Perhaps it's time to stop digging?

 Surely nobody believes that the club's decision on season ticket renewals struck the right note.  Certainly no season ticket holder would, faced with handing the club hundreds of pounds for, effectively nothing.  One would assume even the club hierarchy might look back on how the renewal process was handled and wonder if it could have been done better and fairer.

At least one would have hoped so.

Stop Shovelling Whenever You're Ready.....

But, having read the latest "Poppies Voice" I fear that our Board is not only "not getting it" but actually getting further away from understanding the legitimate grievances ST holders are feeling.  Not only are these supporters bearing the entire financial brunt of last season's cancellation we now read that purchasers of the "Terrific Tuesday" three for two tickets offers from, we assume, 2 seasons ago will still have their purchase honoured in full.  Good for them I suppose, but it does seem to be another slap in the face for fans who stumped up hundreds of non-transferable pounds.

Loyalty is a finite resource in life generally.  Just ask energy, internet or telecoms providers.  Who only buys one brand of cereal for their entire life?  Or purchases their clothing from only a single brand?  But football is different.  With remarkably few exceptions, you don't change football clubs. Clubs benefit from an inordinate surfeit of loyalty.  Supporters will follow, defend and give a large wedge of disposable income to a football club that has done nothing other than share it's name with their place of birth!  

Is Kettering Town Football Club inherently special in any way?  No.  It is an entity that has, over the years, antagonised other local companies, broken contracts, made numerous enemies locally and further afield, and sh*t on it's own supporters plenty of times.  It should have gone to the wall for financial mismanagement more times than can be recalled. 

And yet, the club is still here, and so are we.  Loyalty?  Stubbornness?  Pure bloody-mindedness?  Take your pick.  We are all of these things.  And among the ranks of people who, for reasons they probably can't recall, still support this club, those who happily hand the club hundreds of pounds every season before a single ball has been kicked in anger surely must rank as the most loyal, stubborn, bloody-minded of all.

And what do these ST holders get for this investment?  First dibs on big match FA Cup tickets we'll probably never buy again.  Priority tickets for the next Latimer Park sell-out?  In reality the benefits are usually limited to getting through the turnstile slightly quicker and shaving a quid or so off the admittance fee.  Plus the comforting glow of feeling that by helping fund the club early on in the season we have, in some small way, done "a good thing".

The unspoken agreement is that we pay up front for a season's worth of football and the club treats us ever so slightly better than those fans who pick and choose when they attend.  Neither party is looking for anything more, but also, nothing less.

The Club have come dangerously close to breaking this simple reciprocal arrangement, but perhaps worse than that, they seem to not realise or more worryingly, care that this is the case.  Instead we are repeatedly told how many games last season we watched on our moderate streaming service, which far too often seemed to come with non-functioning zoom facilities.  AND we are now put on notice that should this season follow the same covid-disrupted pattern as last season even this patchy service won't be included within our ST purchase, and we would need to pay twice to see each fixture.

How about this Poppies board?  Count yourselves lucky any of us have renewed our season tickets this season.  Bank the money of the few more that may renew in the week leading up to the first league game.  But please stop trying to justify the fact that we've been screwed over.  I think most of us are willing to put this incident down as the only misstep of the current regime and move on.  We don't need to keep being reminded that we've been specifically targeted for this and potentially future shoddy treatment.

Poppies probably go close!