There’s no business like SLO a business

From time to time, if not continuously, we are known to either whine or be about to whine on this website. Or whines and whinges cover a plethora of topics. Obviously our team performance is near to the top of the list, then there is the manager (we all think we could do a better job), there is ticketing for away games, the food, innovations like the new fan park and events, such as match postponements. In short there is nothing that we don’t seem to exclude from our list of grievances, we don’t even complain about how much complaining there is!

This is the season of goodwill. It’s only fair that rather than complain we celebrate. I am not mad enough to celebrate a particular player because that would mean either they would get injured or sold. Nor am I going to dance naked in the street and conga to the noise of fellow supporters, more often than not they’re too quiet or drowned out by the away fans. I am, however, going to sing the praises of the Supporters Liaison Officers (SLOs) who are rapidly becoming the glue that binds the club together.

If you have ever phoned the ticket office you need the patience of a zen master and a mobile phone deal that gives you a generous allowance of free minutes. The wait can be horrendous. It can also be Kafkaesque. You spend ages pushing buttons, waiting in queues, listening to music only to discover you’ve been cut off. Going in to the club shop in person isn’t much better,  it’s a bit like Russian Roulette. It’s not the staff, who all do their best, but our ticket system which it seems was put together by Stephen Hawking when he was in a bad mood. I noticed last time I was in they now have a sort of virtual reality of the seat, minus pigeon poo, but which seems as clunky and slow as ever. It’s possible to go into the club shop to buy a child’s ticket and find that the transaction takes so long you need to buy an adult ticket!

When the steam starts coming out of your ears, or when you’ve been going around in circles trying to get the answer to an existential question such as ‘when do tickets for that away game go on sale’?, the SLOs emerge from the ether like Knights of the Round Table. Incidentally, not all are male, I know of at least one who is thousands of miles away in Mexico. Yet they seem more efficient, wiser and helpful than people in much closer proximity to the club. Emails come back almost instantaneously, usually with exactly the answer that you need. If the SLOs had’ve been left in charge of solving COVID it would have ended in about a fortnight! 

The SLOs offer a glimmer of hope in the depths and despair of winter. They are a spring day after months of snow, a penalty to us after millions of dodgy decisions against. I bet some of them could probably play better than a few of our players, and they would probably be more loyal.

As it’s Christmas, I’m sure we would want to wish this merry band best wishes for the festive period. You can contact them at slo@tranmererovers.co.uk I’m not sure that they do crimbo shopping, but you never know!