h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/g/gravesend_and_northfleet/7089473.stm

This has to be bad for the club, right?

look on the bright side, at elast someone will be worse run than Leeds.

It's a ridculous idea, and if they continue with the didea of the "members" voting for the starting XI, it will be catasteophic.

It's not just the picking of the team that's unworkable.

Transfer deadline day swoops at 5 to midnight? Not a chance, no time to vote.
Got a big game about Ebbsfleet coming up? Go on the site and send a conflicting scout report about your team.

I'm surprised their fans aren't up in arms. If someone wanted to swap our management and board for a bunch of keyboard-wielding "experts" there'd be carnage. How much of a huge ego must you have to think you'd be able to run a real football team with real fans from the comfort of your front room??

Imagine the half time team talk - done by conference email

'If someone wanted to swap our management and board for a bunch of keyboard-wielding "experts" there'd be carnage'

Which really does show how bad an idea it is, if it's worse than having Dennis Wise and Ken Bates in charge.

It's all part of the suer interaction culture which has affected the media- no longer is any show truly complete without an audience vote or competition. The radio is filled with phone-ins. ITV and BBC news ask people to text in pictures if they are at the site of a news story- we live in an age where being knowlegable about something is no longer necessary to be broadcast. I don't listen to 606, because I would rather hear what football experts have to say about the game than Jeff on the M6. And if 20,000 people on the internet think they can do a better job managing Ebbsfleet than 1 Liam Daish, they're mistaken.

Ebbsfleet agreeing to it doesn't entirely surprise me- the fact that they renamed themselves after the new Eurostar station for "commercial reasons" had already made me dislike them somewhat.

They renamed themselves to take advantage of the new station?
Deserve everything they get then.

Spot on about the interactive media too.

They were gravesend and Northfleet, after the two teams who emrged in 1946. they renamed the club at the start of this season to "take advantage of the urban renewal" brought about by the new station.

Not quite as the despicable "MK Dons" then?

no, they haven't moved or anything. but it still annoys me though, renaming a sixty-year-old football club after a Eurostar station, even if it is near the ground.

They ares ponsored by Eurostar, incidentally.

Oh, I meant to post this link in there as well:

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/sport/default.asp?article_id=32101&startrecord=-1.

Must be pretty awful to be one of their fans. Sounds like the board's selling them up the river.

I think it depends on the level of detail that's sought. For example, will fans be asked "should we sign player x, player y, or player z" or "which position do you think needs most strengthening"? Similarly, I think it'll be a matter of voting for one of three lineups/formations for each game, rather than anything more detailed.

I have a feeling that the level of detail that subscribers get and the level of interactivity will be substantially less than some subscribers are expecting. And that might affect renewals if the subscription is paid annually.

I must confess to thinking that it might be quite fun to be involved with, particularly if match highlights and detailed reports are available through the website. Perhaps even live streaming of some games. Tired of the Premier League? Pay a subscription and get your own version of MK Dons or FC United!

But.... Ebbsfleet are already someone else's club, and this will have a big impact on their real fans and on other teams and their supporters in the division. This kind of thing can be hugely distorting....

£70K - thats a serious wodge at this level, and I suspect Liam Daish is thinking most will drop out after a few weeks.

Hoping more than thinking I'd imagine.

Didn't turn out too badly did it ?