Over the past few days the Trust have been in conversations with the Club around Christmas & New Year coach travel costs to our Hull and Portsmouth away fixtures they announced last week HERE
Like many of our members and supporters we feel the coach travel pricing for these fixtures is very high and we have sought more information from the Club as to the reasons why.
Firstly, we can confirm that the Club also acknowledge the coach travel prices to Hull and Portsmouth are high and are in regular dialogue with the coach provider to continue to assess supporter experience.
The Club also advised us it does not make any profit on the rates that the current coach providers charge our supporters and stated that they actually make a small loss which covers the administrative and ticket booking charges made through the club’s own systems.
We also understand that due to an increase in unacceptable anti-social behaviour from a small minority of our supporters the coach company were on the verge of withdrawing their services with immediate effect. As a compromise, and with the aim of improving our supporter’s behaviour, the Club agreed with the coach company to provide appropriately trained response and supervising stewards to accompany drivers in order to continue the coach service to our away games; and with the aim of maintaining a safe environment for all supporters.
As advised above we can confirm that without these additional security measures being immediately implemented the coach company were seeking conversations with the Club to begin arrangements to withdraw their services this season due to the increasing number of reported anti-social and behavioural incidents. We’re fully aware that this is a minority, and we feel sorry for the majority of fans who always do the Swans proud at away games.
The immediate impact of our current coach provider withdrawing their services, would mean there would be no assurances whatsoever that another coach company would be able or willing to take up the service. And with the upcoming bubble trip to Cardiff City in just a few weeks there is a very high risk we would have to limit ourselves to a much-reduced ticket allocation without the new and additional security measures in place to allow coach travel to go ahead.
So, at least for the immediate future, these additional staffing and security costs will need to be covered. And unfortunately, these rates are compounded still further for these two fixtures due to them falling over the Christmas and New Year period – which means higher rates of pay.
Going forward the Trust will continue to have conversations with the Club where we will be covering areas such as;
- Identifying supporters whose behaviour on coaches is found to be unacceptable and suspending them from traveling by coach to future away games for a pre-determined amount of time
- Looking at ways to monitor supporters’ behaviour including the wider use of CCTV and bodycams to make it easier to review any reported issues and implement any action as a result
- Communicate clearly and regularly to supporters what is expected of them when they travel to our away games. And make it clear what the implications of unacceptable or anti-social behaviour will have for them
- Regular reviews of the current coach travel agreements to ensure supporters are benefitting from the best coach travel rates available
- Aim to announce earlier coach travel costs to supporters for our away games (ideally shortly after away fixture dates and ko times have been confirmed)
Sadly, the actions of a few are impacting on our amazing away supporters and that needs to change. The Club continues to investigate a number of recent incidents on our coaches and any supporters are reminded that if they’ve witnessed ANY anti-social behaviour, they can report this anonymously to support@swanseacity.com.
Finally, as a small token of our appreciation and noting the difficulties of travelling on New Year’s Day all supporters who book and travel by official coach to our scheduled away fixture against Portsmouth on the 1st January will receive £10 from the Swans Trust.
We are in currently in discussions with the Club on the best way to implement this and will provide more information in due course, including a mechanism for re-imbursing £10 to all supporters who have already booked to travel to Portsmouth on the official coaches.
If anyone would like to contact us, please email supporters@swanstrust.co.uk
Swansea City Supporters’ Trust
11th December 2024
