114 v Erith Town - There's A Reason For That...

[Mr Heinstein]

It was disappointing to see the club was unable to effectively staff entrance to the ground at the Erith Town match.

I arrived to be greeted by a long and slow moving queue, a single open turnstile and an open unmanned gate to the side. After a while, quite few people in the queue shrugged their shoulders and just walked through the gate, gaining admission without paying.

Unsurprisingly, the recorded crowd of 114 paying punters appears suspiciously low. It looked like around a 160-ish crowd to me. So, that's maybe £400 lost. Some of that £400 would be payable to Erith Town as it was a cup match. How hard have volunteers worked on the 50-fifty to raise money like that for the club? It's galling to see it thrown away so easily.

I appreciate volunteers are hard to come by but also note the theme of many of them being surprised to be told their services are no longer required over recent years, leaving a valued but depleted troup.

Hopefully this was a one-off and the club will avoid a recurrence, placing the limited volunteers where they are most effective for the club and protecting revenue.