(12-22-2016, 08:37 PM)BluePhantom link Wrote:Where are all our supporters? We are one of the big 5 (gotta include the Dawks) yet bl00dy Port Delaide has just hit 50000 members. Little old Port, 50000.
What are we on ? Just over 30000?
Either they have some real cheap members deals, or they are signing up their gold fish? They probably include all their Port Sanfl members too.
Why are our supporters so reluctant to get on board? Yet when we start winning they all jump on the band wagon.
End rant
Go Blues
Member. 
A couple of factors are impacting...
Firstly Port's competition is basically the Crows when drawing supporters to memberships.
Same in the west with WCE and Freo.
It hasn't quite reached the same levels in the Northern states where there is still a lot of support for clubs outside of NSW and Qld but with each year that support will diminish as youngsters grow up with the home State teams... and support for the traditional Victorian teams will die off as the older supporters are replaced by the kids who have grown up with the Swans (already pretty established), Lions, Suns and Giants
In Melbourne (although it's a bigger base) the competition for Carlton are all the other Melbourne based clubs and Geelong.
I don't see that competition as sustainable.
And there is the danger for us.
We need to ensure that when the cull comes we're not a part of it.
Success is a major factor.
From the late sixties through to the nineties we were a power of the competition.
Although not successful every year the support was still strong.
In the days when only one or two VFL games were shown interstate on the "match of the day" each week...Carlton featured just about every second week.
The ''brand'' was well known and the support was widespread nationally.
As the years go by without sustained success other teams have taken the spotlight.
They're the ones whose jumpers the kids want to wear.
I remember what it was like in the schoolyard when I was young.
I was a Carlton supporter.
For the majority of the season we could "walk tall".
Mondays held no fear for us...we'd usually won, and usually won big.
Premierships?...they happened every second year...and even in the poor years we were finalists.
From that base there grew a supporter group that would last for decades....but slowly over the last decade that support base has been slipping in relation to other clubs.
It's a slide we have to turn around....and on-field success will go a long way to setting that process in motion.
