The mancityfans.net football forum

The Football Supporters’ Federation is now offering free membership to all fans from across the UK and beyond. We’re offering free membership because we’re geared to creating a larger, more vocal campaigning force for fans of all clubs up and down the country. If you’re worried about the direction the game is heading, whether it’s the way that fans are policed week-in, week-out, ticket prices being prohibitively expensive or club ownership issues, then join our existing 140,000+ individual and affiliate members and stand up for fan interests.

There has never been a more important time to ensure your voice is heard, and it’s never been easier to get involved. All you need to do to become a member is give us your name and email address – it’s that simple.

www.fsf.org.uk/join.php

All newly joining members are entitled to a free issue of The Football Supporter magazine delivered straight to your door, absolutely free of charge, as well as receiving a £5 discount from TOFFS, the UK’s largest retailer of retro football shirts, just as our thank-you to you for getting involved. You can use the code as many times as you like between now and the end of the year, too. You can’t say fairer than that, surely?

Everyone who signs up before 31st August will also be entered into a free prize draw to win a retro shirt of their choice, so you’ve really got nothing to lose.

These are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of deals and offers that you’ll receive as an FSF member, but we know that you’re not in it for the freebies, but because you’re interested in the issues which concern fans, and want to make sure that someone is looking out for you and your interests – remember the ‘No to Gam£ 39’ campaign from 2008, or the Stoke fans who won compensation from the police after they illegally served them with Section 27 notices earlier this year? The FSF are instrumental in fighting for fans’ interests in these, and other campaigns - http://www.fsf.org.uk/campaigns/index.php

Get involved today – visit www.fsf.org.uk/join.php and give us 30 seconds of your time, and become part of something. Feel free to pass this on to family, friends, colleagues or other messageboards, blogs or email lists.

If you’ve got any questions at all about free membership, or anything the FSF get up to, then get in touch with us – leave a message below, or email us at info@fsf.org.uk.

A bit of a bump for Tuesday morning

I dont really understand the point of the federation, I understand the theory, but so far what changes has the federation actually made to the game? I would be very interested in joining if I thought it would make a difference, but as long as I can remember the people who matter have ignored the fans throughout history?

Do you have any proven examples of what difference you have made so far?

Ask the Stoke fans who were illegally treated by the Greater Manchester Police last season, whose case we fought and won for them. Or the Plymouth fans who were similarly badly treated by South Yorkshire Police and had a similar result. And how many football fans that has saved from being subjected to illegal treatment from those two forces, or others, as a result of our high profile win. Ask the Sunderland fans if we've been a help to them in the last week in advising fans and representing them in the face of police brutality.

Ask the 20,000+ fans who've received free information from us at each of the last three Champions League finals, or the countless thousands who've relied on our advice while following England and Wales abroad all over the world with our Fans' Embassies, including at the World Cup and European Championships. The hundreds who lose passports or get into bother that we help sort out with local contacts wherever they may be playing.

Ask the thousands of City fans who used our website for finding out information on the sides you were playing and the cities you were visiting last year in the UEFA Cup (and, more than likely, will be again in the near future), or the assistance we gave to publicising the Carl Ramsbottom appeal earlier this year.

It's not always about big changes, it can often be about little things - the individual fans who get in touch with us for being thrown out of a ground or having their season ticket wrongly confiscated who gets it back, the fan who challenges a banning order and gets it overturned, the people that come to us with queries and questions and who get their answers.

We're here to listen to any problems and legitimate grievances that fans have and to lend our expertise and advice to them, whatever their query may be.

We've got the first ever fans' representative on the FA Council in over a century, we work with the authorities behind the scenes from police to transport to local and national government, and not all the stuff that we do can be public and announced to a huge fanfare, but we're the main ones consistently looking out for fans' best interests at all levels, whether Premier League or Non-League.

Those were just a few that sprung to the top of my head, there's probably a load more examples I could give if you wanted.

Belting, I guess i'll be signing up then.

Cheers.

Signed up. Now when does the revolution kick off?

Niall Quinns Discopants wrote:Signed up. Now when does the revolution kick off?

Probably not at 3pm on a Saturday, but we'll see what we can do ;)