The
Chairman of
Swindon Town Football Club is Jed McCrory. I've never met him, but I've seen and heard his many television and radio interviews and the one thing that comes across from him is his obvious delight at being at the helm of one of the long-standing members of
the Football League. He has the demeanour of a boy who's been given the keys to the sweetshop for the night and who cannot hide his pleasure at such good fortune. Personally, I'm one of those fans who believe he and the rest of the incumbent board are doing a good job. Compared to the
Andrew Fitton and Jeremy Wray eras at the
County Ground, when, as Chairmen, they managed the organisation safe in the knowledge that, whatever the footballing world threw at them, they had the
Andrew Black millions to fall back on as a safety net, Jed and his board have to cut their cloth according to the income they can generate through day-to-day footballing activities and sponsorship.
The summer has seen two concerts at SN1; they may not have been top drawer or that successful financially, but the experience has proven that the County Ground can generate income during the summer months. Other income streams are needed to help the fiscal health of the club and I'm sure the Board led by McCrory are working on these. I would advocate some sort of
Asian tie-in a la
Cardiff City; the one advantage Swindon town has over the newly promoted
Welsh Premier League club, who had to change their "bluebird" identity to appease the Malaysian owner, Vincent Tan, is that the robins already play in red, the lucky colour of
Far East countries. How many Cardiff City shirts are now being worn by the inhabitants of
Kuala Lumpar with the proceeds from their sale now swelling the coffers at the
Cardiff City Stadium? How about a
Rockin Robin soft toy under the arm of every toddler in Beijing?
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| Jed McCrory's Twitter Picture |
However the future of Swindon Town unfolds under his stewardship, Jed McCrory seems to want to connect with the one constant of any football club, the fans. He is amenable and mixes with the ordinary punters before each game and, by all accounts listens to, and acts on the viewpoints whether from The Town End, The Arkells Stand or the Don Rogers Stand. He is ready to be interviewed by the local media and is a common voice heard on
BBC Wiltshire on matchdays. The one area where Jed McCrory is always accessible is on Twitter. Looking at his Twitter account right now (Saturday 06:55) he's already conversing with the fans and looking forwards to the game at Shrewsbury Town's Greenhous Meadow. The nature of this part of the social media networking community is that the messages have to be short and concise, so familiarity is rife, even when messaging someone you haven't met before. The lack of the usual social convention and etiquette of letter writing is done away with and addressing someone by their first name or online moniker is the norm. However, this lack of etiquette leads some people to believe that it is acceptable to be abusive to the recipient of their message, a trait that is at best displeasing and at worst disturbing.
I don't do Facebook, but I have an underused Twitter account which is there simply to collect the pearls of wisdom from the aforementioned Mr. McCrory and the representatives of the Swindon Town community, and garner up-to-the-minute information of the comings and goings at SN1. In doing so, I have seen many foul-mouthed, objectionable tweets to the Swindon Town Chairman which, to his credit, he has dealt with with much aplomb. He will, no doubt, suffer many such tweets today, and for some time to come, over his signing of the ex-Newcastle United forward, Nile Ranger. There is much to debate about Swindon Town's signing of this footballer and the subject matter would fill a blogpost in itself, however, I would encourage the reader to watch Jed's Twitter account to witness the sorts of tweets he receives and how he deals with them; I can guarantee that some will contain the sort of language you wouldn't want your grandmother to read!
The point to all this, is that Jed McCrory has put himself in the firing line by taking on the role of Swindon Town Chairman and has to answer to his customers, the Swindon Town fans. That being said, he and no-one else deserves to be subjected to abuse over cyberspace. The abhorrent and cowardly acts of
social networking abuse and the effects of it on the victims of such obnoxious acts have been to the forefront of British news this week. Those who hide behind "anonymous" tweets, texts or vicious attacks via other
social media sites on the internet obviously have mental inadequacies such that the "social" aspect of the media they are using is a facet lacking in their own intellectual make up, with an almost probable inability to mix socially in the real world. Retreating into cyberspace, these bullies harass vulnerable individuals, people they have probably never met or know, and drive some of them to the point where the torment is too much and the victims feel that they have no other recourse to action than to take their own lives. Such baiting conducted in the "real" world, with the tormentor known to the victim, is distressing enough, but to have to suffer abuse online from complete strangers must be alarming to those victims whose vulnerability has been exploited by the bully. The perpetrators of these reprehensible acts lack any moral fibre or dignity to get on with their own lives and instead seek out people on which to inflict mental torture. I would encourage anyone who knows of such abusers to report them to the appropriate authority and help stamp out this vile facet of communicating over the internet.
