The Scoreboard

The electronic scoreboard at the Valley has been part of the "matchday experience" for so long now, that I would feel like I had forgotten to wear a watch if it wasn't there. It saves me continually referring to the programme to see who's playing for the visitors and it makes it easy to see where you are with the more temperamental, card-happy officials. It's also a visual reminder of the big-time and something that clubs like Yeovil can only aspire to.

It was, of course, the cause of all the fuss on Tuesday evening when the Valley faithful wrongly assumed that Chris Lines was being booked for the second time, because he already had a yellow card showing against him incorrectly on the screen at the time that belonged to the lunk Baldwin. The Rovers fans must have wondered what he furore was about, unless they could see the scoreboard themselves. In a strange way, the mistake served our purpose because it got the fans really going and appeared to disrupt Rovers for the easy fourth goal.

I was dismayed pre-season when it was suggested by the club that the scoreboard would be out of action this season because of the cost (£85,000 from memory) to keep it operational. The obvious disappointment was the fact that we would miss it and the fact that a non-functioning screen would reflect poorly on our club and our fall from the big-time. I couldn't understand how it might be so expensive to run.There's the electricity costs for sure and undoubtedly maintenance charges of sorts but I always assumed these were relatively small to operate the srceen for less than 100 hours per year, and didn't sponsorship (the Bream Team etc) more than cover these? Perhaps it was just a ploy to see if someone would step forward and sponsor it?

Looking at the screen on Tuesday, I found myself guessing that we haven't renewed the maintenance contract and are winging it in terms of operation. It was out-of-action altogether at one recent home match and the increasing number of blacked or whited-out strips seems to increase at every game and it looked like we were super-imposing a barcode across the screen when the "Upbeats" video was played at half-time. It is fast becoming a visual reminder of the state of the clubs finances and we really should be keeping up appearances. The sort of money that would be required must be something that could be targeted and raised as a one-off initiative if we put our minds to it?