Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Darren]

The following article by Grahame Rowley appeared in Saturday's Robins' Review...
"What a fantastic first season it has been back in the Vanarama Conference. There've not been too many seasons, whilst I've been on the Board, that we haven't been involved in promotion/relegation issues come the start of April. So, it's nice to be in our present position, where safety is secured and we look to finish the season on a high with a maximum of 62 points to look towards.

However, as well as our on field activities there have been many things going on off field that have put a great strain on the personnel who work day in day out to ensure that the Football Club flourishes and these strains are beginning to produce cracks. These cracks will only widen if we don't take remedial action now.

There's too much expected from too few volunteers and it will come to a point when those volunteers will have had enough and call it a day - and then the club will be in trouble - so let's do something about this before it reaches crisis point.

 We, as a club, need more people to step forward and strengthen the infrastructure of the club, be that as an occasional volunteer-helping the club, to joining the Board and helping run it.

The success of the season does have its down side and it's one which shows up the frailties of a club like ours, which is mainly run on volunteers.

When things are going well everyone believes that there's no need to step forward and offer help because 'everything's fine'; that's not the case and, if we are to progress this club, then we need more people to step up to the plate and offer some help, be it half an hour to paint a railing to taking on board a bigger project around the stadium.

The Community Sports Hall is a classic example itself. When it was in the planning stage everyone was very supportive of the venture. When it neared completion everyone rallied around to pay for the AV system within the Hall but now it’s open and fully functional everyone's forgotten that we still owe up to £50k on the build cost and this money has to be found/raised as quickly as possible to ensure that it doesn’t impinge on other club activities. Perhaps there are supporters out there who might like to organise a fundraiser on behalf of the CSH. I have noted that Andrew Brennan is running the Manchester marathon later this month, a commendable effort and many thanks for all at AFC. He already has over £1,000 of sponsorship.

As the saying goes, ideas are cheap, it’s the implementation of them that takes the time and effort. I can name 20 ways we could raise more finance for our Football Club but I haven't got the time to implement them - have you?

Let's not just sit back and enjoy the good times, let's try and move this football club forward. With your help I'm certain that we can achieve continued success, without it there's only one way we're going.

If anyone would like to discuss matters further please feel free to give me a call on 07720-606897

Thank you for reading this article.

Grahame Rowley, Chairman".

[Mrs Warbouys]

Anybody any ideas for fundraising etc?
I'll kick off with one that's fairly easy to implement without much need for taking people's time. How about a raffle for a pair of sponsors lounge season tickets, giving the winner match day hospitality, match entry and a programme to every home game for them and a guest. £20 a ticket so it's not cost prohibitive to people and your winning a fantastic prize of a full season for just a tenner a head for you and a guest.

With regards to working on the ground. We will have many young supporters in need of work experience between school and college or whilst off from university. How about a reference from the club and a certificate of recognition for the cv of any supporter (young or not) that comes to the ground during summer and partakes in any helping out/volunteer work. It would look good on the cv of anyone.

[York Alty]

We have had good experiences with what I think is still called Community Payback - offenders doing something for the community - one of our local halls was decorated to a a pretty good degree by a group, and one of them sorted out the plumbing.  We had a supervisor on site all the time, and which offenders turned up was always fairly random but work was completed.

Just a thought and as the landlords arranged it I don't know how to start the process off.

[Mrs Warbouys]

Have we not had them in before and purely coincidentally the bar was broken into a short time later? Think this is more about supporters being hands on where possible. Knowing people have such busy lives, it's never always easy or a lot of the time I'm possible to help out. But we had a three page thread on issues with the ground and this thread has had a couple of replies in 24hrs. Some people just like to come and watch the football and go home and put it to bed for another week, which everyone is perfectly entitled to do, but this is all our club, we all have a stake in it.