From A Green Bay Packers Fan.... Congrats!

[kingofmilwaukee]

This might be my only post. I joined just to post this.

As a fan the only publicly-owned American Football club, The Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin, who have sold out every match since 1960, average 73,000 attendance per game in a town of just 200,000 and have a wait list for season tickets of 60 years on average, I am so happy to hear of your new owner and hopefully, a fresh start.

I am a more recent fan of English football (last 2 years) and I am not the only new football fan here in America. Several of us know of the dilemma of Notts County out here and we have talked about how the "original" football club deserves better. Packers fans like myself are naturally drawn to underdogs from smaller cities like you. So we are all happy to hear of this step in the right direction.

Lifetime Green Bay Packers fans can relate to you, for many reasons. There are many of us who are quietly rooting for you. You are not alone. Good luck!!

[magpiejue]

Welcome to Pride of Nottingham @kingofmilwaukee its lovely to know our beloved Notts County Football Club is spoken of so far away. Thank you for your kind wishes for our club. And hopefully you will join in on here some more. Thank you again. A lovely post. 

[liampie]

@kingofmilwaukee thanks for the supportive message, hope to see you around from time to time.

good luck with your own season.

[DangerousSausage]

This deserves a thousand likes! Thank you. And feel free to join in

We are where we are because of a thousand bad decisions and a repeated failure to seize opportunities going back decades. We've had a hard time of it but hopefully we can turn the corner now.

There are some American football fans in Nottingham. I recall there used to be a poster on another forum who was adamant that Notts could be successful if only we held American football matches at Meadow Lane too. But it's probably far too much of a niche thing here to ever stand a chance.

[Northants Pie]

11 hours ago, kingofmilwaukee said:

This might be my only post. I joined just to post this.

As a fan the only publicly-owned American Football club, The Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin, who have sold out every match since 1960, average 73,000 attendance per game in a town of just 200,000 and have a wait list for season tickets of 60 years on average, I am so happy to hear of your new owner and hopefully, a fresh start.

I am a more recent fan of English football (last 2 years) and I am not the only new football fan here in America. Several of us know of the dilemma of Notts County out here and we have talked about how the "original" football club deserves better. Packers fans like myself are naturally drawn to underdogs from smaller cities like you. So we are all happy to hear of this step in the right direction.

Lifetime Green Bay Packers fans can relate to you, for many reasons. There are many of us who are quietly rooting for you. You are not alone. Good luck!!

Any chance you know where we can find an equivalent of Aaron Rodgers by any chance?

[kingofmilwaukee]

Thanks, all.

Between 1972-1986 the Packers never won more than half their games in any one season. They were outscored by opponents in 14 of 16 seasons. It looked grim.

If I had to explain why they started to turn it around it was probably a combination of the following...

1. Youth. They built through the draft. As a small town club, they could not compete with the big boys for free-agents, so they developed from within. It took several years but it paid off.

2. Just a couple key trades (transfers) in key areas to fill a hole that they could not fill with youth. And when they did those trades, they tried to get the best available, blowing their budget on just one key player. But the player was always a no brainer. No risk.

3. Developed a pride/mythos around the club and turned what many thought of as a negative (small town no one wanted to go to) as a positive. This build upon itself over the years. We became "more than a club."

4. Emphasized, even when we stank, that we were one of the original teams, created in 1921, even before the NFL existed. The old stadium, ugly uniforms, etc... all became part of the lore.

5. We became a lot of people's second-favorite club because of #3 and #4 and this made us popular underdogs for years. Now that we are a big club once again, that has gone away, but it carried us for years. We are respected by almost everyone and hated by almost no one.

6. Incremental, but consistent improvement in the stadium. Little things like better seats, one section at a time and other small things really added up over the years because they never took a break from making the fan experience better.

I don't know how applicable this is to Nott's situation or in English football, and it took a decade to get it done. But eventually it worked!

[Northants Pie]

2 hours ago, kingofmilwaukee said:

Thanks, all.

Between 1972-1986 the Packers never won more than half their games in any one season. They were outscored by opponents in 14 of 16 seasons. It looked grim.

If I had to explain why they started to turn it around it was probably a combination of the following...

1. Youth. They built through the draft. As a small town club, they could not compete with the big boys for free-agents, so they developed from within. It took several years but it paid off.

2. Just a couple key trades (transfers) in key areas to fill a hole that they could not fill with youth. And when they did those trades, they tried to get the best available, blowing their budget on just one key player. But the player was always a no brainer. No risk.

