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"Family club" tag

The hullabaloo on the "Pitchshag- gate" thread got me thinking about this "family club" thing.

After reading posting on here for years I've grown to just accept that we are a "Family club" tag without ever really thinking about it because it is constantly banged on about. However I have never personally seen us like that and had certainly never thought such a thing before reading Charlton forums.

What does it even mean though? Surely every club now has family sections and 99% of a club's support outside of the big clubs or in in areas with more than one club are due to family links?

I started going Charlton because my dad introduced me to them (bastard) as his had 30 years prior but that is hardly unique of Charlton and the majority of (decent) football fans find a club this way.

My old man very rarely goes now as he is involved in Saturday football but other than the odd time one of my brothers will join me I;ll end up just going with mates or on my own.

I am sure I'll take my own children one day but I don't get the family club thing.

To be honest I have always seen it as how others wish to project their view/ experience of Charlton onto everything else. "Can't do that we are a family club, shouldn't dot this we are a family club", "Lawrie Wilson showed a bit of ankle but we are a family club etc"

I've never since us like that. Ive seen us as an eclectic mix of a working class and middle class people from, in the main, south east London and NW Kent. Some who over the years will have loved/ still love and punch up and a pint and others who will like Opera singers on the pitch and face paint. The vast majority of us are probably somewhere in between that spectrum, some even appearing to embrace elements at each end.


I would rather see us tone down the welcoming, Charlton fans are so friendly to the opposition reputation if it meant it instilled a different winning mentality into the club which promoted success on the pitch. Not saying to completely dispense with it and start lobbing coins into the Jimmy Seed each game, just perhaps make the Valley less welcoming in terms of atmosphere as that prick Pardew alluded to once.


Point is everyone is different and everyone relates to the club differently. I go to football and have a rant and a swear among mainly like minded individuals in the covered end where as it would be a completely different experience for West Stand ST holders who would have a different view of what the club is too them.

Many people including myself don't relate to the "cosy nice family club dogma" but are still a decent hard working family man and decent human being in the main .


I feel that the wholesome family club image, whilst not saying there is anything wrong with it, is almost deemed to be the only truth for everyone and often used as a stick to beat those who don't conform to their image of cosy, happy clappy Charlton which for many of us is not what football or "our" club is about.

It seems pretty baseless and banal as I reckon 99% of clubs are family clubs and I am sure many like me have never really resonated with the family club thing that we are constantly led to believe is a sacred virtue of Charlton Athletic.


Comments

  • My point of view on this is we can still be a family club but do stunts like this, as they have to remember most of the fans are still mainly men who go to the football with there mates.

    I personally think it is funny, i don't have kids but i would imagine if i did and they understood what they were doing and talking about in the video, then that reflects on my parenting not the Club. I.E if your 7 year old son knows what "scoring at the valley" and what that woman is doing in the video - then that reflects on your parenting - not CAFC.

    My response to questioning would be something wrestling related i would imagine :)

    As i said i don't have kids so maybe talking bollocks. but common sense tells me the above.

    All a family club means is that they accommodate kids, and go the extra mile to please them (much like the woman in the video that went the extra mile to please her Charlton supporting fella)

  • The hullabaloo on the "Pitchshag- gate" thread got me thinking about this "family club" thing.

    After reading posting on here for years I've grown to just accept that we are a "Family club" tag without ever really thinking about it because it is constantly banged on about. However I have never personally seen us like that and had certainly never thought such a thing before reading Charlton forums.

    What does it even mean though? Surely every club now has family sections and 99% of a club's support outside of the big clubs or in in areas with more than one club are due to family links?

    I started going Charlton because my dad introduced me to them (bastard) as his had 30 years prior but that is hardly unique of Charlton and the majority of (decent) football fans find a club this way.

    My old man very rarely goes now as he is involved in Saturday football but other than the odd time one of my brothers will join me I;ll end up just going with mates or on my own.

    I am sure I'll take my own children one day but I don't get the family club thing.

    To be honest I have always seen it as how others wish to project their view/ experience of Charlton onto everything else. "Can't do that we are a family club, shouldn't dot this we are a family club", "Lawrie Wilson showed a bit of ankle but we are a family club etc"

    I've never since us like that. Ive seen us as an eclectic mix of a working class and middle class people from, in the main, south east London and NW Kent. Some who over the years will have loved/ still love and punch up and a pint and others who will like Opera singers on the pitch and face paint. The vast majority of us are probably somewhere in between that spectrum, some even appearing to embrace elements at each end.


    I would rather see us tone down the welcoming, Charlton fans are so friendly to the opposition reputation if it meant it instilled a different winning mentality into the club which promoted success on the pitch. Not saying to completely dispense with it and start lobbing coins into the Jimmy Seed each game, just perhaps make the Valley less welcoming in terms of atmosphere as that prick Pardew alluded to once.


