Family Day Q&A - Graham Eales

Saturday's match against Tranmere Rovers has been designated a "Family Day", with discounted admission prices supported by the Nationwide 'Supporters of Tomorrow' Campaign. United's PR Manager Graham Eales (right) answers some questions about the day, and you can help to promote this match and ensure as many people as possible attend by downloading and printing this A4 poster (also available from the Tickets page) for your workplace, school, college or club! Click here to download the poster in colour, or here for the black & white version.

You can also listen to this interview here.

Q. Graham, how has the 'Family Day' idea come about?

A. For a couple of years now Nationwide has put money into the whole of the Football League clubs. It was really their 'Season of Promise' initiative a couple of years ago that has had a different thrust. We were encouraged to encourage different people and some disadvantaged groups who wouldn't normally get to football matches - youngsters and deserving causes, needy causes, disadvantaged groups - were encouraged to come along.

But this year the thrust is 'Supporters of Tomorrow' - the whole theme is about supporters of tomorrow - so it's a chance for clubs to encourage just that; supporters to come along with Nationwide picking up the tab to the tune of about £12,000 per club. When you think that's throughout the whole of the Nationwide League clubs that's tremendous support from the League's main sponsor.

So, whilst we've done this throughout the season - we've had some youngsters coming along on a 'quid a kid' basis and selected groups coming along - what we had always decided was at the end of the season to have a carnival day and have a major thrust on encouraging people to come along.

The thinking was that at the end of the season we're looking forward to next season and what we need to do is get people behind the club, get people buying season tickets, so we announced this some time ago and for some organised groups from schools and Duke of Edinburgh groups and from voluntary organisations, they are coming totally free with Nationwide picking up the tab.

This has been happening over the past few weeks because it's not just totally 'free', it is to try and encourage some sort of achievement. It might a school where the youngsters have achieved better attendance or it may be that they've excelled in something, or it may be that this school is wanting to recognise something that is just a little bit beyond the normal call of duty. So there is quite a lot of scope for schools to interpret that in their own context, and this is what has happened.

I'm going to be taking some tickets with John Taylor to a school from Haverhill who are bringing a coachload of 50. At our game against Blackpool that was the game that Comberton chose to bring youngsters to because next week is outside of term time so they preferred to bring the whole coachload to the game against Blackpool. We've got pockets of youngsters from different schools that we're linked into, different youth groups, Duke of Edinburgh award, voluntary youth organisations.

So a lot of them are coming on an organised basis, but over and above that we've said a quid a kid and a fiver for adults for everybody. In a way it's shades of the Queens Park Rangers game and we thought this is a great way to end the season with some sort of carnival-type family thrust.

There will be added little bits and pieces. We're going to to be distributing some of the charity money - we know that we've got a chance to channel proceeds from the FA Charity Shield to three local causes - some local Colts league teams are being recognised as having gained some sort of excellence criteria, so there are seven of those who are coming with something to celebrate.

Football in the Community have raised £1,000 in the last week for a Shop-mobility scheme in the Grafton Centre so we're going to be presenting that. We're going to have a display on the pitch at half-time of youngsters from our Centre of Excellence. Some of the youngsters involved at under-8 level had a very successful tournament abroad recently and they won a trophy so they'll be on the pitch. There were youngsters on the pitch at half-time having a bit of fun against Bloomfield Bear, and this time they can have a bit of fun against Marvin. We'll have face-painting in the crowd before the game, we'll have balloons around.

The whole thing is to try and give an end of season carnival atmosphere because this year we're hoping to announce on Thursday what the season ticket prices are for next year. Instead of there being that gap between the end of the season and then the time when we start talking about the following season and we're waiting for the fixtures to come out, we thought 'no, we'll go for it from now', so as from Thursday we'll announce the new season ticket prices and really drive next season, getting fans behind us.

John Taylor has already made an appeal to fans - one way they can help the club financially is to buy season tickets early. Gary Harwood (left) has reinforced that in a couple of interviews recently, so that's what indeed we shall be doing.

