Focus Group - Report

By TSFC
July 1 2003

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.

Walsall FC Supporters’ Liaison Committee, Focus Group Meeting, 30/6/03, 8.15pm

 

This has been kindly supplied by the WST and Richard Hall.

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 neighbors. The old premise of being able to progress through the ranks more quickly at Walsall than our neighbors 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, counseling – 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 neighbors. 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.