THE SEASON'S best crowd so far by over a thousand - 31,424 - against Liverpool shows that Teesside's football public WILL respond to creative pricing initiatives. In that respect the club's experiment in scrapping the punative pricing for casual customers for what would normally have been a £31-£38 Category A game was a complete success. We must hope they repeat it.
However, judging by the post-match grumbles, the club were widely perceived as not having delivered on the other side of the equation: the game was a gritty defensive display but it lacked the zest of attacking flair, the excitement and goals from the home side that would have made it an unqualified success and provided undoubted value for money.
But the big question is, will those who gave Boro another chance against Liverpool do so again?
And that question is crucial to the way the season pans out. Those 10,000 or so "part-timers" are a vital ingredient to the club as an influx for big games provides not just revenue, but also offers the potential for the cracking atmosphere which is a key component of the product, and further, a compelling reason that people actually go: to be part of a crowd that is expressing itself in a vocal and passionate way. Getting involved. Feeling part of the action. Getting them thousands back on a regular basis can help galvanise the crowd and create a positive big game bandwagon that can drag more in and stop the rot in the Riverside matchday demeanour.
So how one off games boosted by ticket initiatives like the Liverpool one are received by the casual fans is extremely important - because unlike Red Book holders they do not have a financial imperitive to return next time irrespective of form, results or weather. Selling the next game to them is part of an on-going battle for hearts and minds that the club must win if they are to reignite the flames of passion around the club.
So it is unfortunate that the returning hoards saw a goalless draw on a freezing night in which the home keeper is the busiest player on the pitch and where there was little to cheer or warm the heart. There must be a fear that some, a lot even, left muttering about Boro 'never coming to see me when I was bad' and vowing "never again".
But we must also hope that enough will have seen a gritty, committed team that belied the gadge-in-the-pub consensus that the team was an easy touch and who took a good point from a team in the Champions League (and who despite a sluggish start will still be expected to be in Europe again next year) to come back again in the belief that goals - or at least the glimmer of an attacking zest - can be added to the endeavour in the future.
It is important that the club's U-turn on prices, a major political policy change, was a success at the gate. After two bad defeats, a televised game on a miserable night could easily have been an attendence disaster. That may have knocked price cutting off the agenda completely. As it was the people of Teesside did their bit. Now it is down to the club - on and off the pitch - to keep on doing theirs.
******
BORO'S sterile display up front offered a frightening glimpse of a Stewyless future.
Without Downing on the pitch as the chief creative outlet - no, let's be honest here, ONLY creative outlet - Boro struggled to offer anything that troubled Liverpool's defence at all. There was no pace, no invention, very few crosses finding their man in the box, no one dropping deep to demand the ball with the express intention of getting forward looking to hurt people... it was a deeply worrying sign of exactly how dependent the team is on one individual.
An injury to Downing right now doesn't bare thinking about.
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