On Tuesday 14th May Phil Stringfellow Chair and Mike Field committee member of Old School Hammers met up with Catherine Smith the new Supporters Liaison Officer at West Ham United.
The meeting was informal and interesting. Catherine has a lot of experience in football having worked previously at Manchester City and Chelsea. Catherine replaces Jake Heath who has now gone to Tottenham, we wish Jake well. Catherine is actually a West Ham fan as are her father and Grandfather.
We discussed many things during the meeting including stewarding, queues, accessibility lanes searches, smoking in toilets, men using female toilets and our key discussion Season Ticket price increase above the inflation rate and concession changes (65 to 66) and the loss of concessions in bands 1 to 4.
A family area (which we don’t currently have) and perhaps a concession area were also discussed.
We stated that there has been a clear divide and lack of communication between the club and the fans and we want this to improve.
The impression we got from Catherine was that she wants to try and improve relationships and dialogue with fan groups, and yesterday acknowledged the club has made past mistakes in how they communicate with us.
We understand that the club won’t always be able to make changes that fans want, however we have asked that rather than the club make a decision and that is final, that perhaps discussions with the fans and explanation of decisions and to see if there is a compromise would be better all round.
We as Old School Hammers have re-iterated that we will be applying to be on the Independent Supporters Committee and or the Fan Advisory board to represent our aged 60 and above fans.
The FAB is in process / discussion with the club and we believe we can apply when we have been established for 18 months which is in June.
We thank Catherine for her time, wish her the best of luck in her new role and look forwards to a good working relationship between the club and fans.
