Priced out of Football?

This blog will mostly be about the new season ticket prices released by Portsmouth FC, there is a petition at the end of this blog that I would very much appreciate all my lovely readers to sign.

Here is the new pricing of season tickets as released on Wednesday 16th March.. New prices

So, I sit in the North stand for which I paid £425 for this season. A completely reasonable price considering we had just been relegated from the Prem, were in administration and fighting court battles to even have a club! Now, I completely understand the need to increase prices, most clubs do this to bleed some extra money from supporters to bolster the teams purse. I'm ok with this concept as long as its a fair increase and that you know your going to get something for your money. So, if I renew my season ticket before the end of this month I only have to cough up an extra £25, not too bad i guess, it still works out at nearly £10 cheaper than buying a ticket on the day. But why do i get 15 days to do this! Surely this should have been announced a month ago. All they needed to say was 'Hey, next month, season ticket early bird, watch this space'. Instead it was fortunate that I spotted something about it on the social network site Facebook and spoke to my mum that she looked online to see that this was announced! I then informed a couple of my friends who are season ticket holders and they were extremely grateful as they had no idea this was happening! That is terrible planning on behalf of the club and will only infuriate fans further. Also, you are unable to pay by direct/credit card for early bird, even when it charges a £5 admin fee. So, you want me to stroll around Portsmouth with £450 in my pocket?! Cheers!
And if I dont go and renew it by the 31st, I have to pay £500! No thanks!! Thats over half a months wages for me. The club have released a Q&A page which I will post here and then talk about that....  Q&A

So VAT has gone up. Yes PFC youre right, everyone knows that and is already feeling the pressures of increased prices. However, I like the fact they explain that it is still 20% cheaper than the 09/10 season, which had 4 less home games. This is true but you could look at those games as being Man Utd, Chelsea, Arenal, Liverpool, Man City, Spurs etc. Although our Premier League season tickets were very expensive there was a reason for that! Now we are playin the likes of Scunthorpe, Preston, Barnsley etc (no offence to those teams) its understandable that people arent going to pay as much to see them!
The debit/credit card situation is laughable, we couldnt do it last year because of the clubs status. OK its a year later, don't you think that maybe you could've re-negotiated by now?! Poor business Pompey.
So they're my gripes as to the new season ticket prices. But, what about the new match day prices?
The club are now putting games into categories again, although only 6 will be Cat A this season. So, this season you could sit in any stand for any game for £23 and £20 in the Milton stand. As the price list shows, next season there is no seperate prices for stands and for Cat A its £30. Thats £7 more than this season! Ok, its only for 6 games (or so they say) and 3 of these games are likely to be the relegated Prem clubs. Wait, so if they did that this season it would have cost people £30 to watch Hull and Burnley?! Um, no thanks! I had to endure both games, which we also happened to lose! And I would've demanded a refund! Cat B are £27, so an extra £4 on last year. Not so much of an increase but as some of my friends have already said, they won't be going as often next year as they just cant afford to keep shelling out more and more money.

As I mentioned at the start of this blog there is an online petition against these prices and the link is here, no matter who you support I would appreciate it if you could sign it and show the footballing world that the fans aren't happy about all these constant increases and they should remember who the game is really for... Pompey Petition

Thank you for reading and showing your support.

Respect part deux

So last time I was very lazy and just used a friends blog to make my point. However, I'm now going to add to that with some events from last week. I might rename this blog 'Refereeing - How to cock everything up'.

So Havant & Waterlooville were playing against Dorchester and some twat decides to interrupt the game in a mankini. Dumb as this is, the stewards fail to control him, or do anything at all, and so he's running around like the douche he is. Then one of the Dorchester players takes him down, not maliciously, just grabs his shoulders and wrestles him to the ground before the inept stewards lead him off. And then the ref decides to send off the tackler, no pun intended. Heres the video just to show you what the player did. I say player, turns out hes the clubs player/manager..... Video times

Now, by the letter of the law the referee should send him off as he acted violently. But, surely common sense should kick in there and say 'hey, he stopped the guy, this is a good thing'. He didnt punch/kick/headbutt the guy, just got him on the floor so the stewards could take him away. So, the ref sent off the player/manager when the game was poised at 1-1, H&W went on to win 3-1. Although Dorchester did have 2 more players sent off.

Then in an incident between Barcelona and Arsenal, Robin Van Persie was sent off after receiving a second yellow card for kicking the ball away. This happens constantly in football games and you know when a player does it deliberately as they usually throw their arms in the air and then boot the ball away. RVP didnt do this and seeing as the Nou Camp is a very large stadium with a lot of passionate fans, so it is entirely possible that he didnt hear the whistle. However, on the video that I have for all you lovely people, you can hear the whistle. This may be that the microphone was closer to the whistle than RVP, I dont know, but have a watch for yourself... Aren't videos fun

So either, he was right to be booked for kicking it away or all refs should agree on the punishment for this act. As it happens in every game and mostly goes unpunished. And I must talk about the referee yesterday who was easily the WORST referee I have ever seen! I dont think he got one decision right. At one point, our striker Dave Kitsons shirt was being stretched into a XXL and he got a free kick against him!! So Phil Crossley, Fuck you! Go read a rulebook and then maybe you can ref in the local Sunday league.

There needs to be a review of referees and their assistants as this is getting ridiculous. As Mike said they have started this 'respect' campaign but there is nothing to respect. In Rugby as soon as the whistle goes the players break apart. They dont surround the ref and they take every ruling as it is given. Maybe footballers should start doing this and we can just forget that the twat in black is even there.

So it has been another awful week for football referees and another blog slating them for their decisions.
Thats all for today, I'm bored of moaning about a lack of common sense or knowledge of the rules in the game. Something needs to be done for the good of the game, but knowing the FA nothing is going to happen anytime soon.

Goodbye all.

Respect from a lazy point of view

I went to the Portsmouth v Sheffield United game last Saturday, its handy when you have a season ticket.
Anyway, I'm not going to talk in depth about the team...In fact I'm not going to write anything more really.

My good friend MikeyT (who's blog can be accessed from the links on the right of this page) decided he was going to write a blog about Respect, in majority the campaign by the FA to look after their precious men in black. So, very shamelessly and I will owe him a pint for this! Here is a link to his blog about Respect that covers everything anyone needs to say on the issue.

MikeyTs Respect

(Many thanks mike)

So that's that, I hope you enjoyed his blog :)

Talk soon.