Sorry if I have a bit of a Farnham ground obsession, but it fascinates me lol

Anyway, just seen a pic online of their post-promotion pitch invasion today (mostly 10 year olds - great to see!)

As you can see (click on link below), they have done away with the cover between the dugouts and the corner scoreboard...

I have a feeling a metal stepped terrace will be going in its place!

@dorking-eagle Don't worry, I'm equally fascinated by thier ground and journey!

One minor annoyance I have (as demonstrated today by Bobby-Joe) is that the ball doesn't appear to hit the back of the net down one end - it hits the wall instead and bounces straight out. Pretty crap and hard to tell if it's actually gone in, as someone pointed out on X today.

Just need to pull the net forward and make it a bit tighter!

@dorking-eagle I can’t imagine they’ll find it easy to get planning or permission to build or develop much around Farnham - especially in that town centre location. I might be wrong?

Posted by: @philrigerator

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@dorking-eagle I can’t imagine they’ll find it easy to get planning or permission to build or develop much around Farnham - especially in that town centre location. I might be wrong?

They can quote the ground grading regs and get the planning permission for increasing it to 3000 fairly straightforwardly I would think - the easiest and cheapest way is via 'uncovered terracing' ie the prefabricated metal steps without even a roof over.

I think they may have to make more use of access through the car park that is directly behind the dugouts side, as the road/lane that serves the Main entrance into the ground is quite narrow and may be deemed insufficient for access/egress of 3000 fans

How they could ever demonstrate the ability to expand to 4000 on that site I really do not know - would require a massive overhaul of the whole stadium footprint

(a bit like how we would achieve the 5000 including 2000 seats at Meadowbank required for EFL - plus bigger dressing rooms, better floodlights etc)

On a side note I do wonder if these rapid back to back promotions 3 times running are necessarily a good thing - the fans barely get to properly experience the division over a couple of seasons, and feel it out, it all feels a bit too rushed to me!

@dorking-eagle that’s interesting. That’s also a very interesting thought regarding the speed of the journey and the experience. Hopefully their fans are enjoying it nonetheless. 

Also, it’s always a bit of a question/concern when infrastructure doesn’t, or can’t move alongside at that speed. 

It's a fascinating story, and one other issue with growing so fast is not being able to build a decent hard core support. They got some stick for having only 6 fans at Gloucester City (mid-week), and thier away support is poor by all accounts. 

But these things take time, we have built our overall (and especially away) support hugely over the past 4 seasons or so, despite that including one relegation and 2 failed play off bids. I recall us only taking around 50 to Ebbsfleet in the last NLS promotion season, now we'd be disappointed if we took less than 250-300, which is a huge increase. This is down to a lot of factors, but mostly imo, the incredible supporter engagement, the story, the loyalty and the strong club community principles.

That's not easy to replicate but I'm sure Farnham will build thier away following in time.

I think they will.

At Dorking we are lucky to have a manager who constantly acknowledges and shows appreciation to the away support, that counts for a lot. Fans like to feel appreciated and valued. 

I remember the days of 20 away fans being decent, and £5 coaches to FA Cup away games but these things snowball over time. Even now the coach fares are subsidised. 

For anyone else fascinated with what Farnham are doing there is an hour+ video interview with their owner Harry Hugo on Youtube, which I am only a short way through but is well worth a listen

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uthK_606cNg

Posted by: @dorking-eagle

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For anyone else fascinated with what Farnham are doing there is an hour+ video interview with their owner Harry Hugo on Youtube, which I am only a short way through but is well worth a listen

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uthK_606cNg

Their early bird adult S/T will be £199, the cheapest in the NLS

Their adult admission will be £14 next season

They will have free under 12's (watch out Aldershot who are IMO pricing out youngsters!)

They will have a 12-20 age bracket, with season tickets for those just £70

They are adding stands (plural) and other bits including redoing a lot about their ground including the tannoy.

They are pleased that the 600 segregated away section for their Gloucester home play off final worked well with an away fanzone in the segregated bit, plus away toilets.

They acknowledge their ground will have the worst ground infrastructure alongside Walton & Hersham.

New hospitalilty unit going in for partners, officials, directors, officials & hospitality (sams size as the clubhouse!), 

More outdoor bars around the ground

LED perimiter pitchside boards going in at the 'empty' end

5m x 3m screen going in to replace the current scoreboard

2 new stands - 1 by where the turnstiles and burger stand is, 1 between the Pepperami standing terrace and the Main Stand is

Club shop will become a tuck shop for kids

New club shop in the car park, selling adidas kits and merch

New loaded fries vendor next to the new club shop in the car park(!)

