wfc pr

The club and the fans

Open Day - great day

A new regular column highlighting the highs and lows of the Wrexham FC public relations machine:

Respect! The Wrexham FC Open Day was a fantastic event in itself and, furthermore, a wondrous PR success. The weather was rubbish - constant rain and drizzle - but the concept of the occasion, and the way in which it was executed, was positively slick. Let me set the scene: first-team players strutting about all day (a player rota, covering the whole day, was in operation), Pryce Griffiths wandering around like a wise and much-loved grandfather, loads of young kiddies with their autograph books, and Allan Thomas - The Ultimate Host - always at hand. Yes, the day was that ‘open’, that laissez-faire - the fans who attended had unlimited access to anything and everything. A number of supporters groups also had their own ‘premises’. Red Passion, the Shropshire Reds and the Programme Shop were each given a PGS executive box to themselves. The lunatics taking over the asylum? I don’t think so. These three organisations are sane and deadly serious.

There were lots of interesting goings-on in the (extremely smart) RP ‘box’. Steve and Neil Roberts came in for a chat. Steve was looking adolescent and angelic, Neil was looking cool and wry. Gareth Owen dropped in and looked happy and buoyant in a Sunday morning (or a Testimonial Year) kind of way. Kevin Dearden (and son Alex) also popped in - very briefly. When he realised that the ‘box’ he’d just walked into was the Red Passion ‘box’ he started to boo and hiss under his breath (which I didn’t think was very nice). What have we ever done to you, Kev? Joey and his dog Beauty also made a noisy appearance and, in no particular order, so did Cliff Sear, Brian Prandle and Malcolm Davies, Chairman of the Gareth Owen Testimonial Fund. Chalk and Barrett were watching the rugby in one of the empty executive boxes, Brace was buzzing around and Hardy was looking very nervous (just as if he was nearing the opposition penalty box). Meantime, Danny Williams, Andy Morrell and David Walsh were touring the premises as a three-piece set. Danny was Jack The Lad, Morrell was all quiet and sensible, and Walsh shy and unassuming. Oh, and by the way, the ground and the pitch were looking fantastic. The ultimate piece of club PR came when Pryce Griffiths wandered into the Red Passion ‘box’. He thanked everybody involved with RP for their hard work and their fundraising help and said that he’d been reading a lot about the magazine’s initiatives in the local press. He also agreed to do an interview with us - so watch this space!

Away from the Big Day there have been other PR triumphs. Club MD David Rhodes is a man who doesn’t get a lot of plaudits - far from it in fact - but I would like to congratulate the club, and its MD, on an excellent ‘group booking’ ticket scheme. When I phoned up the club to order tickets for the 56 children and teachers from Ysgol Rhiwabon and St Davids School - Red Passion’s guests at the Chesterfield home game - I was told by the woman who answered the phone in the ticket office that there were no special ‘group’ rates for the new stand. I got put through to Mr Rhodes - he said that there was! In the end we paid £4-a-head for each of kids’ tickets - and the normal price for the adults’. This, I thought, was a very reasonable deal.     I’ve mentioned Allan Thomas already - and I’m now going to mention him again. Red Passion recently sponsored the matchball at the Conwy WPC home game. Allan was a FANTASTIC host and the ‘deal’ that match/matchball sponsors get is an excellent one - and, again, should be publicised more and better.

And now after the praise…the gripes! Let’s start with ticket office telephone arrangements. In early October I phoned the WFC ticket office thousands and millions of times (I wanted to book a set of kiddies’ tickets - see above). For a full two weeks all I got was a monotonous and extremely unhelpful answerphone message - in the first week it was about Samoa-Japan ticket arrangements and in the second about Wales-Switzerland details. No message saying something like: “If you want Wrexham ticket details please hold on/please press this or that number on your telephone pad/please phone a different number.” No, all it did was rebuff you if you wanted any WFC-related ticket info.

Finally, I can reveal that Red Passion passed on to the club copies of two items which appeared in Issue 12: the letter from Andrew Shone about facilities for disabled fans and the Robert Davies piece about the steward who stopped him taking photos of the game from the Kop. Allan Thomas told us that he had left the two items with a senior colleague to deal with. We contacted the club in mid-October and as yet we haven’t had any reply.

Peter Davies

If you have any WFC PR ‘highs’ or ‘lows’ you’d like us to publicise please get in touch.