Changing demographics of High Wycombe
Obviously High Wycombe is a town that has changed dramatically over the last few decades with an expanding immigrant and in particular South East Asian population. However the crowd at Adams Park does not yet reflect this. How does the club propose to involve Pakistani or Indian Wycombiensians and bring them onboard? In the long term this could be of vital importance. (No blatantly racist replies please!)
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I think everyone's welcome.
What's your dissertation on Canada? You maple loving immigrant
Do you live in Canada?
It has always struck me as a something that needs addressing as well. There are fast-growing communities living in the Wycombe area which almost certainly contain great chunks of football supporters but few, if any, would think of coming to Adams Park to watch a match. I wonder if they worry they wouldn't be welcome. The half-time penalty shootouts were always good at getting in young players from diverse backgrounds but when I look around the stands I never see similar diversity reflected back. Employing a community officer from the Asian community dedicated to building links with people who don't consider coming would be a fine start that could feasibly pay for itself very soon. Given the club hardly ever sells out, giving schools / local sports clubs around 200 free tickets per match to encourage people to try the club with friends would be a great help. And finally - cracking down on our ridiculous youth gangs, with their connotations of far-right racism and bovver boy violence, could easily help make the atmosphere less intimidating for minority groups.
I can possibly see perhaps outreach to perhaps the Polish community where they have a history of football, but does anyone see the Pakistani/Indian communities coming. The cold reality is that these ethnic groups aren't exactly throwing themselves into the wider societies in general let alone a perceived more hostile environment?
@aloysius what connotations of far right racism have you seen or heard?
I remember the excitement at my secondary school when Wycombe came in occasionally and dished out free tickets/free kid with adult tickets.
No idea if we still do much of that.
But to answer the specific theme of the thread, there must be a few predominantly asian kid schools we could get involved with, and then do the freebie give away.
Certainly a massively missed opportunity.
Maybe linking up with other towns with large asian sections like Bradford, to see if they do anything extra, have any tips
Why would anybody not feel welcome at "the Wanderers". It is one of the most friendly clubs around - its one of the things we should be most proud of. End o the day fellow human beings have a choice whether to come to football or not - no amount of "outreach" whatever that means will change that. Freebies to schools sadly have been shown not to work.
@peterparrotface / @StrongestTeam I chose the word 'connotation' carefully. I'm not saying that any of the members of the so-described Wycombe "firm" have far-right sensibilities. Nor do I imagine many members of the "firm" have the intelligence or curiosity to do much research into the history of far-right hooliganism in football. But whether it be Chelsea Headhunters or West Ham's Inter City Firm or the current bunch of Russian neo-Nazis - any googling of 'football firm' will soon bring up links to far-right hooliganism. If I was from a minority community, interested in coming to Adams Park and doing a bit of research on this board or on Facebook and came across a post from members of the so-called Wycombe firm spoiling for a fight - I would think twice about coming to a match.
It would be interesting to understand how fans started to come to football (and stayed). How many were brought by their family? how many started coming with their school mates? How many came along due to excitement at a cup run (or whatever) and weren't depressed enough never to return, etc.
With the south Asian community there is probably a lack of the former, inter-generational stuff, but there should be no reason why we can't attract them (and any other communities) from any of the others, particularly as others point out we are a notoriously (and proudly) friendly lot
We have a tiny number of dickheads who get a bit lairy from the alcohol fumes outside the Hourglass they would assume if you called them far right you were asking where they stand on the terrace.
As to the struggle attracting a people from a particular demographic group well that just reflects the clubs struggle to recruit new fans of any description the competition from premier league football on TV means spontaneous supporters are a rareity and Wycombe for the most part has to rely on parents introducing kids to support their local community club if that's the explanation you seek.
I'm a little annoyed that you felt the need to ask for no blatantly racist comments I don't think we have blatant racists posting on here and with a little research you would know that.
