Thetownend.com

Survey is @ http://www.truststfc.co.uk/survey.php

good luck

Done :D

'Tis done too.

it got me thinking, how many times would i come to swindon without a club being there.


0  :?

Same as you Whits.

Apart from visiting my dad in Chippenham, STFC is the only reason I travel to Wiltshire.

im done

I hardly ever go to Swindon other than the footy...

I'm nearer Swindon than Oxford by about 5 miles, but I always go to Swindon purely because the parking is cheaper, you don't get lost, it's much less crowded and I know the place.

Exactly and there's a lot like you guys. What we're trying to do is make the council/Chamber of Commerce/New Swindon Company/General Movers and Shakers realise quite how much money the club brings to the town and specifically the town centre. If we can get a decent enough sample size (ie enough people fill it out) we can then hopefully come up with an annual figure and say "Having STFC at the County Ground is worth x million a year to this town" - it's the perfect answer to all those who say "Well I don't care about football" etc. The question becomes not should Swindon people (even non-fans) back the CG redevlopment but can they afford not to?

Oh, and if you want to help collecting the survey we're starting before tomorrow's game (although that's a bit of a trial run). Everyone welcome - meet at the Trust office at 6.30. Pompous clipboard provided! Don't panic if you can't make it bang on 6.30 - if you're late there'll be someone there till 10 mins or so before kick off to hand out the clipboards and direct you to an appropriate place not yet covered. All help gratefully received.

Just done it.

STFC is the only reason I come to Swindon apart from very rare distant family do's etc, probably once every 3/4 years.

i normally go to swindon town centre on matchdays about 0 times a season! or visit swindon otherwise really. no reason too!

Only the cinema, or the occasional shopping trip but then I prefer going to Bath

to buy your glow in the dark duck keyrings  :soapy tit wank: then someone pierces them in 2/3 days.

Think i would go to swindon more often now, if i hadn't when i was younger. seemed like i went there everyday when i was younger. and if sports soccer closes down, like it says it is, then i won't bother going to swindon centre at all!

Done and dusted.

On balance, do you believe the football club is or is not better located at the County Ground rather than (e.g.) on the outskirts of Swindon? yes no

Now there's a fucking badly worded question.
In fact, the whole thing could have been thought about a little more thoroughly.

Never! STFC  is the only reason I come into Swindon. As I went to a Cirencester school all my fiends prefer to go to Cheltenham or Bath so if it is shopping I want I go to Bath normally but then I go to see Bath Rugby aswell.

How about inserting

"If redevelopment of the County Ground is yet again turned down, should we drop the first "o" in the title of the aforementioned stadium name?"

Just to spice things up a bit.

OOH! Rebelious!

It's not great is it?

How about:
Do you believe the football club is better located at the County Ground rather than (e.g.) on the outskirts of Swindon?  
Yes, better at the County Ground
No, prefer edge of town/out of town

In what way? Seriously, if there's stuff you think's missing or needs doing better, let us know. We've tried to get a balance between extracting enough information to be useful and something that can be quickly completed on a clipboard stood outside the ground/in the pub etc

The only point I felt could do with clarifying was between the first two questions of section 2. I believe the intention is to illustrate that a non town-centre based stadium would lead to a reduction in potential revenue brought to the town centre as a result of people attending football matches. This is a fair-enough point, and worth highlighting (I believe that the location of the county-ground is one of its biggest assets).
However I visit the town-centre for non-football and non-work reasons around 150 times a year making the second question redundant, I think it would be better to word the question something like: How many times less would you visit the town-centre annually if the football club was re-located to a non-central location, or: Would you spend significantly less time/money in Swindon town Centre if the county ground was re-located to the outskirts of Swindon. Just something that highlights the advantages gained (for supporters and the council) of town-centre based football stadia.

If I have completely missed the point then I apologise!

Fair point, and I agree wholeheartedly that the CG's location is one of its biggest assets. We're not looking to "make a case" as such in the survey form itself - in fact if the questions aren't fairly neutral then that would undermine the value of any survey. The idea is when we present the results of the survey, that is where we would "make the case", using the figures gained from survey to back it up.

You may do but a significant proportion of our fanbase don't. Last time we had figures on it over 60% of season ticket holders were from outside Swindon and even people who live in Swindon don't necessarily go to the town centre that often. It's a legitimate point you make - if you'd visit the town centre a lot without STFC then it makes more sense to phrase the question as you suggest, if you wouldn't, then the way we've put it makes more sense (I think, anyway).

What we're trying to do ultimately is make the questions as simple and as quick to answer as we can while still getting useful information so we can prove to council etc - "look if we lose the club from the CG, then these x-thousand people are either never going to visit the town centre or will make x-thousand less visits, resulting in x million quid a year lost from the town's economy", much as you pointed out.

We've had a fair bit of feedback this week on the questions and it's fair to say there's areas we can improve on (for example, there's also an ambigiuity as to whether the "total spend" is supposed to include money spent on tickets, in the ground etc or whether it's just money spent in town centre - different people have taken it different ways). That's why we did last night's "clipboard survey" as a trial as much as anything. We picked up a lot of useful feedback from that and from forums like this, so cheers, BR, and everyone else who's come to back to us and said where we can improve it. We won't make it to everyone's total satisfaction (you never can) but hopefully we can come up with the simplest possible set of questions that will still give us the answers we need.


Nope, seems to me you've got it completely!  Thanks again for the feedback.