Project 1,000: A one-off for the women's side or a sign of things to come?

When I checked on Saturday afternoon, my doubts seemed to be confirmed, as the club announced that, at that point, 700 tickets had been snapped up. This meant they would beat their previous record, which was a great achievement in itself, but I couldn’t see them shifting another 300 tickets in less than 24 hours. It just didn’t seem feasible.

Fast forward to matchday.

My daughter and I have watched the women’s side on numerous occasions over the last two seasons, but Sunday immediately felt different. As we approached the ground, joining dozens of other families and couples trooping along Hayes Lane, I began to pick up on the buzzy matchday vibe that usually accompanies the men’s games. 

That vibe carried on in Broomfields, where a sizeable choir was belting out hits and filling the space with an inescapable but pleasant wall of sound. Noelasis this was not. 

Friends and families bustled busily among the tables, and the kitchen and bar staff were doing their best to keep up. Then, as kick-off approached, Broomfields’ throng emptied out into the stadium. When we took our seats behind the goal in the Glyn Beverly Stand, it was clear that the crowd was beyond anything the women’s side had achieved before. The John Fiorini stand and mini terrace next to it were both full, and three blocks of the Glyn Beverly Stand were busy too. Had the club done it? It looked like they might be close.

Midway through the first half, Hayes Lane’s soundsystem crackled into life and an announcement followed.

On Sunday 8th March, International Women’s Day, Bromley FC Women attracted a record crowd of 1,053 for their home match against Greenwich Borough, bringing colour, noise, and entertaining football to Hayes Lane on an otherwise grey afternoon.

This bumper attendance acted as a timely reminder that progress at the football club isn’t limited to the men’s side. Momentum is building everywhere.

I’ve written before that it feels like Bromley FC Women are in a similar position to the men’s team of the early 2000s in terms of fanbase growth, and I have to give the club and the Bromley FC Community Trust their due because they are actively going after it. The way they promote and embellish their home fixtures puts them far ahead of anything that has gone before.

In the lead-up to Project 1,000, the club peppered its social media channels with reminders of the fixture, and I know the awareness drive extended to local schools and training sessions connected to the club. Bromley FC Community Trust weren’t messing around; this was consistent, well-targeted marketing, and they reaped the rewards for their efforts.

Forgive me if I play my grizzled veteran card, but I have to put a crowd of 1,053 in some sort of context. When I started watching the men’s team at the turn of the century, attendances in the region of 300 were the norm at Hayes Lane. Yes, the football was iffy and the facilities threadbare, but it always baffled me that a club in the heart of a borough containing 300,000 souls could only convince 0.1% of them to care.

The answer to that conundrum probably had more to do with awareness than the questionable quality of the football. The early 2000s might have been the dawn of the internet age, but locals still got their results and fixture news from the News Shopper and Bromley Times. Happenings at the football club were very easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them.

This might be hard for younger fans to imagine, but 25 years ago, if Bromley Football Club wanted to get the word out about an event, their only option was to place an ad in the local papers or ring around the borough’s newsagents asking to put a notice in their window.

With the ascent of social media, times have changed, but so has the target audience. Today, persuading people to spend their free time beyond the clutches of a high-definition screen has become increasingly difficult. But the success of this initiative shows that if you are willing to put in the work and convey the right message, you can cut through the noise and find your crowd.

Going all-in to promote the women’s fixtures is a worthwhile task, as there’s so much to like about the matchday experience.

Off the pitch, the club are bending over backwards to create an inclusive, family vibe, and the choice of food and drink is as good as ever. On the pitch, manager Dean Davenport sets his side up to play incisive, line-breaking football that creates lots of chances, and the overall standard floats somewhere between good and really good. Above all, it is an unfailingly entertaining way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Okay, if you go expecting the passion and noise of the men’s matchday, you will come away a little disheartened, but to me, Sunday afternoons at Hayes Lane offer something of an antidote. That isn’t because the game doesn’t mean anything, Bromley’s Men aren’t the only ones chasing promotion this season, but because the atmosphere around the game is far less stress-inducing (the irrational whims of my four-year-old daughter aside).

Paradoxically, writing this in the pages of From Bromley With Love should be a case of preaching to the choir, but that isn’t entirely the case. A sizeable chunk of the men’s matchday crowd have yet to be bitten by the Sunday bug, and I imagine this is a source of frustration for the passionate team who promote women’s football at the club.

