Notes from the Crew Fan Forum

By: Matt | March 24th, 2009

Thanks to Crew BigSoccer poster B-M-T for the photo
Unfortunately, I was not able to go to the Crew Fan Forum held at the Claddagh Pub tonight in Columbus that had General Manager Mark McCullers, Coach Robert Warzycha, Brian Carroll, Robbie Rogers, and Danny O’Rourke attending and answering the questions of Crew fans, but here is some of the information that is on teh interwebz about the forum. In short term news, it was learned that with Frankie Hejduk out due to US National Team commitments, Danny O’Rourke will get the start at right back. Robbie Rogers was also asked about his injury that he picked up in the season opener against Houston and Rogers said while he has yet to get his MRI results back, he feels he will be good to go on Saturday against TFC.

In more long term issues, Mark McCullers spoke about how embarassed he was about the difficulties that many US National Team fans had with the parking situation at Columbus Crew Stadium in February. For those that don’t know, CCS is located on the Ohio State Fairgrounds, literally. While there is one premium parking lot that is paved, the rest of the available parking is made up of a grass covered field. In March and April, Ohio tends to have a lot of precipitation in the forms of rain and snow, which can make a grass parking lot tricky. If it is tricky in March, I can just imagine how bad it would have been this last February. The easy solution would be to pave it right? Well, it’s a bit more tricky than that, as the Ohio State Fair owns the grass that Crew fans park on and have no intention of paving their fairgrounds. However, McCullers seems to be determined to make sure a repeat of the situation at the US National Team’s game, so it should be interesting to see what happens.

McCullers also mentioned that sponsorship this season would be less than it was last season with the economic situation. MLS has already tried to lessen the burden on teams by reducing roster sizes and the number of developmental players a team may have, but with less sponsorship money, the Crew might feel some more economic pains. Finally, McCullers mentioned that there was a 93% renewal rate for season tickets and a 84% renewal rate for half season programs.