I definitely look round the terrace quite often and am surprised at how the demographic of WWFC fans is so white British, considering Wycombe is quite a mixed bag.
I personally think Wycombe Wanderers is a welcoming place for people of any race or nationality. However, that's easy for me to say - I'm bog standard white British like 95% of people who come to games.
Just because you're unlikely to be racially abused on the terrace because you're Asian or Eastern European, doesn't mean it logically follows that it feels like a welcoming place.
We probably don't have a tangible presence within the lives of the more established Asian community in Wycombe, or the more recent Eastern European community. They may like football, but hardly register WWFC's existence.
The club should look into ways of reaching out to these communities, who often live quite separate lives to the 'native' population.
At risk of stereotyping here, do we have any links to local cricket clubs for instance, where we offer discounted tickets?
The actual only times i've heard anything even resembling racism watching Wycombe have thankfully been limited to 2 incidents in over 20 years.
One very old boy shouting something very non PC when Browny picked up another silly booking in the late 90s, and one young Polish chap shouting something so offensive at the Luton away game that a steward actually walked over and shoved him and gave a very easy to understand warning.
Obviously his gang completely ignored/missed what he'd shouted, and focused on the stewards actions.
That was a game i close up saw just how incredibly tolerant the Luton stewards actually are, ignoring repeated vile abuse (sorry "banter"), and that Lewis kid's incredible behaviour, only at half time ushering him out.
Huge generalisation here but the Asian community have a relatively low engagement with professional football. There are very few asian professional players and little family history of connection with the club. Generalisation again, but it is probably true that Asian families have lower disposable income than "white families" on average. Not sure you can do much more to break this down than natural attrition. It is noticeable that many of the stewards are recruited from the local community and hence the Asian community is well represented that can only help in getting the club's relevance better known.
East Europeans - well for obvious reasons much harder to tell how many of them attend.
Likely to be relatively low however - football supporting is tribal and it would take a while for new arrivals to feel any allegiance for high Wycombe or its sporting clubs and again often this community has relatively low disposable income.
Tap Asian community and Bradford city into google and you will see that other clubs with large Asian communities on the their doorsteps are wrestling with and have largely so far failed to solve this opportunity.
I saw a game of Canadian football a few years ago near Toronto and the crowd there was very white considering the wider area is diverse. It's not just an issue specific to Wycombe or England or football. There was also a surprising amount of casual homophobia in the crowd which wouldn't have been seen as acceptable any more in the UK.
Incidentally, Toronto Argonauts play in Oxford and Cambridge blue.
@Chris Hockey or ice hockey as we call it here is by far the most popular Canadian sport and has an almost religious status over there (I'm a fan myself) but how diverse is it go to a leafs game and look around the stadium people in glass houses should not slapshot pucks
I started coming when WW did training at my daughter's school and we got a free ticket...then she and I progressed to ST...then she progressed to not wanting to go to football and I progressed to coming on my own and spending too much time on the Gasroom. So it sort of worked.
I have been running a youth football club in High Wycombe for the last 21 years, in that time there has been a noticeable shift towards Asian players joining the club, so much so that they now make up the greater number of the membership as opposed to the odd one back when I started the club.
This would suggest to me a growing interest in football in this part of our local community, something the club should really tap into.
Where's bourne70 when you need him?
One answer could be to encourage the asian community by setting up a dedicated supporters group for them. I remember reading how Wolves did this quite a few years back, working with their asian fans to set up 'Punjabi Wolves' that allowed asian fans to attend games as a group en masse and make them feel safer. If it can work at a club like Wolves, which has had it's problems with racism on the terraces in the past, then it should definitely work at a club like ours.
Perhaps a specific game could be designated as a type of community day where the club encourage Wycombe's asian and eastern european communities to attend with some freebies in the family or main stand.
