Firstly, can you both state what your roles are within the club and, briefly, what they contain?
ST: My role in the club is a full director of the club. I’m one of five directors within the club, although only four are operational with Peter Joyce having decided not to be operationally involved several months ago. I’m involved with the day-to-day running of the Football Club should the Chief Executive of the Club see something needs bringing to our attention.
KU: I’m now the Chairman of the (Supporters) Trust, previously the vice Chairman when David Hindley was at the head of things. My role is just to be the person who tries to hopefully manage the affairs of the ‘Trust as we go about what we’re doing. We’ve got a board of about fourteen people now in various roles; vice-chairman, treasurer, secretary and people who have responsibility for various sub-committees like we have a fund-raising sub-committee, a community sub-committee and various others.
And my role is to try and pull that all together as I chair the meetings of the Trust board and I’m a contact point for a lot of things that go on and I really try and take the Trust forward with the other people as much as possible. But we’re a very democratic organisation as there’s no one person that really controls everything, we try and make sure that everybody has a role on the Trust board because that’s what we think the Trust should be about.
Roughly how many hours do you spend at Meadow Lane per week?
KU: Well Steve spends a lot more than I do, he spends most of his life down here! But I’m down the club infrequently because a lot of the things I do is sat behind a computer or we’re having our board meetings or our meetings at various pubs around the city. But, in terms on time, it’s probably a couple of hours a night, seven days a week on Trust business.
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Anything of a legal nature that needs doing, I take care of. And, as you know, I do a lot of the radio stuff as well. So, it just depends.
I’m spending less (time) in the club now since the chief executive’s arrived because I was doing most of the work that a chief executive would have done before, but he’s doing all of that now so that element has been, sort of, given up by me willingly as well. So, mine (role in the club) is obviously more reactionary in terms of I can spend two or three days of in, but at the minute I probably spend two, three, four times a week not necessarily all day. It just depends on what’s happening.
What ambitions do the club have after Howard Wilkinson recently spoke of a three-year plan?
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Now, we’re in the early stages of sorting all of this out. So, the ambition of the club is to get out of this league as quickly as we possibly can within the financial means that we’ve got. I want to emphasise that because the two go hand-in-hand; if we buy our way out and go through overdrafts and loans, then eventually they’ll have to be repaid and the history of this club, and everyone in the Football League, is littered with people going into administration because they’re repaying the loans.
And, at the minute, a ten-point deduction probably means relegation so you can’t take that risk anymore.
Keri, how would someone wanting to get a place on the Trust board go about it?
KU: It’s very simple. First of all, if you are a member of the Trust you have the ability every year to stand for election. It’s a fully democratic organisation and I would encourage people to think about it. If they’ve got the time – and that’s the important thing because of what the Trust is, and because we have big ambitions like the club – to put the work and the effort in so if people do want to stand for the Trust board it’s there for them come August-September time we’ll be asking people to stand.
Think about it. If you’ve got particular skills and you think that you can do something to help the Trust, to help the club then brilliant – the more people that want to get involved the better as far as we’re concerned.
Why should people join the Trust?
KU: Well I think you have to go back a couple of years now when there was a fantastic sense of achievement when we did what we did to help save this Football Club. It was a real spirit, everyone showed how much they cared – we want to keep that going. One of the ways we can get supporters involved, we can make them feel like they’re part of this Football Club, is through the Trust.
In many ways, we’re at the heart of the supporters in terms of what this Football Club should be about so we really need the Trust to thrive and prosper because if the Trust does that, then it will have an impact of the club thriving and prospering but moving forward in a way that supporters want.
There’s a lot of things that we want to do and a lot of things that we are doing and we must keep that going – we mustn’t give up now, we’re only at the beginning but we can achieve great things if we all work together.
ST: The other thing I think is that, as a member of the Trust, is the fact that it gives you share ownership which is why we have to be so democratic. It is a legally established company, as well, and it gives you share ownership.
There is a big difference between the Supporters Club and the Trust – they’re not the same thing, it’s a completely different animal. The Supporters Club does a great job in helping the club, in helping the fans for away travel, etc. but the Supporters Trust is there to gain access at a higher level, boardroom level through direct representation through shares. Of course, you need to be a legally established entity to do that.
For years, fans have given money and the only people to get money back when clubs go into administration tends to be directors. OK, they lose a lot of money as well but they tend to all go away with something whereas fans lose everything, and that’s got to stop.
Why is it so important that people renew their season tickets?
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If you don’t support something that means there’s less money to make that thing better. It’s the same here – if you don’t support this club now when it needs you, then the chance of it being better are just that little bit harder. Although it’s bad, just think about what we’ve had to sort out.
To be honest with you, it’s not from a financial side that the club has had a bad season, the money was there. That’s just happened for various reasons. But next season we genuinely need you because we are one year away from sorting out this Football Club and it would be a real shame if it doesn’t work for the sake of people not going on for one more season and renewing their season tickets because in twelve months time, all the problems from the previous ownership – financially, anyway – will have gone away.
All the contracts will have been sorted out and people don’t realise this, but we’re still paying (Tony) Hackworth, we’re still sorting out (Steve) Mildenhall, we’re still tied into those deals. I settled them to save the club money so they could go away and earn some more money, but we are still paying them. So, it’s not as if we just look at the squad of players and say ‘hey, that’s it’, we still have to sort out pay for that Hackworth deal which saved the club thousands, tens of thousands of pounds but we still had to pay him something in order to do that.
The difficulty is, I have to find a way of financing that, I have to say how many people are going to come and watch Notts County play. It’s a weird industry because I have to take an educated guess in many ways and set the budget accordingly then if people suddenly don’t come then you can imagine that that budget’s in tatters.
Keri, how are Trust membership figures currently doing?
KU: They’re really good. At our last count, which was a few days ago now, I think we had about one thousand, four hundred and twenty five Trust members which we’re really, really proud of because we’ve worked really hard because we’ve seen in other Trusts up and down the country that supporters join up at a time of crisis and then interest tends to drop, people tend to wonder why they should be continuing with an organisation like the Trust. So we’ve kept our figures up and we’ve worked very hard in doing that and, as I say, it’s about getting out the message just how important keeping the Trust going is.
If our membership figures start to fall, people start to lose interest then that will impact on the club because we need to be able to support Steve (Thompson) and the work that he’s doing and Steve doesn’t necessarily operate in a vacuum, any of the big decisions on the club’s board and we need to work together, we’re in constant contact about how we take this club forward. That’s why it’s important that we maintain this impetus and keep people together for the future of the Trust and the Club.
For the continuation of the interview - with both current manager Ian Richardson, plus former managers Gary Mills and Billy Dearden discussed in detail - be sure to check back to Notts County MAD throughout the week.