    Point is everyone is different and everyone relates to the club differently. I go to football and have a rant and a swear among mainly like minded individuals in the covered end where as it would be a completely different experience for West Stand ST holders who would have a different view of what the club is too them.

    Many people including myself don't relate to the "cosy nice family club dogma" but are still a decent hard working family man and decent human being in the main .


    I feel that the wholesome family club image, whilst not saying there is anything wrong with it, is almost deemed to be the only truth for everyone and often used as a stick to beat those who don't conform to their image of cosy, happy clappy Charlton which for many of us is not what football or "our" club is about.

    It seems pretty baseless and banal as I reckon 99% of clubs are family clubs and I am sure many like me have never really resonated with the family club thing that we are constantly led to believe is a sacred virtue of Charlton Athletic.

    A good evaluation of the clubs image from the fans perspective, however my feeling of watching the club over 30 or so years is that the club has always wanted to project as part of its image this "Family Club" value and this became more important after the lost generation years of Selhurst.

    As a value that it wants to project, being a "Family Club" is in the fabric of what the club perceive itself to be and so this projection of the club with the slightly smutty shagging on the pitch goes against what the club wants the football fan base at large to perceive of the club.

    I'm not offended by the ad itself, I am offended that a short term communications message should go against a the values and communications strategy of 20 - 30 years.
  • It's pretty meaningless. We are no better or worse or different from the vast majority of the other 91 league clubs.

    It's like that communist party that calls itself Green or the party for the Islington middle class that calls itself New Labour or I Can't Believe it's Not Butter. People believe it but it's dross really. It's just that calling yourself a club for drunk blokes, or the Red Party or Old Feckless or Taste's like slime doesn't really do it for the public.
  • I see it more as the Charlton community is more like a family! There have been numerous occasions on this board where fans have helped out other fans they've never met purely because of the Charlton connection... that's what makes us all a family!
  • ''Family Club'' is a nice tag, albeit one that seems largely self ascribed - I am pretty sure most clubs would describe themselves the same way. Thing is, it's pretty meaningless in terms of a football team (not club, team.) Okay, so the players are crap, they don't give a damn, the manager hops on the touchline gibbering for the whole 90 minutes, the owner is a Belgian Bond baddie... BUT at least we're a family club. No, I don't care. Monsieur Roland's regime has not made it any more or less relevant than it ever was - which is to say, barely at all beyond being a nice line of fluff. Where I sit there is language you would NOT want youngsters hearing, and when I sat in the 'family stand' a few years back... it was exactly the same!

    The community stuff however, that really DOES make a difference, the campaigning against knife violence, racism, the efforts to help those with various disabilities but crucially, none of that affects the actual team in the slightest.
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  • Family club is a meaningless type of description that would apply to virtually all clubs in our division. Watford, Reading, Ipswich, Norwich etc

    Similarly, the expression that a player is a "proper Charlton type player" implies that supporters of Watford, Reading, Ipswich etc wouldn't want a hard working, loyal player who was a credit to the club
  • Family club my arse! Tell that to the kids in the stadium when the cupboard end are chanting 'your wife is a whore' to Danny Murphy.

    Community club yes.
  • The video has a very `continental' look about it. Ads in France/Holland, Belgium etc often border on soft porn so we can probably expect more of this sort of thing.
  • bobmunro said:

    Family club my arse! Tell that to the kids in the stadium when the cupboard end are chanting 'your wife is a whore' to Danny Murphy.

    Community club yes.

    Cupboard end???!!!!!
  • bobmunro said:

    Family club my arse! Tell that to the kids in the stadium when the cupboard end are chanting 'your wife is a whore' to Danny Murphy.

    Community club yes.

    Hahaha I forgot about that
  • Agree that we are more of a prominent 'community club' compared to others. The whole 'family club' thing is a tag you could probably give to every club in the Football League.

    In truth I don't think we have much of an identity outside of our own bubble, just another club that 'used to be in the Premier League and should have never sacked Curbishley'.
  • cafctom said:

    Agree that we are more of a prominent 'community club' compared to others. The whole 'family club' thing is a tag you could probably give to every club in the Football League.

    In truth I don't think we have much of an identity outside of our own bubble, just another club that 'used to be in the Premier League and should have never sacked Curbishley'.

    I think that's the problem, we really don't have anything that especially sets us apart from the other clubs in London in the eyes of the public. It used to be that we were seen as a smallish club run sensibly in the Premiership but we didn't even manage a spectacular enough fall from grace compared to the likes of Leeds and Portsmouth and vanished off the radar totally. Which is not exactly the end of the world but still a shame I guess.
  • edited February 2015
    cafctom said:

    Agree that we are more of a prominent 'community club' compared to others. The whole 'family club' thing is a tag you could probably give to every club in the Football League.

    In truth I don't think we have much of an identity outside of our own bubble, just another club that 'used to be in the Premier League and should have never sacked Curbishley'.