With regards to racism and far right views amongst the One Direction firm, I've stood near them on a number of occasions and for all the crap they do come out with, I've
only ever seen/heard two instances of racism/far right beliefs; one at Col U away back in 2010 when one of them scratched 'EDL' onto a toilet door in a pub and then a couple of years later when the kid behind me called an opposition player a "black c***". I turned round and stared at him but to my shame didn't properly confront him. I wish I had. I remembered his face and while he stuck around for a few seasons I haven't seen him in years.
I also remember Luton away as a particular low point - not just for the individual confrontations that @Malone mentions but also for the general 'banter' chants - "this is a shanty town" ... "we only came for the curry" etc. It made me squirm at any rate. I would like the club to make clear before the fixture this season that behaviour will be monitored and similar outbursts will not be tolerated.
My original, short reply was deliberately so. I regret that the conversation, predictably, has fallen into cliches (sorry, Micra, don't have the knowledge to type the accents).
The original post begged a question, about the club's intentions, that no-one here can answer and made implied suggestions that the lack of non-white spectators is an issue that the club has some kind of duty to address.
As I wrote the first time, I'm pretty sure there's no-one checking the colour of your skin at the gate and see no reason to think the atmosphere at the ground could be interpreted as being in any way an unwelcoming, let alone hostile, one. If, as @Jocks_little_helper writes, there are more young Asian kids playing the game than before then, presumably, at some point the number of Asian spectators will also increase. So be it. In the meantime, let's just get on with our lives, shall we, and talk about something else.
If other people want to discuss it HCblue, you're more than welcome to comment on other threads instead.
Just because you find it pointless/uncomfortable/boring doesn't mean others don't think it should be consciously addressed.
@HCblue perhaps the rest of us have given more substantial replies because we think it would help the club, currently struggling for support and finances, to attempt to tap into a large and largely-ignored potential supporter base on its doorstep. I would say most, if not all, of the suggestions have been constructive. Sure, the club could take the organic or, dare I say, laissez faire approach you advocate to engaging with under-represented groups in its fan base but I would suggest that's not actually in the spirit of a community-based club. Nor is it necessarily a sensible business model. If you don't want to talk about this subject you could always ignore the thread.
Black, white, brown, pink, male, female, transgender it makes no difference to me whatsoever. Surely what matters is bums on seats. Let's not go out there and create division. One Wycombe!
Advertise in the town centre in local businesses and in community events in the schools, mosques and churches by all means. Be creative in our pricing and games policy in order to attract new fans.
As a fan owned club with no money this is what will make the difference to both the atmosphere and club finances.
Set some attendance targets and monitor how we meet / don't meet them.
Understood, @aloysius and @bill_stickers .
My criticism is not of the comments which, I agree, have tended to be constructive, but about the frame of reference given by the original post. Why narrow a conversation about how to increase the number of people who want to watch the team play to the Asian population of High Wycombe? I find the starting premise a lazy one with, in its word choices, an underlying suggestion that the club and its fans are in some way responsible for the low number of Asian spectators that is unsupported by fact.
And why are Bangladeshis excluded from the original post?
The initial post never narrowed the discussion to purely the SE Asian population, it merely picked it as the most prominent example.
I also don't see the club or fans being held responsible. In fact quite the opposite as many have pointed out this is a broader problem in football.
Seems you are setting up straw-men and knocking them down.
With respect HC, on this one you are trying so hard to be PC that you missing reality.
It is a perfectly valid question to ask why a section of the population are underrepresented in any activity and if there is a benefit (in this case in potential income to the club) to question whether there are steps that can be taken to address this.
It is an observable fact that the number of Asian footballer supporters at WW games is below the ratio of young Asian men to total population in the town. If that imbalance could be easily addressed, it would be beneficial to the club (and arguably to society as a whole)
I agree with you however that those running the club are not stupid and if there was an easy way to attract say 10% more people and revenue to the club, they are highly likely to have tried to.
This is one of the most ludicrous threads in Gasroom history