5 Things I Would Change About The Steelers Match Night

Everyone has an opinion about what could be better or worse about a match night, regardless of who you support or where your team play. Whether its the choice of music, the colour of the lights, the quality of the toilets, somebody will always find something to pick fault at.

To the credit of the Steelers, they are constantly trying to find ways to improve the match night experience, Tony Smith said at the recent fans forum that they consider match nights to be a 'show', and he wants everyone to be entertained.

Here's a few suggestions from me as to how the Steelers match nights could be improved.

Get Rid Of Whoosh
It's dated - generic 90's dance music. It's embarrassing - we haven't been number one since 2011. Its a part of our past. With all the updates to bring the Steelers into the modern age in the last couple of years, predominantly the video wall, can we not have a song that does the same?

My suggestion? An edit of the chorus of 'Lonely Boy' by the Black Keys.



Employ Stephen Dowson As Full Time Match Night Announcer
He has been commended for his stint as announcer when David Simms was performing webcast commentary duties. He is good at presenting - he certainly came across that way when performing the task in the players' lounge on Boxing Day. He handles the duties well at the start of periods. He is the guy who presses the buttons and sets the volume. He does very well. Give him the job. Let Simms focus on the following...

Move David Simms Into A Motivation Role
I've spoken about this earlier in the season, and its a point I raised with Ashley March. She said that over in Canada, they have people in the crowd, encouraging fans to chant and make noise, offering prizes to the loudest fans, and so on and so forth. If there's anybody in the organisation who can get a crowd going, its Simms. He can focus on the 50/50, he can get the crowd making noise, he can motivate everybody to create an atmosphere. When he focuses on his job, Simms is a great PR guy. Let him do that.

Refocus the sponsorship.
The ice at the Motorpoint this year has been a bit of a laughing stock around the league - especially the black ice behind the goal at the start of the year. I don't know if anyone has noticed but we have a great big video wall. We could pepper that with adverts. We don't use it to its full capability, the score is at the top, the penalties are at the bottom, and theres a big space in the middle that just has the Steelers logo. We could put at least 3 banner adverts on that. They could rotate. I'm not saying keep the ice completely clear, but you could move some of the clutter from the ice up onto the video wall, and it would look a lot better.

Introduce Hockey Etiquette Guides
Something we've spoken about at length before. Again, its something that could be put on the video wall. It could be on posters around the arena. It could be a little pull-out guide in the programme. Newbies don't know the etiquette rules when they come to a game. Plaster it about, make sure they know, then when they complain when being told off about breaking them, they can't say they didn't know because it will be all over the match night.

Thats the main 5 I can think of. I'm sure you can think of others. Let us know, and the best suggestions will be published next week.

Cheers for reading.

Liam
@IAmMcCausland
@TomWalkeden
@AwkwardGinge
@FrozenSteelBlog

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