By Albatross
December 11 2002

Carlise owner John Courtenay is incensed. Apparently Pools are robbing him blind by asking for a big sum of money to change the date of the Scunthorpe game. Is he justified? Maybe, but then again maybe not. When you first think about it, £50,000 for changing the date of a match sounds like an awful lot of money for Pools. When you get down to it and look at the figures though, it doesn't seem quite so much....

First of all, let's look at the number of people likely to turn up. While some have been less than enchanted with the idea of Friday Night Football, the figures at Pools this season seem to show a lot of people do like the idea. The attendance for the game against York on Friday 1st November was just under 5800 - only one other home game has bettered that and that was the Derby. Considering the conditions were pretty abysmal that night, it does look like the demand is there. Considering where Pools are in the league, a 6000 attendance figure doesn't sound unreasonable.

Compare this to our last Saturday fixture at the Vic. The game against Kiddy was watched by 4300. Bear in mind that the match is being played on the last Saturday before Christmas, when attendance tends to be a bit lower, and you soon reach the realm of moving the fixture reducing the attendance by 2000.

If you assume an average spend per person of about £15 - covering entry, programme, half time draw tickets, refreshments etc means that sounds reasonable - then you're already up to £30,000.

Then there's other factors to add in. Most Police Forces seem to expect two weeks notice of any fixture change; and given the way Pools tend to get treated by the local force, I suggest it's highly likely that they too will insist on being compensated. Let's allow £5000 for that. Then you've got the Sponsors to add in.... with about 10 days notice of the change, it seems reasonable to assume that a number of sponsors or those using the Executive Boxes will not want to rearrange things, and the club can hardly demand payment from them if they do pull out under the circumstances. Certainly not if we want them to come back to Pools again anyway. Looking at the Pools Website reveals that the cost for each company taking up a box is £1000 - plus VAT. I don't know how many boxes Pools have, but even if it's a case of we only lose five sponsors because of the switch, then there's another £5000.

Tot those figures up, and the figure has already reached £40K. All of a sudden you can realise why Pools asked for as much as they did.....

Even without justifying the figures though, you have to wonder about the motivation of John Courtenay in making the claims he has. After all, Scunthorpe are apparently paying half of the fee but haven't made a fuss about it. Some Scunny fans are complaining, but only due to the fact that they have been informed by Carlisle fans - their board haven't said a thing about it.

The net result is that tension between fans of Scunthorpe, Carlisle and Hartlepool has been raised, and with the problems around Brunton Park on the first day of the season this cannot be a good thing. John Courtenay may well feel he has grounds to complain - but by placing them in the public domain all he will achieve is to antagonise relations between two sets of fans that don't exactly get on well in the first place. I don't think he's done it maliciously - but you can't help feel he's been misguided.