Nelson talks exclusively to NCM

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Patrick for taking the time to answer these questions and for providing NCM with a bit of an exclusive.

Snack bar service on matchdays

RH: I know that many fans find the service to be slow and that some, myself included, do not bother to use the facilities as a result of this. I don't think that it would take much to improve the service, as a lot of the time this is down to the food assistants standing around chatting without actually serving or cooking food.

Maybe appointing a Team Leader in each section and making them responsible for ensuring that a fast service is delivered and then having someone who can check on this by walking around the stands. You might only have to increase a few people's hourly wage by a small amount to facilitate this and I would expect that over time an increase in sales would happen. Maybe in true Capital One style, this is something that Notts could test and learn from?

PN: I think our food is of excellent quality and well priced, however I do appreciate the complexities of serving lots of people in a short period of time, particularly at half time. We are going to look at the whole ground catering operation over the summer to see if there are changes we can make to improve it further.

This might (or might not) include menu changes, logistics changes, mobile units etc. Charlotte Moore, our marketing manager, will be leading this review.

Opening hours of the club shop

I am sure that this is as much down to the operating costs as anything and I appreciate that there is an online shop now, but I wondered if there were any plans to extend the opening hours?

We have made great strides forward with the shop in the last 12 months with regard to stock ranges etc, but we can do a lot more I think. Goods are now available over the internet as well as at the shop, and we have re-introduced card payment facilities.

Again, my aim is to do a complete review of our retail strategy and see what changes we might be able to make for the good of the club. As I am sure you will appreciate, we need to balance any increase in cost with an expected increase in revenues.

SMS Messages from the club.

On Wednesday (reserve match) I received a text message at half-time with the score, but I didn't receive anything at full-time. This is not the only example of this kind of thing, and again it must represent lost revenue for the club?

To this question Patrick opted to let Tom Loakes, the Website Manager, to reply.

TL: With regards to the SMS Service last week, many apologies as we had a problem with the server on PTV and this lead to the SMS not being able to send out. By the time it was back up again, it seemed pointless to waste 25p of people's credit etc when the score was on the net etc by now. It was a one-off, which I am sure you appreciate was done in the best interests not to 'rip off' our supporters.

Pre-match build up.

Cheerleaders? Now there's an idea..

It's not happened for a few seasons now, but I also wondered if there were plans to invite former greats to come out on the pitch prior to kick off?

I am keen to build up pre-match atmosphere and we will try a number of things to make it work better. One thing we have done recently is to use the same music from 2.45pm each matchday to increase the sense of expectation, and we will be trialing the use of the University cheerleaders quite soon too.

As well as this, we are hoping to install Sports TV in the concourses in April which will encourage people to come in earlier and hopefully to build-up the atmosphere too. One thing you (the fans) could do - and I know Ian Richardson would be very supportive of this - is to increase the range and volume of the singing so that we don't 'just' have the Wheelbarrow Song!

Fans Forums

Finally, I think it has been mentioned in the past that this is something that would happen every quarter, but I am not sure that this has happened. Is this still the club's position and can you tell me when we can expect another such event to happen?

The Trust does hold fans forums every quarter, and certainly at the last one, makes them open to all fans, whether Trust members or not. Ian Richardson, Steve Thompson and myself faced the crowd to answer all the questions.


Editor's note: These questions were put to Patrick BEFORE his recent spat with Magpies' manager Ian Richardson.