FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Is a picture still only worth 1,000 words if it features 1,200 supporters?
It’s the enduring image of last year’s remarkable playoff run; New England Revolution head coach Jay Heaps isolated on the Red Bull Arena field, fist raised in triumph, saluting the raucous traveling support which helped lift the Revs to victory in the first leg of the Eastern Conference Championship.
It took 20 busses – the Revolution happily handled the cost – to carry all those screaming voices south down Interstate-95 for that memorable afternoon last November. Now it’s time to do it again.
New England’s supporters will invade Red Bull Arena on Saturday night when the Revs return to New Jersey for the first time since last year’s conference championship, and it could offer just the kind of boost the players need to help them bust out of this recent slump.
“It’s huge having our fans supporting us,” said Teal Bunbury. “When we’re playing at home, we hear them the whole game. Especially on the road it’s always fun to be able to look up in the stands and see 1,000 fans up there.”
The number this weekend will likely hover somewhere in the 800 range, an incredible showing for a midseason league encounter. In years past that figure has consistently settled around 200 for regular-season games, with fans generally responsible for purchasing their own tickets and arranging their own travel.
But that was before the Revs and Red Bulls launched an innovative season ticket program for both clubs’ supporters last August. As part of the program, 750 “Fort Season Ticket Packages” were made available, including a ticket to this weekend’s game at Red Bull Arena and bus transportation to the venue.
The idea was to not only make the process easier for those fans already planning to travel to Red Bull Arena, but also to introduce a new batch of supporters to the excitement of road trips.
“We’re always looking for ways to help enhance the supporter experience and in speaking with our supporters, they all spoke about road trips as a key component of being a supporter,” said Revolution president Brian Bilello. “This was on display in tremendous fashion last year during the playoffs, when we won the first leg of the Eastern Conference Championship in front of 1,200 of our fans in New York.
“That, for me, was and always will be one of the special moments for our club, and we’re excited to try and build on that with this program. With that in mind, we developed this program as a way of making it easy and affordable for long-time and new supporters to travel with the team.”
New England’s supporters face a tall task in trying to replicate the atmosphere they created during last year’s Eastern Conference Championship – it will go down as one of the most impressive showings of traveling support through the league’s first 20 years – but with approximately 800 voices ready to sing and chant for 90 minutes, that’s exactly what they’ll be aiming to do.
“Last year in the playoffs was an unbelievable atmosphere,” said Bunbury. “We hope this year it’ll be the same.”
