This section will reflect on Paul Gouda's experience in the area of public relations and game promotion.
The photo displayed above was taken at a local town youth club AGM . It presents a true case of successful public relation and game promotion programme that led the smallest club in York Region in only 4 years to become the largest club in Canada. Certainly it was no accident!
Due to the abundance of the selected material needed to present this area, this page is supplemented with associated sub-pages.
Please click on the pages below to visit each presentation.
I am certain you'll appreciate the validity of the argument raised herein with regards to what approach should be taken towards soccer promotion in Canada.
When I accepted the responsibility of president of the Aurora Youth Soccer Club in 1986, the club consisted of 386 youth players.
The club was founded 1964, and in 1975 the club had 239 players and in 1979 the club had 308 players. The ratio of increase in membership was very marginal despite the tremendous increase in town population.
At the time I took over the club responsibility, the club was the smallest club in York Region which consisted of 16 towns. Clubs such as "Woodbridge town" and "Richmond Hill", "Markham" town or "Thornhill" town consisted of 1200 to 1500 players each with an average population slightly over Aurora.
If you examinethe sub-page; "part III" on this issue, you would clearly see that registration did not correspond with population. Aurora's image was that of the "second class" or "small soccer club" !!
Well, in 4 years the club not only caught up with the big clubs, and not only became larger than them, the largest "while they stood still or even decreased", in fact AYSC made the unquestionable record of being the club with the highest registration per capita in Canada.
A letter from Sports Canada was the first to state; which was followed with a great deal of attention and respect from local, provincial and National sports authorities.
We were obviously doing something right and we were sought for the expert advice often.
Our AGM used to have over 700 people attending "including the mayor among a few regional and provincial figures" .. When I joined the club the AGM had 7 people who ended up forming the club committee!
Our "real" magazine reached every player, coach, referee, sponsor and influential figure.
Our Sponsorship revenue peak was evident in the fact that we had to refuse sponsors.
We had many small in-house tournaments named after and sponsored by a tournament sponsor who only gets his name on the trophy "as opposed to team sponsor who gets his name of the team shirts".
We had the best coaches and referees and every committee we needed.
We had a professional club run by dedicated volunteers.
Having acquired the right keys to game promotion at the club level, I was motivated to apply the same formula to several other football arenas at which I got involved, namely:
Senior Soccer: NDSL Regional / inter-district men's competitive league.
District and provincial associations.
The referees Association. That deserves a few pages I tell you!! I was the president for 7 consecutive years, made the Association's Honorary Life membership status, and achieved record registration - not to mention the World-Wide famous referee magazine "Free Kick".
For now, please browse through this section on game promotion via the following sub-pages. They present many memories, many years of effort and success I am proud of.
