But in real terms, our crowds aren't as low as what we make out. Those supporters who watched Dale throughout the 70's and the 80's will tell you that our current crowds are on average double what we used to put up with. Make no mistake, we weren't too far away from the old footballing joke in those days about the players being told the crowd changes.

We're averaging just short of 3,000 this season, and it's fully expected to pass that figure as we approach the final few weeks of the season. However, looking back it would appear that the three thousand figure is some sort of modern ceiling, as we've only passed that number in three seasons since those heady days of playing in a different division. Yes it happened.

There can be many reasons why we've not pushed up and beyond there. We talk about the number of people in the town who's allegiance has been swallowed in this Premiership world by teams deemed to be more glamorous than ourselves. But since the inception of the Premier League, our crowds have swelled by over a third.

There's a thousand different theories about why we can't increase our following, and there's probably a little grain in truth in every one of them. But what we're looking at now is not the reasons why our crowds aren't bigger, but rather what can we do to make the crowds bigger.

Things may have been tried before. We've had the odd free kids day here, and a Goldbond day there, but one off events aren't going to do anything to dramatically increase the Spotland attendances. What we need is a sustained effort by both club and supporters to reach out to every single one of the 200,000 plus in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale.

We are looking at launching a new era at Rochdale Football Club. An era in which the club and its supporters work together to ensure that we do everything within our means to get as many people as possible to come and share our love of the Dale.

And fair play to the club. They have kickstarted a number of promotions for the next few weeks which will hopefully get as many people as possible aware of forthcoming matches and into the habit of coming to Spotland. We'll be looking at each of them one by one as we approach the fixtures.

But for today, we are looking at launching "One Poster, One Poster".

For every home game, there will be a high quality poster made available on this site to download. It'll take a few seconds to download, no more than that and a few seconds more to print off in colour.

We are then looking for each and every poster off the messageboard (and there are in excess of 500 registered users, plus many unregistered on top of that) to print off one of these posters, and take responsibility to stick one poster up somewhere.

You might choose to ensure that it is you who puts one up in your local pub. You might ensure that there is a poster displayed in your school or college in the run up to any home game. It could be a cafe, newsagents, your office, your factory, cinema or even the pet shop down the road on the corner. Stick one in the back of car if you can't think of anywhere else.

Each poster acts as an advert. We want the sceptics in the town to see these posters wherever they go. We want the posters to hammer home that there is something special taking place at Spotland these days, and we're inviting the town to come down and share it with us. The more adverts that are seen, the more people will be convinced into making that trip to Spotland that they may well have been putting off for months.

So we are asking you to take responsibility for one place within the town and make that your place. Every time a poster is released, you print it off and you make sure that your place has that poster displayed, and just to give yourself a little pat on the back, post on the messageboard to let us know where you have put up the poster.

Initial signs are good. Within 24 hours of the Peterborough poster being released, it's been seen up and down Bury Road, Rooley Moor Road with others dotted about to. We want them everywhere.

We have to realise that raising our average attendances above that three thousand figure will not be an easy achievement and it cannot be achieved just by a bit of effort from the club, or a decent spread in the Ob. We need as many of you as possible to do your bit, and these Posters are the first step. We all have a responsibility in this. After all, this is our club. So let's sell it to the people.

It's over to you!

click on the poster to download for the full size version