Ruchniewicz replies to Mad posts.

Last updated : 12 September 2005 By Bigrich.....
Peter Ruchniewicz
'I've been reading the thread on the mad messageboard started by Gino where some play is made of the board's apparent lack of initiative and belief on the marketing front. Gino raises some interesting ideas some of which however have in fact been in the melting pot for a long time. Initiatives have begun and continue to be developed. For instance just look at all the stuff in Millers News (and indeed the fact that such a rag has now been produced).

We have no shortage of belief or desire to pursue countless marketing initiatives just a lack of financial and human resources necessary to make them happen.. The bottom line is that all of this costs far more in the short term than you get back and it's a popular myth that there is a quick marketing fix to our problem.

We made the best start we could marketingwise on what we could afford in the first half of the year using an outside agency until Damon arrived. He's only been in the job 2 months and has a massive list of tasks to address which we've obviously had to prioritise not least of all getting in all the commercial sponsorship which people were reminding us about particularly the shirt sponsors deal. We rather thought even before it started happening on the pitch that all the stand stuff finally getting under way coupled with such marketing as we had done would give quite a lot of encouragement to supporters which it clearly has to some but not to others, hence my rallying call on Radio Sheffield which I stand by entirely.

David Veal
David Veal is booked to do a questions and answers session for you site and I'm sure he'll deal fully with a lot of points emerging from this discussion which are just too numerous for me to deal with here. Do bear in mind however that the decision to outsource the catering to Lindley followed a comparison with what we could reasonably and profitably provide in house ourselves and Lindley got the nod..

The intention is to improve standards and the offer generally which I am confident will happen in due course - unfortunately there is presently little we or they can do to improve the capacity of the existing tea bars to hold more and better catering equipment and teething problems have been compounded by recent power infrastructure failiures - a lot of this gets back to the poor state of what we currently have and until we can get our new generator and other facilities installed with the new stand we have to make do with sticking plasters and hope our loyal fans will understand. We are however feeding back custiomer comments to Lindley including the good as well as the bad ones.

Finally a word on my making the rallying call from my supposedly 'posh' house (which happens to be quite modest and why should it matter anyway?) instead of attending the game. I had to spend 2 full working days last week purely dealing with legal work for the Club all of which I do for nothing.

Yesterday therefore I just had to catch up with my day job and the same today because I too have to earn a living. I will get to most games but when I don't there will be other directors present and all of us have of course put in substantial sums sufficient to pay for a season ticket many times over.

My geographical position at any given time therefore hardly disqualifies me from expressing disappointment at the level of attendances and for the good of the Club encouraging people to return by reminding them whats at stake - surely that's one of my duties?'