans from attending games where this is proven to be the case.

Two of the remaining bans were issued around discriminatory language and behaviour which I hope supporters will find as disappointing as we do. For a club that is genuinely viewed as welcoming and inclusive, it is sad that this happens at our games. We will continue to work with fans to remove this entirely from our matchdays and many thanks to those supporters who either reported incidents or assisted with our investigations.

If you do experience or see such behaviour, please speak to a steward on the day if possible or text our confidential supporter assistance line with as much detail as possible. We can then advise our safety team in the control room who will monitor, take action and/or gather evidence via CCTV.

Ticketing Update

There was a temporary problem with online ticket sales for Liverpool on Wednesday morning that was identified and rectified by our supplier by 10:30am. Our apologies to those supporters who experienced a delay or inconvenience and, in the meantime, this issue should be resolved going forward.

We have reviewed the format of notifying supporters of an on-sale and we now, as well as advising the allocation of tickets, will for away games give the order in which blocks will be sold (as directed by the away club) and also how many supporters are eligible to buy in each points band. Hopefully these ongoing improvements will make the process of purchasing for away games easier and encourage more fans to support the team on our travels.

Chelsea

Thank you to supporters for arriving at the ground in good time for the match against Chelsea. We again saw all supporters in prior to the game starting, with 3,505 supporters in the ground 45 minutes before kick-off which is 500 more than for the Leicester game. We really do appreciate supporters’ efforts and patience in assisting us with the enhanced entry procedures.

Unfortunately, matchday duties precluded me being served a beer in the Great Escape Bar by an ex-player pre-match, but a good many of you were able to experience this as part of the outside bar’s official launch.

Our young supporters in the Junior Fanzone also had a great time with Halloween fun and games. The best costume competition brought us some very scary and amazing outfits so well done to all those who entered into the spirit of the day.

Another happy supporter was Graham Mead who left with a beautifully boxed and signed man of the match shirt, having been chosen as one of the supporters who had entered the ground by 45 minutes before kick-off.

The game was themed around World Mental Health and the supporters' nominated charity partner Cherry Tree Nursery was featured. Everyone involved was really happy to be there and you as supporters gave them that experience and those memories to keep.