How to Start Your Own Local Tartan Army?
Why Would You Want To Do That?
There are a few reasons:
- Without any organization, it's difficult to convince bars to show the games. Most bars want to make money and need to be convinced that there are enough thirsty Scots around to make it worth their while showing the games. This is easiest if you know what your numbers are and if you all agree to watch the game in one place.
- You'll get more people at the games. Not only does this keep your bar manager happy, but the craic will also be better.
- A good relationship with a bar is the best way to communicate with carriers like Setanta.
- It's an easy way to meet Scots and other fans of the team.
- It's generally an excuse to organise extra socialising.
- The more organised TAs we have across the continent, the better we can negotiate with the carriers.
What Do We Mean by a Local Tartan Army?
Anything you want, really. All it needs to be is some way for everybody to keep in touch and agree on what bars to watch the games in and so on. You might want to go further and set up a constitution, rules, a bank account and so on, but you certainly don't have to.
Okay, So What Should You Do?
The first step is obviously find out whether there's already something going for your area. To do this, check the TA of NA contacts page and see if there are any groups, or even a single contact listed. If no luck there, a good next step would be to google for all the combinations of your town or city or state and "TA", "Tartan Army", "Scotland" etc. Chances are if you haven't found anything yet, then there is nothing going on already, but it's worth checking in with your local branches of the North America Rangers Supporters Associations (NARSA) and North American Federation of Celtic Supporters Clubs (NAFCSC) - even if they don't have anything organized, they should be fertile recruiting ground.
Once you've established that you're on your own, you need a couple of things
- A way for people to find you (and join)
- A way for everybody to keep in touch
To help people find you, you'll need a web site. Your site doesn't need to have much on it other than contact details and a way of signing up (see below), so you can use something as simple as Google Page Creator to make a free page. It also helps if you have an easy way of updating your page, so I actually recommend you take a look at Blogger which is also free and not too tricky to set up (TA NYC and TA of NA both run on Blogger). You don't have to set-up your own domain name (e.g. www.tartanarmynyc.com) but it might help people to stumble upon you. If you want to set up your own domain, you can do this through blogger or you can sign up with one of the hosting companies (e.g. GoDaddy, DreamHost, 1and1 etc.).
Now that you have a site, you need to help people find you - there are three things we recommend. First, email us, so that we can add you to our contacts page. Next, find as many Tartan Army sites around the world as you can, and email them asking for them to put a link to your site on theirs (and offer to reciprocate). Because of the way search engines like Google work, the more sites that link to you, the higher up you'll be in a Google search. Finally, give it a plug on the TA Clubs, Social and Charities section of the Tartan Army Message Board.
Right, so you've got your website up... how do you now let people sign up and keep in touch. This is most simply done by setting up a mailing list. We have experience with both Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups, both of which are free and will do the job fine. We personally find Yahoo! Groups a bit easier to work, but others swear by Google. Once you set up the mailing list, put a section on your website (nice and prominent) that will let people add themselves to the group. Yahoo! and Google will explain how to do this in their help sections. You should also invite as many people as you can think of to join just to get you started.
The Vancouver TA has also started a Facebook group, so that's another option for both promotion and communication.
Remember to keep promoting your site and mailing list. Print off some flyers or take a sign-up sheet to games with you to make sure you're capturing everybody. Do the same at Old Firm games.
What Next?
That's it really. If you want to make it more formal, the Association of Tartan Army Clubs has a page on how to start a fully-fledged club.
Good luck!
If you have any more suggestions for this page, let us know.