Winter Sports
“I met the President of Barcelona and found out he was more in awe of us than I was in them. That's what drove me on to get really involved in Sheffield FC”
farm as well, with sheep, and we go out contracting baling straw as far as Newark.”
As with many other groundsmen from
grassroots level upwards, Peter does put in the extra hours to make the pitch stand out that bit more on match day. Part of the reason behind this is that he is a true fan of the club itself and what it stands for.
“I do it because it’s Sheffield FC and it’s my local club, I only live up the road. I don’t go to every game, but I go to as many as I possibly can,” he said. A typical Sheffield FC game will pull in about 250 people, but it was not ticket
sales that Chairman, Richard Tims, was looking towards to secure the next 155 years for the club. ‘The oldest football club in the world’ is a powerful tag not just in the UK, but on a global scale, and Richard is sweating to turn this into a viable business model, which would continue the legacy.
He said: “If you can imagine that every football fan in the world is related to us, genealogy-wise you came from here, so what we are going to create is a brand called ‘The World’s First Football Club’ that is the ultimate grass roots football club. On Facebook, we are the 49th most followed football club in this country.
25% of these followers are international, so we wonder ‘why do they like Sheffield FC?’ Well, they don’t, they like the world’s first football club.” On 24th October, Richard launched a
marketing campaign to increase the profile of the brand. He is attempting to name the date, which is the birthday of the club, as International Football Day and hopes to spark a worldwide annual celebration. Richard explained where some of the motivation to do this came from: “In 2003, I met the President of Barcelona and found out he was more in awe of us than I was of them. That’s what drove me
WITH NEW
TECHNOLOGY
70 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2013
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