Bournemouth fan in peace here….
I’d come on here to have a gauge on sentiment before our game in a couple of weeks time, but stumbled across this thread and thought I’d offer my 2 cents worth.
First of all I am very surprised that CCFC doesn’t have any form of loyalty scheme for your away tickets. I sort of just assumed every club at this level would have one, and certainly for games at places like Bournemouth where capacity is limited.
For what is worth, our away loyalty scheme works quite well, and I’m sure it’d do the job for you too. You receive 1 point for every away league game you attend, and attendance to away league games both from the current and previous seasons count towards your total. Clearly last season was an anomaly and so at present it’s points from 21/22 and 19/20 that count. Away games go on sale first to those with 10+ away points, and then every 2 days the required points total comes down by 2 points, until either the game sells out or it reaches general sale.
The system ensures that those who go to games such as Middlesbrough away on a Tuesday night are guaranteed tickets for the more local away games. It also means that the more points you have the better your choice of seat.
We have the same system for home games, I think at the moment selling starts at around 25+ home points and you’ll usually need at least 10+ to get a ticket - that number increases as the season goes on.
As much as many of you are frustrated at the allocation you’ve received (and I can understand why), at least it’s just one game. For us, home games are a complete closed shop now, the last game to not sell out was in early 2015, there has been no turnover in season ticket holders since 2014 and so unless you’ve been going
for years you’ve got very little chance of a ticket.
The capacity is also not what is reported on most sites - it’s less than 11k after a number of seats had to be removed for new TV gantrys and new disabled platforms. The gap between the capacity and our weekly attendance is from segregation, a low away turnout and season ticket no shows (usually the family sections for evening games). We desperately need a bigger ground but a combination of not owning our current one, prioritising a new training ground (pre-relegation & Covid) and a lack of suitable/cheap land in Bournemouth means it hasn’t happened. It’s incredibly frustrating and the club should really have extended the temporary south stand when we got promoted and had cash to burn, but choose not to for a number of reasons (not good enough ones IMO).
I hope you guys continue to have a good season - you’ve had a traumatic few years just as we did pre-Howe, any success this season would be well deserved (but not at our expense please!).