Q. So the aim of the day is to throw the doors open, at a very low price, to the Cambridgeshire public and say 'come along, get a taste of the football, have some fun'?

A. Yes, and some people have said 'is it a good idea to do it at the end of the season? Isn't there a chance that people will say 'I really enjoyed this Dad, can we come again' and the Dad says 'we can't son because there's three months before a game starts', but our view isn't that that will happen. What is more likely to happen is somebody will say ' Dad this is really great fun, can we come again?' and he says 'yes, we certainly can, because there's tremendous value here in season tickets for you, so we're going to get one for you and I'm going to buy one'...

So that's the thrust we're making, that it's already trying to get people thinking about next season much earlier than we would normally do. And to reinforce that is a major brochure that we're putting together with the different aspects of the Club, spelling out in the next few months how we can get behind the Club and start thinking onwards and upwards with regard to next year.

Q. And existing season ticket holders aren't forgotten?

A. The genuine season ticket holders are very, very supportive and they know that all these things we're trying to do, all the time, are to get more people to support Cambridge United, so there's never really a problem. But I suppose you could say 'the season ticket holders are the heart and soul of the Club and yet they're not going to benefit from a 'quid a kid' scheme because they've already paid for their season ticket at the start of last year, so to keep them with us what we're going to do is a major draw.

Everybody who turns up for the game on Saturday who is a season ticket holder will be involved in a draw, and so the very first season ticket that will be secured will be one that is won by a season ticket holder as our way of recognising that they're an important part of our family.

Q. As well as promoting the day to schools and organisations, we've got a poster downloadable from the website that people can put up in their school or college or their office, and really we want them to spread the word and get people along on Saturday?

We do. We had 1,000 people at the ground today at the Colts League finals. There was 1,000 parents and families and it was a very, very strong family presence at the games today - four different finals at different times - so all told there were 1,000 people coming to watch. That was a chance for us to say 'you've enjoyed your experience here at the Abbey Stadium today, if you want to see live soccer matches it's not as costly as you might think because next Saturday you can see our final home game of the season and it will only cost a pound for kids and five pounds for you to come. You could see a lot of people thinking that is something they would really like to do.

Although it's not ideal because it's out of term time, by the same token it's a bit like a special sort of treat before they get back to school.

Q. So it's been a disappointing season but we're looking for a good game and a good crowd at the end of the season?

A. We're really trying to say let's start looking forward and thinking about next year as opposed to looking back. There was a lot of euphoria with regard to the trip to Cardiff and a lot of fans turned up for that who we don't normally see here, so again we made sure we got the message across on the coaches, we got the message across as best we could in the media to say to people 'if you've enjoyed your little taste of professional football why not come and have a taste back at the Abbey Stadium', because there clearly were people at Cardiff who haven't been coming week in, week out to watch us. So it's a drive that's been going on now for about two months.

U's supporters at the Millennium Stadium last month

Please download one of the posters above if you think you can help us promote the Family Day game to your friends or colleagues.

Is there someone you'd like to put on the spot in a future Q&A? Nominate them by writing to web@cambridge-united.co.uk

Previous Q&As:
30Mar02 -  Gary Harwood - ITV Digital
22Mar02 -  John Taylor
17Mar02 -  John Howard - Redevelopment
10Mar02 -  Andrew Pincher
03Mar02 -  Tom Youngs
24Feb02  - John Taylor
17Feb02  - Gary Harwood - Chairman
10Feb02  - Richard Summerfield - Finance Director
03Feb02  - Lionel Perez
27Jan02  - Stuart Ayles - First Team Physio
20Jan02  - Paul Wanless
13Jan02  - Dale Brooks - New Assistant Manager
06Jan02  - Mark Johnson - Match Programme
27Nov01 - John Taylor and Dale Brooks - The New Management Team
17Nov01 - Gary Harwood and Colin Davies - Redevelopment

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