Mark Devlin on a Saturday night

[Simon Pieman]

Investors in football clubs are few and far between now, mainly because you won't get any return. The new ground is dragging on, it always has done no matter who was in charge. I don't think the situation is likely to chane much, unless someone at SBC has forgotten about some land they don't need.

[Arriba]

Investors in football clubs are few and far between now, mainly because you won't get any return.

exactly why i am dubious about power coming here with his dosh.unless he sees it has a sort of hobby like abramovic at chelsea does.hope so,just seems very odd

[Mark D]

I understand your sentiment Arriba. Football fans are always a litttle dubious when somebody with no obvious link to the club invests in the club. With Swindon's recent past I can fully appreciate your concern. Knowing Bill as I do, I believe he will be an asset to the club alongside Sir Seton. Let's see how the club progresses in the next few months, and hopefully years- you may be right, you may be wrong.

[Arriba]

mark d, i really do hope i am wrong to be dubious.

[STFCere]

i think we should just be grateful we now have 2 main investors! lets just for once enjoy this new found optimism and hope and forget the questioning and concern.

i for one believe the club now has a good setup on the board, in coaching and hopefully with more new additions on the pitch before the start of the season.

now more than ever we all need to pull together and show our support to dennis and co.

[pauld]

FWIW, Arriba, as I understand it Mark D opposed the ticket price rises but was overruled. I can understand the "wait and see" approach (we've had too many let downs not to) but personally I'm allowing a small dribble of excitement to infect my cynicism    Seriously, with fresh investment in the club, and perhaps as importantly the freshening up of the boardroom that brings with it, an overhaul of the (playing side) management, and hopefully of the team, plus a good deal of goodwill from the fans, this is a golden opportunity for the club to make a fresh start and start getting things right.

[STFCere]

well said paul, what plans do the trust have to exploit this new found optimism? general plans ambitions etc for the new season? may i suggest (if this is feasible) more collections for spare change on match day for raf fund. i always chuck in a few spare quid

[STFCere]

all gone quiet on the trust side of things for some time now, i think you need to focus on promotions etc and generally getting people aware of the trust again

[TalkTalk]

all gone quiet on the trust side of things for some time now, i think you need to focus on promotions etc and generally getting people aware of the trust again

* Bump *

Ahem...Paul D?

[RobertT]

Aren't they busy getting a fanzine together for the start of the season?

[pauld]

It's one of the things we discussed at the AGM - the need for a higher profile among fans of what we do (the problem being that we actually do quite a bit, but aren't always great at communicating it).

It's something we're aiming to tackle early in the season, current ideas being leaflets at first few home games, trestle tables/info stands outside the ground so people can come up and have a chat etc. Any other ideas gratefully accepted. Ironically for every person who thinks we don't do enough to communicate what we're doing, there's another one who thinks we're always banging on about something or other, or a bunch of self-publicists etc.

Don't think we've been that quiet "for some time now" - we were busy with the CG redevelopment stuff (collecting postcards, talking to council etc) pretty much up till the end of last season. The postcard collection was certainly quite visible to most people on matchdays. Then over the summer we've recently published the results of the economic survey we did on fans' spending habits.

In terms of the original question, for our ambitions for the coming season, I think it would be the same as usual: CG redevelopment, fan on the board, beer, doing what we can to help get a successful team on the pitch, beer, trying to represent fans' views within the club and to the wider world, beer. We do need to increase our membership to help achieve these aims so if you like the idea of an active Trust prepared to speak out on matters affecting the fans (whether that's to the club, council or whoever) but have been happy to sit back and let us get on with it, we do need your support - membership forms from the Trust office on matchdays or print em off and send em in from:

http://www.truststfc.co.uk/join.php

For the record, the fanzine isn't a Trust thing per se, although some of the people involved with it are also involved with the Trust. But some aren't Trust members, and some Trust people aren't especially involved with the fanzine - I've been palming off attempts to get me to write something for weeks now ;-)