Lots of people hate New Year’s Eve and the pressure of celebrating something not worth celebrating with the best night ever. For me, the dread comes on New Year’s Day; the tiredness driving a looming sense of impending normalcy.

So, a game on New Year’s Day is particularly welcome, especially because somehow, it was my first live game since Forest Green at the end of November. Having been caught up in the general sense of apathy around the club, it was refreshing to be back. The noise, the ceremony, the collective energy made me think that things aren’t so bad after all.

And, we played well, it was very much my kind of game; tight and competitive, teeth grindingly frustrating as both teams probed for a breakthrough. Yanuk Wildschut, a winger who looks like a centre-back, powered down the wing. Lewis Bate and Tyler Goodrham, both seem to have grown up without actually growing up, dancing their way through the Exeter backline. Marcus McGuane and Cameron Brannagan kept things honest with their varied range of passing. All good.

The breakthrough didn’t come, but that seemed to be OK. We were doing All The Right Things. As we entered the final third of the game, their thoughts were clearly turned to protecting the point they had. We started to camp in their half, at one point they had a defensive line of six players. The risk was that we’d abandon things we didn’t need; like a defensive strategy for counter-attacks. And then we got done by a counter-attack. 

Looking at it technically, that moment aside, it wasn’t a bad performance at all; we deserved a point and could reasonably have taken all three. As a unit we are much improved on earlier in the season, we have a more attacking menace, even if that doesn’t materialise into a big goalscoring threat. You get a sense that the team feel a bit like an insomniac who can’t sleep; the more they consciously think about sleeping, the less able they are to do it. The more we think about scoring, the harder it seems to be.

After the game there was talk about the atmosphere around the ground, there’s no doubt we were quiet given there were 9,000 there. Nothing seemed to rouse us, even the mocking of the Exeter fans about the atmosphere being like a library. On the radio, there was the usual debate – if the team don’t perform, the fans won’t respond, but if the fans don’t get behind the team, the team won’t find that extra few percentage points to get them over the line.

Both things are true, Ben Purkiss argued that players at this level aren’t going to perform all the time, others argued that ultimately, it’s hard to force fans to be excited. It all seems to be unresolvable finger pointing. There is one area which is under the club’s control which can help with this – broadly speaking: marketing.

The match day experience has improved markedly in the last few years, you don’t need to feel the club’s spirit deeply in your bones to enjoy it. But, the marketing of the club – how it’s perceived to the outside world – has become bland and generic. Photos of training sessions are coupled with a strong-arm emoji and the phrase ‘working hard’, pre-game player quotes could have been generated using a Google AI bot, it’s all very sub-Soccer AM footy banter stuff.

We know nothing about the players or how the club functions. A couple of years ago BT did a short documentary about the club, it was full of insight about its philosophy – the role of senior players, the interactions between the manager, players and support staff. There was a segment about players shaking hands – particularly the young players with the senior management. Karl Robinson, who came over brilliantly, said it helped them mature by breaking down barriers. We saw the club as people.

That aside, there was also that time Karl Robinson invited Joey Beauchamp and James Constable to train with the squad to help them understand the heritage of the club they play for. All that seems to have gone away, or is hidden. Now, we know very little about the players as people, or how the club functions on a more human level. Is it all just chat about ‘going again’ and xG? Is Ciaron Brown funny? Can we go fishing with Cameron Brannagan? What did Simon Eastwood think about the last series of The Crown?

If you’re a small club, you don’t have the momentum of the big clubs, you can’t just thoughtlessly promote yourself with generic regular communications to keep ticket sales ticking over. There must be some individual personality injected into the club. In some of the disingenuous communications coming from those opposing the new stadium, there’s dismissive talk about ‘foreign owners’ as if the club is some sort of interloper, rather than an integral part of something good in the city. 

And, it matters, I don’t think agree there’s a simple equation between better results meaning a better atmosphere. When we’re cruising to victory, the atmosphere is more contented but it’s not exciting. Good atmospheres come from collectively fighting for something – think about Sheffield Wednesday and Portsmouth at home last season. We want the club to succeed not just as a team, but as people – we want to be part of them and them of us, but if we don’t know who they are it’s much harder to access that deeper layer of enthusiasm.