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Poor transport options had long tarnished London Irish rugby club's reputation with its supporters but as Gillian Upton discovers, a new provider is turning it all around and encouraging fans to come along for the ride

As a keen amateur rugby player, Chris Madsen has an enviable job. He is responsible for getting the junior, second team and main rugby team of the London Irish RFC – plus their coach members and physiotherapists - to their away matches from their home training base at Sunbury, Middlesex.
The club’s rugby aces are ferried by coach to all parts of the country and abroad, as well as to and from Reading where they play all their professional matches at the 23,000-capacity Madejski stadium.
“We pride ourselves on our match day experience. We’re a big family club and we theme match days. London Irish is the number one rugby club in Reading so we are trying to get the message over that we’re the premier rugby club in the south. We need to tap into that and champion ourselves in Reading,” says Madsen.
Supporters buy their tickets through the club and travel with them to the matches but the transport offering was “not effective” in the words of Madsen.
“Our overall plan is to increase our away supporter fan base. Previously, we’ve had only 40-100 supporters going to away matches because of the lack of transport. Last week Northampton played Saracens at Wembley and brought 15 coaches down, that’s a lot of people, so our aim is to start to bring four or five coaches to away matches.
“Our average attendance last year was 11,000 so we need to keep filling the stadium.”
The move comes on the back of a good couple of seasons for London Irish, having got into the final of the Guinness Premiership last season and the Heineken Cup this season, while a number of international players brought up through the ranks of its Academy are propelling London Irish forward. “We’re moving with the momentum of our success and providing a better service for our supporters,” says Madsen.
In order to meet the club’s goal, it had to find a ground transportation solution that would offer a range of well-priced transport options, packaged with hotel accommodation, and a company that could pro-actively manage the ticketing and marketing of travel to away games.
“The average ticket price is £22 so the barrier is the travel as supporters are not willing to travel to Reading for a match,” explains Madsen.
Read on to find out how London Irish went about rising to the challenge.

STEP 1: Do your research. A meeting with the supporters' club highlighted the problems with the existing transport provider, that the two pick-up points – a pub in Reading and the Sunbury training grounds – were not convenient and user-friendly. Cost was another driver and any new solution would have to be on a par.

STEP 2: Go out to tender. London Irish gathered prices from almost ten coach companies in the Reading area and settled on Draw-Bridge, a managed ground transportation company and relative newcomer to the marketplace, but with fresh ideas on how to simplify the booking and travel process as well as ways to give the supporters a more enjoyable experience. “We don’t own fleet so we’re not constrained as to what type of vehicle we can supply our customers,” said company director Adam Reid. “For us, it’s all about service.”

STEP 3: Get the new supplier on board. Draw-Bridge signed a three-year agreement and began work with London Irish in July 2009. It has already set up a dedicated telephone line, email address and online booking platform to ease the booking process, created a family ticket that’s heavily discounted and will be offering one ticket for all eight away games next year, also heavily discounted. “Draw-bridge are really good,” says Madsen. “They go round the market and find the best deal for us each time and they accommodate us at short notice as quite often we have corporate clients who need a 12-seater executive coach to get them to a match on a Saturday.”

STEP 4: Communicate the changes. “We drip fed a little bit of information to the supporters but the big promotional campaign began in October. We’ll also be incentivising the supporters to come to as many away matches as possible. We’re thinking of running competitions and running a loyalty club,” says Madsen. Supporters will be emailed on a weekly basis with the coach and hotel rates; the club website will flag up the new travel arrangements through Draw-Bridge, and the big screen used during home match days will flash up the news too. A coach will be branded with the London Irish logo to up the ante still more for the next season.

STEP 5: Review progress. “We’ve agreed to review our transportation issues again in six months time. All we need to do is get people in the stadium,“ says Madsen. “As we build the fan base we need to put this transport in and make sure the cost is never an issue.” The new transport option is on a par with what was previously available. A recent game in Sale, for example, saw coach prices set at £30 per person, much cheaper than the train.

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