THE STEVE GOLDBY COLUMN

By STEVE GOLDBY
November 4 2005

Another European night, another fairly easy win and another very poor turnout. One of our dreams has finally been delivered and yet the interest level is embarrassingly poor.

It's worrying as well. I've already read several comments this morning along the lines of 'why does our great chairman even bother.' Those are sentiments that I can only echo, although I doubt that such a resilient man will have even considered throwing in the towel because of this setback.

After all, he weathered the storm of our worst start to a season for several campaigns and whatever action was taken after our extremely disappointing first quarter of the season has worked a treat and full credit should be given to everyone involved.

It's not unusual for a quality side to suffer a dip in form but it is highly unusual for them to arrest that form in such dramatic fashion and without making any personnel changes.

I still believe wholeheartedly that Steve McClaren had lost the dressing room at one point this season but somehow, against all the odds, he appears to have won it back. It takes somebody very special to do that.

But back to today's main talking point. Attendances. I watched the highlights of every UEFA Cup game on Eurosport last night. Boro were on first and I cringed as the camera scanned the ground and it's vast empty spaces.

The following highlights of various games throughout the continent showed exactly the same scenario. Every single stadium that hosted a UEFA Cup tie last night bar none had row upon row of empty seats. So it wasn't just Middlesbrough who failed to ignite mass interest in the competition last night.

But that's not an excuse that we can hide behind. We're focussing on Boro here and despite everyone else suffering the same problem, it's our house that needs putting in order.

The stadium was just over one-third full last night. Or two-thirds empty if your glass is never half full. Why? It's the UEFA Cup for crying out loud, something that we couldn't even visualise a few seasons ago. To most, it is still a fairy tale and to those who have become accustomed, still magical.

Yet our attendances for both home ties this season have been nothing short of a major embarrassment. So just as something was done about the poor form in the early part of the season, something must be done about UEFA Cup attendances.

If we had been beaten last night, we would not have been knocked out of the competition. We would still have been in with a hell of a chance of qualification and therefore some of the sting was gone from the match. Yes, it is the biggest competition that we have ever played in but the last night's match was diluted in respect of competitive importance because of the very fact that it was a group game.

On the surface that is. In reality, the win last night has virtually sealed our passage to the knock-out stages and although Steve Mc mentioned it several times, we didn't make a big enough song and dance of the fact that a win last night would do that.

The club need to put the competitive edge back into these matches and that can be done by taking the many selling points of the competition and fixtures and ramming them down the public's throat until the game becomes a must-see in the mind of the paying public.

We haven't promoted the UEFA Cup enough, haven't made a big enough thing out of it and haven't managed to capture the imagination of the fans with big talk about this magical competition.

I see huge banners around the town with great pictures of Boro stars from the past but I don't see any UEFA Cup promotion going on.

We need to sell our chances of success in the tournament as well. It's great to hear the chairman and manager constantly saying that we want to better last season's achievement of reaching the last sixteen but what about coming straight out and saying that we are going balls out to win it?

Some of the interest in the competition has gone because we are effectively being told that we would be happy with the quarter finals. If Messrs Gibson, Lamb or McClaren were to state in no uncertain terms that we were going for nothing less than victory in Eindhoven, they would instantly generate more interest in our European exploits.

If the PR department of Middlesbrough Football Club had embarked on a campaign to remind everyone of how great this competition is and just what it could lead to, it would have helped enormously. It's not too late to do it for the Lovech match in December.

The final is in Eindhoven this year, the very place where one of Middlesbrough's famous sons invented total football. That's not enough to fill the stadium for a group game but it produces a little mystycism for us and is one of many selling points that the club have not used in their portrayal of the tournament.

And that is what needs to happen. We need to sell the tournament to the paying public. We need to sell the opposition as well. Who on earth were Dnipro? Why should we want to pay to go and see them? No reason at all really. Ukrainian football doesn't exactly capture the imagination in the way that Italian or Spanish football does.

Only the smallest percentage of supporters were aware last night that the Dnipro side contained one of the rising stars in all of European football, one Andrey Rusol who is one of only a handful of players who has a whole page dedicated to him on the FIFA website.

Once again, not enough on it's own but one of several selling points that could have been utilised to put numbers on the attendance figure.

One of Jack Charlton's first projects when he took on the manager's job in 1973 was to increase attendances and he did it by embarking on a promotional campaign at grass roots level. You couldn't walk into a shop or factory at that time without seeing a fixture list hanging on the wall or a poster of a Boro player. We need to do the same again for the UEFA Cup.

There are so many former players who would probably love to be involved in this era of our history. How about utilising their services for a mass promotion of the tournament and more importantly, Boro's chances of winning it?

Because we can win it and we can generate mass interest in it. We just need to create a campaign plan and follow it through.

There are hundreds of other ideas that could be thrown into the mix, all of which would help to address the problem. I am sure that Mr Gibson has his own and will implement them in time for the Lovech match.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the club was losing support due to poor customer service standards. Since then, there have been several examples of a serious improvement including the chairman personally phoning a supporter to address a complaint, enquiries from customers being addressed in quick time and a massive improvement in general communication.

Middlesbrough Football Club are most definitely on the right track and with better promotion and a continued improvement in customer relations, the sky really is the limit.

If the club can get that message across to the customer base, then who knows what we can achieve?

Steve