Burger van moving to car park

Home turnstiles to be demolished and moved into the car park, (4 to replace 2)

New exit gates in 2 or 3 places around the ground

Pitchside bar moving to the raised corner at the clock end

Car park itself to become more like a fanzone

New tannoy system and speakers

Improving the pitch itself.

Totally unrelated to DWFC but has anyone been following with whats unravelling down at Maldon & Tiptree..

@dorking-eagle Some great ideas in there - but I do wonder how much Harry is propping up the club in terms of financial support - knowing how direct he is, he'd probably answer that one too!

My only small concern with some of what he does, is that it is so ultra focused on the 'experience' - which is great - but there is a slight risk of becoming a 'Dulwich Hamlet' (and to a degree, Horsham), where the event is all that really matters, people focus only on socialising, eating, drinking etc and less on the actual game and supporting the club vocally. 

I've not been to Dulwich myself, but it sounds (to me) pretty awful, just groups chatting away and ignoring most of the game, and not caring about the result. Horsham was actually pretty similar this year, I stood with the home fans first half and honestly, they didn't really care that much about the game, and most of the conversations were non football. Second half there was zero noise when they attacked or came close, so much so that it was hard to know if it was going to lead to a goal. Now that might be more to do with not much riding on the result, but I suspect that it's often like this, which of course is fine, if that's your kind of thing.

Just my thoughts of course, maybe Farnham will be different, and probably will be helped by having cheap kids tickets (tho the flip side of that is they could attract a 'youth element' 🤣)

Posted by: @hemelwanderer

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Totally unrelated to DWFC but has anyone been following with whats unravelling down at Maldon & Tiptree..

Shocking - innocent until proven otherwise of course

Posted by: @adeb

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@dorking-eagle Some great ideas in there - but I do wonder how much Harry is propping up the club in terms of financial support - knowing how direct he is, he'd probably answer that one too!

My only small concern with some of what he does, is that it is so ultra focused on the 'experience' - which is great - but there is a slight risk of becoming a 'Dulwich Hamlet' (and to a degree, Horsham), where the event is all that really matters, people focus only on socialising, eating, drinking etc and less on the actual game and supporting the club vocally. 

I've not been to Dulwich myself, but it sounds (to me) pretty awful, just groups chatting away and ignoring most of the game, and not caring about the result. Horsham was actually pretty similar this year, I stood with the home fans first half and honestly, they didn't really care that much about the game, and most of the conversations were non football. Second half there was zero noise when they attacked or came close, so much so that it was hard to know if it was going to lead to a goal. Now that might be more to do with not much riding on the result, but I suspect that it's often like this, which of course is fine, if that's your kind of thing.

Just my thoughts of course, maybe Farnham will be different, and probably will be helped by having cheap kids tickets (tho the flip side of that is they could attract a 'youth element' 🤣)

Quite.

And he seems to have forgotten about planning permissions - he said that the new stands will be in place in June, yet there is no planning applications for them - so presumably he is going for just doing it then getting retrospective permissions, which won't sit well with the Council planners or the immediate neighbours!

He said he is going to segregate all away teams next season, wierdly though he didn't say it was because he wants a family friendly atmosphere in the home bits, he said it was so they could really focus on delivering a brilliant away experience.

I just know it will become yet another away game where we take 500 ish and if you want to stand at the frnt you have to take up your space about an hour and a half before ko, and then not move. Getting a bit weary of it tbh, and even went in the home seats at Maidstone just so I don't have to stand for so long to ensure a good view of the game itself.

If you go to 1hr 4mins 40 sec it is quite interesting about away fans - he said along the lines of - 

- the Pepperami Stand (covered standing) holds 370

- on the whole that is enough for most clubs

- for a handful of teams he needs to think about extending that to 'a more play-off allocation' (they gave Gloucester 600)..."but that will all come down to how well we sell home fan tickets - I have no problem keeping that away fan allocation to just 370 for away fans....that is more than adequate for the league'

I think he will find that the bigger supports he mentions can insist on being given 600 in the NLS!

Posted by: @dorking-eagle

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- for a handful of teams he needs to think about extending that to 'a more play-off allocation' (they gave Gloucester 600)..."but that will all come down to how well we sell home fan tickets - I have no problem keeping that away fan allocation to just 370 for away fans....that is more than adequate for the league'

That is more than a little niaive, and shows a lack of knowledge imo.

370 is totally inadequate against many teams in the NLS, including us. As I said before, I won't hesitate to buy a ticket in the Farnham end if our allocation is too small, as I suspect will many others.

@dorking-eagle Charged with rape and human trafficking. ITV were due to release a 6 episode documentary on them which has now been pulled, club just won the league aswell bet quite a few players/manager will leave seeing as they was bank rolling the team. Could be entering into a period of unknown while this goes on