Programme Articles
AGM Report, Fixture Clashes with Saints and Reserve Seating
By Ant Collett
Nov 26, 2005, 15:00

AGM

NTFC Supporters Limited AGM took place on Thursday 17th November. The following supporters where elected to our board; Roger Averill, Phil Laker, Linda Smith and Steve Tomlin. Congratulations and welcome to the great team we are building.

The following supporters stepped down; Tony Clarke, Tommy O’ Reilly, Tony Platt and Jim Tomlin. I would like to thank them for all their work and you will be missed although all remain firmly in support of the Supporters’ Trust movement.

Tony Platt was elected as President with his nominee, Brian Lomax, stepping down to the Vice President’s role.

More details will follow about the AGM and the new board members in future home programmes.

Hotelend
 
The following are all interesting discussions supporters have had on the Hotelend Website which can be found at http://users.boardnation.com/~thehotelend.

Clash with the Saints.

Today’s game clashes with the Saints. Following a misleading article in the Chronicle and Echo, I thought I would put the record straight.

The Cobblers before the season started looked at Saints fixtures and saw the games that clashed and made an effort to move our fixtures to avoid a clash, the Saints after we had changed our kick off time for today’s fixture, decided they would change theirs to 12:30.

Both clubs in the past have taken a very stubborn approach to this in my opinion i.e. "We are not moving".

I think NTFC are to be applauded for their approach to this over the last two seasons. Whilst Saints attitude is disappointing to say the least, they are not even meeting us a tenth of the way on this. They do not seem to give a damn.

Some supporters have said “Why should we accommodate the Saints but it is not a case of moving for their benefit, it is a case of moving for our own benefit, to ensure a). Those supporters who like to watch both games (and there are over 100 I believe), can watch both games; b). It eases traffic congestion and convenience for supporters.

Ideally fixtures should be kept to 3pm on a Saturday and there is an argument for all games not to be moved, then everyone knows where they stand. My own personal favoured option is the Friday night games, as the atmosphere is better and those supporters who work on a Saturday or play football on a Saturday can make it, I think it increases the attendance more, this way.

Yes I know there are supporters who cannot make Friday nights, but NTFC are always going to upset somebody here. As I say they should be applauded for trying to improve things.

What surprises me is that the police do not insist on the fixture being on different days. They insist on us and Rushden and Diamonds (sorry to swear) being on a different day, yet we are miles apart compared to the Saints.



Reserved / unreserved seating.

The Football League have a safety ruling which means that if unreserved seating is in place, the capacity of the stand must be cut by 10%.

The logic behind this is for example; three supporters sit in the middle of a row, then another group sits a seat apart from them, it leaves lots of rows with an odd seat.

So as you get close to kick off you get groups of supporters who want to sit together and there is only the odd seat here and there. The idea being if there is 10% less capacity there should be seats together and this will cause less disruption.

Pre-booking forms.

Supporters have pointed out that they filled in Pre-booking forms and are being given seats at the front of the stand for ticketed away games, which in their opinion are not the best seats. 

The reason for this is that these tickets are processed first often because this is a stipulation by the club we are visiting as they want the wing tickets sold first in case all tickets are not sold and thus they can sell part of the stand to home supporters.

I viewed the paperwork for the Rushden (sworn twice in the same article now) ticket allocation, and they were particularly picky in what tickets they wanted selling in a certain order. Most clubs also do not have layouts of where the tickets are within a stand.

However I have subsequently asked for the box office in the future to ask the other club (if they are not stipulating how tickets should be sold) for the ticket numbers for a block of seats that would be in the middle of the stand i.e. not on the wings, and fairly high up.

However this may not be all supporters first choice, some may want seats near the front, or others on the aisle seats. What do supporters prefer???

The box office is in agreement with me that supporters who have filled in these pre-booking forms should be given the best seats where possible.

Indeed they do already try to be as accommodating as possible for supporters that wish to swap where they are sitting or cancel all together. The box office also tries to sit supporters together who request this.

They deal with special requests for those that due to disability require an aisle seat, if this is the case please contact the box office. All of the above is done by clipping the special instructions to the supporter's card.

For games where the home side requests tickets to be sold in a certain order, I have asked with the box office to liaise with me to see if a batch further down the pecking order can be allocated to those with booking forms, as the early tickets allocated will nearly always be on the wing and possibly down the front.

I will do my best to ensure pre-booking forms get the best seats for future games.

Anthony Collett (Elected Supporters’ Representative)
Chair
NTFC Supporters Ltd
100 Hamsterly Park,
Southfields,
Northampton, NN3 5DX.
anthony.collett@ntfctrust.co.uk


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