Walsall FC
Supporters’ Liaison Committee, Focus Group Meeting, 30/6/03, 8.15pm
News from
our man on the ground
The meeting spent 15
minutes discussing several items of varying levels of interest before someone
mentioned a certain football club in the north-west and off we went.
First the entrées:
Season
Tickets: 3700 sold so far. Roy Whalley confirmed that we need 4200
sales to generate same revenue as last season.
Police
Costs: Now increased to £12-13K for a match from £10K last
season. Hence the club will try and avoid the need for police at matches where
possible. Current proposal is for 7 matches to be policed, including the first
3 high profile matches. It was 9 last year.
Shirts: On-line
shirt design selection was deemed successful and will happen again nest season.
Signings: Some
info on re-signing some of last years squad was given. CL is in Portugal on
holiday (I thought training started tomorrow!). In terms of signings this was
not a problem (according to RW) because most of the football community is in
the med at this time of year and CL is really on a busman’s holiday.
SAMWAYS –
CL is “pursuing a lot”
JUNIOR –
still no news on whether he will accept the contract offered by the club
HAY – RW has absolutely no
idea
AINSWORTH – his father is his
agent and makes all his arrangements. The club do not know the players exact
thoughts on Walsall’s contract offer but believe they have as much chance of
signing him as QPR.
Reserves: matches
will continue to KO at 2 pm because this allows the coaching and scouting staff
to take in evening matches.
Aston Villa reserves will again
play at Bescot between November and February. RW was adamant that last seasons
pitch problems would have occurred anyway. Two Walsall reserve games in early November
played in a downpour were particularly mentioned by RW as initiating the
problem.
£120 000 has been spent on
two courses of treatment which the club are confident has rectified the
drainage problem. The firm involved have assured the club that no renovation
work will be required for 7 years. Both myself and another attendee asked what
guarantee the club have that this will be the case and do we have a ‘warranty’
on the pitch. Neither a “yes” nor a “no” were forthcoming.
No cash
turnstile: all seats are reserved and our policy of no cash turnstile
is in line with other clubs practice. It was mentioned that the club could slap
a reserved sticker on each ST holder’s seat leaving the others to be sold
either in advance for a discount or at full price on the gate. I thought it was
a good idea but RW disagreed. Interestingly away supporters can pay on the gate
unless it is an all-ticket match.
The main course follows.
Manchester
United: This was what everyone really wanted to talk about. RW
spent a good 15 minutes describing the history of the link up and its practical
implications for Walsall. Apparently it was an idea put to Man Utd scouts by
Bill Jones last year. Man Utd drew up a contract for co-operation and after
some fine-tuning (RW would not reveal any exact details although he was pushed
on this) Walsall signed up.
RW stressed it is a youth
system collaboration. We are not a nursery club in any recognised way. In fact
RW denied that the nursery club concept existed in the UK and rubbished the Crewe-Liverpool
set up which is widely understood to exist.
The deal was set up because
of concerns over the ability of Walsall to attract youngsters of First Division
quality into the club. They will all go to our neighbours. The old premise of
being able to progress through the ranks more quickly at Walsall than our
neighbours has now gone, as every game counts over the past few seasons and now
more quality is required to break into a First Division side. RW mentioned that
Hawley and Bishop would be established first team players if they had emerged
10 years ago.
By linking with Man Utd,
youngsters who would normally be attracted to Villa / Wolves etc will now want
to link up with us. We get youth matches at Man Utd, coaching from their
coaches – not just in football but in drug awareness, nutrition, counselling –
and we may get loan deals for Man Utd youngsters where their salary is
subsidised by Utd. On top of this we get a friendly each year for 3 yrs. In
return Man Utd can make an approach for our young players but can not sign any
of them until they are 16 and will have to negotiate a deal with the club.
RW was totally enthused
about this deal, claiming that it put us in a good position compared to our
neighbours. The thoughts of those who attended were more cautious because it
sounds too good to be true. It would be useful to know what Man Utd are getting
out of this and what the exact project plan is for this 3-year deal, and what
the fine-tuning entailed.
Overall it looks good: even
if Man Utd take the top few per cent of them we will still be left with some
promising youngsters. RW ended up distraught at the attendees’ reservations on
the deal and we will have to wait to see how this pans out.
One final
point – RW warned us all to expect a loss making year after 11
years of profit and brought the meeting to an end.