This season, they have been hamstrung to a degree by the decision to move the majority of their games to the astroturf training pitches. I believe this had something to do with the building work at Hayes Lane, but the implied sense of disconnect probably made selling the women’s matchday experience much harder during the frosty winter months.

Project 1,000 was a neat way to draw a line under that period and begin a new chapter, hopefully one in which the women play all of their home games on the stadium pitch.

The choir might have been a one-off, but the club always go the extra mile for the women’s fixtures, putting on stadium tours, autograph signings, face painting, colouring activities, and inflatable football games for younger fans to enjoy. Each aspect speaks to the welcoming vibe they’re cultivating.

But is it reasonable to expect the club to go to such lengths for each and every matchday? The football alone is more than good enough to warrant turning up. 

Perhaps that's the wrong way to look at it.

With ticket prices in the men’s game ever-increasing, even die-hard football families are being priced out. The comparative affordability of women’s football makes it a great alternative, allowing young fans to enjoy a matchday experience they otherwise might have missed. They, after all, are the fans of the future, so giving them a meaningful and positive connection to the football club at a young age is likely to pay dividends in the years ahead.

If your target audience is likely to be on the hunt for ways to entertain the kids on a Sunday afternoon, then why not tailor your offering to meet that need? The fact that excited youngsters are in plentiful supply at Bromley Women’s games tells its own story. I should caution that this isn’t Sunday School; there is a bit of coarse language off the pitch and some tough tackles on it, but that’s stadium life, you can’t bleep it out.

I’ve got this far without mentioning that Bromley won 2-0, which is far more important than my preamble.

From the off, the Ravens looked in control and were rarely troubled by the visitors. Greenwich Borough looked a decent side and were certainly capable of playing on the floor when given the chance, but their lone striker wasn’t getting any change out of Bromley’s composed back three, and the fluid positioning of Bromley’s wide players was creating repeated headaches for the opposition, who didn’t know whether to stick or twist. 

There were close calls aplenty as Bromley formed attack after attack, but they had to wait until the second half to make their breakthrough. When it came, courtesy of a timely follow-up from attacking dynamo Beth Hull, it was more than deserved. A fine free-kick from second-half substitute/finisher Charlotte Lee put the icing on Bromley’s cake, but anything other than a win would have been baffling in this fixture as they looked so calm and collected throughout. 

Much like last season, the Ravens find themselves stuck in second place in the table. There are no play-offs in this league, and only the top team wins promotion, so the odds are stacked against the chasing pack. Brentford ran away with the league last season and Hammersmith threatened to do the same in this campaign, but despite doing the double over Bromley, the league leaders aren’t out of touch. After a stuttering start, the Ravens have found their feet and have been posting some impressive results. If they win their two games in hand, they will be within one point of the league leaders, who, a reliable source tells me, have just lost their leading goal scorer to a season-ending knee injury.

It's all to play for.

It took a lot of marketing and advocacy to get 1,053 people through the doors of Hayes Lane for this match. That kind of effort drains resources from other areas, making it difficult to repeat ahead of every home fixture. However, from a marketing standpoint, to repeat and grow, you need to be very consistent with your effort and message. You have to keep moving the needle, even when it’s difficult to allocate resources to do so, otherwise you risk slipping back to where you started. 

Given what is on offer on match days, it is a needle worth moving, and there is no reason the club shouldn’t attract 1000, or more, every time they play at home. Scoff if you like, but it has to be one of the best things to do within a ten-mile radius on a Sunday afternoon, particularly for families. And as kids go free, and adults only pay £5, it is very affordable when compared to other family activities.

Bromley aren’t a community club in name only. The growth they have achieved in recent years has been driven by efforts to embed their name and ethos in every corner of the borough. That extends to promoting the women’s game, a sector that some clubs bafflingly neglect.

The women’s team have had their ups and downs in recent years, but here’s hoping they now have the kind of stability on and off the pitch to propel them into a golden future, with the fanbase growth to match.

This isn’t just a cause worth supporting; it is a team worth supporting. If you’ve yet to sample a game, I can almost guarantee that within 90 minutes, you’ll find yourself rooting for a favourite player and enjoying the free-flowing football on Hayes Lane’s tidy turf. And you never know, your support might just push them over the line in their promotion chase.

I repeat, it’s all to play for.

P.S. Shout-out to the Bromley FC Community Trust coaches who run the girls-only training sessions at both Hayes Lane and Chislehurst School for Girls, where my daughter regularly attends. If you have a school-aged daughter who might be interested, dive in and book a session. I can confirm the coaches are very patient. 

Link to book: https://www.bromleyfc.org/programmes-activities/