Monday 4 August 2014

Family fun day

A Charlton fan who took his family gives his impressions: '[A club official told me] it was a bit last minute, could have been done much better and they were not expecting so many people to turn up. The OS estimates that a thousand came through during the day but could of been more or less who knows.'

'I was surprised that everyone wasn't milling around the west stand but you could go and admire the new velvet carpet of a pitch from the north end. And it looks splendid with new random sprinklers going off too.'

'The skills sessions: a couple of players appeared now and then in front of the tunnel, had a short kick about and disappeared - often before you could get down there to watch!'

'Anyway, it was all going on in Crossbars. I was warned that it was carnage in there and a look through the window from the seats revealed Oxford Street on Xmas Eve. The decision to host in Crossbars was to promote that area as the other suites are sold out for the season. So we went to the youth club opposite the club shop cash point and played table tennis! A nice Canadian guy gave us an interesting run down on the programme'.

'Now, the big thing, the Q&A with Dick, Kate & Bob! Was anyone else puzzled when they advertised this for the Media Suite? - a bit small! So I thought people would shuffle through in phases, ask some questions and then give others some time in there. Nope. [A club official] explained that 40-50 had been squashed in there, and that was it they weren't coming out and the trio of club personalities were in there for the long haul. He thought it should have been in a larger suite but agreed when I suggested that perhaps they didn't want that level of scrutiny. I asked if it would be on Player and he thought that it would.'

'Love the players but wasn't going to queue for an hour to see them. Maybe they should have had separate queues per player as you had to shuffle along all of them, and it would have been rude to pass on some. So this slowed it down a great deal. You wouldn't want to snub Mr BK - a huge beast of a man.'

'The face painter's were working their socks off and with a queue of 8-10 my youngest girl was happy to make a badge instead. The lovely ladies on that table gave us a £20 voucher off a full kit, which was nice.'

My comment would be that it's always possible to learn for these events and do things better, but I would commend the club for making the effort.

Some footage of the event is here: Fun Day

2 comments:

Unknown said...

dowie needs one -a face paint that is lol

Anonymous said...

Wyn
I have just watched the 30 minutes of the Q&A now available via the OS. I thought Richard M and Katrien M were very open and straight and gave some good insights. I didn't see too much evidence of a corporate line being trotted out. Of course, we cannot see whether any awkward questions have been edited out, but Richard M seemed to be very confident and up-beat - and he has seen it all come and go. It's a very engaging watch and I came away pretty up-beat.

The corners have got better too.

Best wishes to you for the new season.

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