    I said the same thing in Bartrams last week (did you hear me ?)

    Unless we can attract new fans,who bring family and friends, we could start to
    yo-yo between Champ and League 1 for ever and a day. whoever is the owner whether Duchalet or CAFC fan/businessmen.

    We need our own identity ? what about if we were the number 1 team in a network?
    A stronger one than we are in at the moment.
    Can we even have our own identity if you are part of a network,

    We can't even get anywhere near West ham, because of the difference in finance.
    Or are we now known as Sexy Charlton instead of Trainspotters ?








  • bobmunro said:

    Family club my arse! Tell that to the kids in the stadium when the cupboard end are chanting 'your wife is a whore' to Danny Murphy.

    Community club yes.

    Cupboard end???!!!!!
    Yes. Cupboard End, as in "Cupboard End choir, singing Valley Floyd Road, my only desire."


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  • There are certain clubs that I am completely disinterested in: Everton, Middlesborough, Leicester... I neither like them nor dislike them, but when we play them I have nothing but a sense of boredom and disinterest. Sadly, I suspect that for large numbers of people outside of the Charlton bubble we would fit right into this category.

    I've often heard it said on here that Charlton are somehow a special club; "Only Charlton, blah, blah blah". Of course the club is special to us, but I don't think we are really any more ore less remarkable than any other team.
  • Spoken from the heart Cabbles,
    You sound like a younger saner version of myself !
    we need to be a broad church and welcome Atheist(that's me) and Agnostics(that's me) and theMacho guys who help with the atmosphere but cross the line,
    EG. Scott Parker's a greedy Bastard is borderline
    Where Scott Parker is a Cunx is over the line.
    Well done guys as one family of 4 told me on the slow tube after that game they won't go to another away game.
  • edited February 2015
    I've used the term family club, but personally I think we're a community club. With that comes some responsibilities, particularly if you're ueing that brand identity to enhance your business (and there is clearly a big focus on bringing in the kids at the moment).

    The problem as I see it is not so much the video per se and it's clearly targeting a specific demographic. It's that it's has been pushed to all demographics, many of whom see it as tasteless at best and certainly inappropriate to children - could the video be shown on the big screen today, got example? Yet the club has allowed this to develop a national profile.

    Simply, I'm not sure the intended outcome of interest in pitch bookings merits damaging your community club identity with those whom you're targeting for a long term relationship with the club. The club is much more than a hostile atmosphere or otherwise on a Saturday.
  • Stig said:

    There are certain clubs that I am completely disinterested in: Everton, Middlesborough, Leicester... I neither like them nor dislike them, but when we play them I have nothing but a sense of boredom and disinterest. Sadly, I suspect that for large numbers of people outside of the Charlton bubble we would fit right into this category.

    I've often heard it said on here that Charlton are somehow a special club; "Only Charlton, blah, blah blah". Of course the club is special to us, but I don't think we are really any more ore less remarkable than any other team.

    I find the one thing that older fans of other clubs say about CAFC is that it used to have the ground with the biggest capacity (66,000) and how they remember the huge east terrace.
  • edited February 2015

    Spoken from the heart Cabbles,
    You sound like a younger saner version of myself !
    we need to be a broad church and welcome Atheist(that's me) and Agnostics(that's me) and theMacho guys who help with the atmosphere but cross the line,
    EG. Scott Parker's a greedy Bastard is borderline
    Where Scott Parker is a Cunx is over the line.
    Well done guys as one family of 4 told me on the slow tube after that game they won't go to another away game.

    I'm not sure about saner mate as I still make stupid decisions in my life on a daily basis :wink:

    But I don't mind the family/community tag at all. I've just finished reading running with the firm, which is the book based on the football hooligan film ID. Now it's good reading, but that's all it is, a good read.

    If people want to go round kicking the heads in of other supporters, then that's their choice. But as I intimated above, life's too short. One scuffle or one punch to the head the wrong way, you could be dead. Now you want to tell me being associated with a harder club is worth that.

    Don't get me wrong. If I'm ever physically threatened by someone or a friend or family member is, I'd do what I can to defend myself.

    Anyhow I think I'm moving too far away from the original post. You can label us as you want. And the fact that my upbringing has been with my dad and uncle going to Charlton all these years, then by that, I guess it is a family club
  • In case my original post was misinterpreted far from aspiring for our club to becoming green Street ultras my point is that why do clubs have to have labels that attempt to box themselves into a particular exclusive category particularly with such a broad range of fanbase as ours.

    I am immensely proud of the uniqueness of our clubs valley party, the pioneering of kick it out and the continued community- orientated aspects the club strives for.

    At the same time iam not a fan of opera singers, abba tributes and face painted adults all of which are activities many enjoy at the club and would associate as being of what u believe is their interpretation of a " family club" and good luck to them. Just never resonated with me.
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