Brian enjoys ‘Dutch’ of class on fact-finding trip

Brian Thompson pictured with Pieter de Waard, of Dutch club Telstar during Brian's recent visit.

The Broughshane man is well known for his love of Dutch football since he first visited Rotterdam in 1976 to see Northern Ireland draw 2–2 with the Netherlands.

“I grew up in the era of Cruyff, Neeskens and Krol and just loved the great football they played,” stated Brian, who has since travelled to see Holland in two World Cup finals, USA ’94 and France ’98.

“In 2001 when I set up Telstar Marketing I called the business after the Telstar Satellite.

“Back in 1963 there were two Dutch teams in the city of Velsen which combined to form a new club and they called the new club Telstar, “Recently I contacted Pieter de Waard and decided to go in search of The White Lions of Telstar as a birthday treat.

“I arrived at Telstar for their game with FC Oss and was treated to a great day of Dutch hospitality. The club has 16 full time professionals and 5 amateurs along with 5 full time employees. The standard technically is much better than the Irish league and the crowd was in the region of 1800. The stadium has 3000 seats.

From a marketing perspective there were some interesting points.

Merchandising was almost identical, however the match day programme was complimentary and not used to raise revenue.

Most surprisingly for Brian, who has run successful club lotteries at Linfield and Ballymena, was that Dutch law prevented clubs running their own lotteries.