3. Developed a pride/mythos around the club and turned what many thought of as a negative (small town no one wanted to go to) as a positive. This build upon itself over the years. We became "more than a club."

4. Emphasized, even when we stank, that we were one of the original teams, created in 1921, even before the NFL existed. The old stadium, ugly uniforms, etc... all became part of the lore.

5. We became a lot of people's second-favorite club because of #3 and #4 and this made us popular underdogs for years. Now that we are a big club once again, that has gone away, but it carried us for years. We are respected by almost everyone and hated by almost no one.

6. Incremental, but consistent improvement in the stadium. Little things like better seats, one section at a time and other small things really added up over the years because they never took a break from making the fan experience better.

I don't know how applicable this is to Nott's situation or in English football, and it took a decade to get it done. But eventually it worked!

That is what we all want as Notts fans to be built up in the same way. We have had periods of big invesments followed by periods of severe lack of money in general, we all hope now though that we have a chairman who will build in a very same fashion to how the Packers have built.

I have aways followed the NFL and have always followed the Packers and I love the rivalry with the Bears in particular. We could have had a similar rivalry with Nottingham Forest if we had been built properly over the years but unfortunately we haven't had the correct mentality when it comes to building properly.

On that note i'm predicting a 31 - 7 win over the Vikings, what are your thoughts on the game?

[Who r ya?? You Pies!!]

A massive welcome to PoN @kingofmilwaukee , thanks for your kind and encouraging words , it's great to here our very much loved club is spoken of and that people are interested , thanks in your part of the world , ever thought of helping us grow over there , we would love to hear more from interested persons , it's so thrilling , thanks you and good luck .

[Elite_pie]

On 22/12/2016 at 05:01, kingofmilwaukee said:

As a fan the only publicly-owned American Football club, The Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin, who have sold out every match since 1960, average 73,000 attendance per game in a town of just 200,000.

Those are certainly very impressive attendance figures, let's just say ours are, erm....... a little different.  Our city has a population of 320,000, and although we share it with another club (their name escapes me at the moment) we currently average around the 4,500 mark.  I would guess that your ticket prices must be a bit more affordable than ours - our matchday adult price converted to your money is $29.50 for the main stand, and $27.00 for the cheaper stands.  We have an impressive stadium for our level (4th tier of English football) but sadly in recent games over 80% of it has been unoccupied.  Thank you for posting, it's normally all doom and gloom around our club at the moment so it's encouraging to know that we have attracted your attention.  Let's hope that both of our teams have better times ahead!

[kingofmilwaukee]

Your neighbors will regret their new owner. He is very good at getting local politicians to invest many millions in making a stadium better and also fixing roads around the stadium, etc, all in order to make more money for himself. I saw this first hand with the San Diego Padres when he owned them. He will front some money early to lull people to sleep and to get taxpayer money. After that is done, he keeps all the money himself, waits for the club to get a higher valuation, then sells out, even if the club is doing poorly. Add in the fact Forest loses so much money that future transfer bans and fines are coming, I think they face a rough road ahead.

This leaves an opportunity for Notts.

[kingofmilwaukee]

Your situation reminds me so much of Swansea in 1996-2002. Their attendance was about 4,000, they were in trouble... and the did it right with a lot of fan engagement and just slowly built the team and rose up through the leagues. In ten years, were in the PL, selling out 20,000 seats every match. Such a well-run club. Until this year. But for me they are the model.

[kingofmilwaukee]

Just peeking back in to say I have not forgotten about you all.

Congrats on the recent success, it looks like you are staying up after all. Oh what a difference a good owner makes!!

Maybe there will be some money for a few transfers and you can start making a promotion push into L1 in the next year or two? That would be awesome. 

So glad for you all. Right now, you are probably the envy of the club down the road. It's been a long time since you could say that.

[TheCalFoster]

@kingofmilwaukee everything is looking so much more positive now, only lost 4 since Nolan took over in January. 

Nolan has been a good manager whon has changed the mindset of the team, his approach has got us results. We signed a few decent players Ameobi, Grant and Bola now we look like a team again.

As for Alan Hardy, he's been a breath of fresh air, open and honest with fans and started rebuilding the structure of this club.

 

We're happy again, onwards and upwards..

[liampie]

its looking promising for us, so hopefully some of the well wishes and good luck will help to see this form now continue next season.

thanks @kingofmilwaukee