It’s funny that people believe the trust saved the club, at the end of the Cardoza era. They didn’t, Kelvin Thomas and co. Did! Yes the acted as collective to raise money for the club, some was used to pay wages, the remainder wouldn’t have touch the sides of the giant hole we were in, and subsequently after the club had been rescued they kept the balance for themselves, sorry ‘to look after’!
The Trust, in my opinion is outdated and does not represent the fans of our club. Members alone (if 700 is correct) wouldn’t even fill 10% of our ground. A ground that according to the Trusts latest endeavour is far too small! Out of interesting, if anyone from the trust is reading this, how do you finance the reports etc. That you produce, corporate match sponsorships days you attend etc.?
The club is doing a great thing by offering a fan, any fan, a place on the board. Making this a democratic vote by the fans and not an appointment by the club, literally anyone could have put themselves forward and be voted in by the Fans and the club decided to have no control over who this will be. It is strange that one of the 11 trust board members, along with their 700 strong support didn’t put themselves forward as this was a perfect opportunity for them to get what they’ve been asking for…transparently. If I was a trust member and supporter I’d be very disappointed. Maybe this role is beneath them, and it’s full control they want, as from a public view it does seems the Trust just like to make a lot of negative noise, have their own agenda of somehow taking over the club, and have no interesting in working with the current owners.
Good Luck to Tom and Dan, and thank you both for offering yourselves to represent the fans.
Other parties stepped back based on the still unfulfilled promise of £4m ring-fenced to complete the East Stand. This is also why the Trust agreed to not having representation on the board. So decisions were made based on untruthful statements by those who took over.
Why would there need to be a fan on the board of the club in order to achieve transparency? The club has a very effective internal media machine, and highly obedient local media too. Instead of a constant stream of puff-pieces and repeating the owners' flannel, these could be used to share honestly the challenges we face, the situation we're in, where we want to get to and by when. Or even to answer the Trust's questions - even a few of them.
There is a huge amount of willingness on the part of everyone to get behind something. This is shown by the number of people jumping to the defence of owners who have delivered nothing. I was one of those people until I saw the facts. KT can be very engaging - imagine if he communicated a vision and a plan for us all to pitch in with. What is stopping you if you are a football person determined to leave the club in a better state than when you arrived? Tell us what that looks like, don't be afraid to share ideas. I would contribute to an infrastructure foundation every month to help achieve that vision, if there were guarantees that the club would benefit long term.
It's interesting that you think the Trust has to pay for the things it produces - we are all volunteers and we don't pay anyone. I understand that in light of the quality of any forward-thinking coming from the club you'd think it was really difficult, but it isn't that hard if you want the best for NTFC and are willing to think about anything other than that bloody 22 acres which has paralysed the club for over a third of the time we have been at Sixfields. It also made me smile. One minute the Trust's documents are amateurish and ridiculous (everything in them has been done successfully at other clubs), the next minute they're so good we must be paying for someone to produce them. Well which is it??
Whilst others might be willing to share blind hope based on absolutely nothing (and I do sort of understand that, we all want to believe), I'm going to keep trying to tell you that the Emperor is in fact stark bollock naked.
Yes, good luck to the two candidates, they seem like great people. Let's hope that the board holds meetings for them to attend and gives them the "transparency" we've all been crying out for without them having to submit FOI requests like the Trust had to.
