A few weeks back on the Ulternative Alster Fan Club (UAFC), the derrière named White Knight of the Weld (WKOTW) pronounced on the messageboard forum that even his horse was bored. The opaque message appeared to refer to an AIL game involving Ballynahinch. To accentuate the obtuse, the WKOFW had reproduced a photo of his alleged horse consisting of a row of very large white buck teeth.
The UAFC forum, like this site, the Front Row Union fulfils an important role for supporters of Ulster rugby in allowing them to express their dreams, desires, doubts, gripes, grouches, thoughts, solicited or otherwise. You can exchange views, news and generally pronounce on the state of Ulster Rugby as sports supporters do the world over. All the more pertinent in the vacuum created by the closure of the Official Ulster Rugby messageboard forum, largely due to the lack of control exercised, in my opinion, by Ulster rugby themselves.
As the owner of the Alternative Fan club forum will tell you, it requires constant attention in order to stop it descending into the type of mess the official UR forum found itself in. A small minority of posters with an inane desire to disrupt threads and messages pertaining to Ulster rugby eventually brought a halt to posting. The horse post example is a more benign version of the disruptive posting that blighted the UR board. Potentially the poster knows the limits that he can stretch to in posting under the controlled conditions of the UAFC forum, a control conspicuously absent on UR’s messageboard.
UR lost the will to live with their forum and shut it down on the grounds that they couldn’t afford to give it undue care and attention that would distract staff from other more serious business. At a stroke, a minority of posters with little desire to discuss Ulster rugby had achieved their aim of spoiling the majority of good natured and right thinking posters from posting their views on a public and official forum. There were some who believe UR shut the forum down because they did not want to read the negative outpourings legitimate or otherwise from posters who were becoming increasingly alarmed at the state of team affairs and the UR administration.
Personally I do not subscribe to this theory whole heartedly but there has been one feels, a distancing by UR and Mike Reid in particular from ordinary supporters. The once natural rapport between the two has all but gone, replaced by cynicism, disillusionment and in some cases a dropping off of support.
Ulster Rugby have replaced the conduit, the messageboard provided, with a relentless marketing programme. The sort of approach that treats the consumer as commodity but does little to foster personal relationships and leads to an ‘only sing when your winning mentality’ amongst the punters. When things go the marketing target vanishes due to lack of belief in the marketing hype.
Don’t wish to totally denigrate UR’s professional approach but they are a small organisation with a limited market and the earlier years of approachability have been replaced with one of corporate consumerism leading to a feeling of distance amongst rank and file supporters. The messageboard forum was not all embracing in terms of numbers posting on it. It did provide a snapshot of supporter concerns and a barometer of the feelings of Ulster Rugby’s support. Sad that the beneficiaries of such feedback should adopt a laissez faire attitude to it and allow a small minority of fifth columnists to destroy it.
The UAFC forum does allow an outlet for supporter news and views. Increasingly of recent times one has had to wade through the detritus of a minority of posters including the one mentioned above, who indulge in serial, innocuous looking but disruptive posts against genuine and well meaning posters. It is tiresome to read through this waste matter to find the real topic matter and subject of the thread. Mores’ the pity, it’s not a new phenomenon as I‘ve seen many forums from the Springboks to the IRFU, self implode due to the weight of vitriol and pillory usually from a small core of posters whose interests lie solely in destructing the messageboard.
I’ve no desire to see the UR board up and running again, absence does not make the heart grow fonder. UR for their part appear not too concerned either but it is a pity that the previous sense of partnership the forum fostered has been lost. Clearly things soured with the departure of Mark McCall and the hubris surrounding the circumstances of his resignation. A link with the support damaged then has never been repaired and the continuing fallout from that period of Ulster Rugby when the team’s standing sunk to an all time low amid dressing room unrest is still resonating even as Matt Williams seeks to restore morale and a sense of belief in the team and amongst the support.
The supporters club (URSC) might have been expected to fill the void of any failure in communication but it has stagnated amidst apathy. The once numerous supporters buses to Glasgow and Dublin are now either nonexistent or miserly in numbers with non URSC members filling out the spaces. Some point the finger at UR for this demise in the URSC’s lack of authority and leadership. There may be truth in this though the URSC got into bed with UR and never had control over their destiny.
I’m sure many will disagree with my views on how UR’s relationship with its support has, in my opinion, become distant due to the annexation of the forum, the sidelining of the supporter’s club and a failure to effectively repair the damage caused to supporter relations during the Mark McCall era. It is the legacy of the latter issue that is the single biggest gremlin in the UR works. The fallout from hiring an inexperienced coach, who was a genuinely nice bloke but with little provincial coaching experience behind him made his tenure seem like a 3 year detour irrespective of the Celtic League win. There is simply no substitute for experience or spending money, as has been proved with Solomons and now Williams. Whatever economic forecasts the UR CEO seeks to promote underlining the parlous state of UR’s finances you only have to look at other teams in the Magner’s League with smaller crowds who continue to survive.
The outpourings of Micheal Reid cannot be commented on in an official public forum simply because one does not exist. Reid therefore may continue to rattle on to you the supporter about UR’s finances and you can’t respond in a commensurate manner. I say this as a paying punter who contributes to UR’s revenue through the turnstiles. The crowd figures remain healthy so you have to wonder how the state of the finances sound so parlous. You wonder how the grant from DCAL which was first mentioned all those years ago has taken so long to finalise and what reasons lie behind the Government failing forthrightly support a prominent and professional sporting organisation in Northern Ireland.
I am keen to see Ulster rugby do well but I am also aware of issues regarding finances, the dressing room fallout that occurred last season, the matter of Reid castigating supporters for abuse to McCall and towards himself. The redevelopment, player contracts, new stadium choices and player development are all matters of interest to me without necessarily being a life threatening matter. Simply as a supporter of a rugby team I have an interest in seeing that team do well and develop a lot of dark thoughts when it doesn’t. That is why a messageboard acts as a conduit for my interest which I want to share with other supporters. I am indebted to the owner of this site for allowing me a blog to echo my thoughts and opinions. I would like to share them with other supporters and have feedback on their views. That is part of the ethos generated by supporting a sports team.
Unfortunately the act of sharing views has become restricted in respect of Ulster rugby, due in part to the actions of a minority who UR failed to deal with effectively and also in part due to Ulster Rugby and its Chief Executive failing to live with criticism of its own organisation.
As BJ Botha might say, chat soon.
Corrections, comments or questions?