The unofficial AFC Rushden & Diamonds messageboard

The biggest problem as I see it is you have the facilities worthy of a Championship club + all the upkeep costs before you even kick a ball.
And you have the fans turning up to each game at the level of a lower conference team or higher Conf North or Conf South team.
With average gates of 1000, and sadly this season on several occasions much less, we don't have the income from football to match the costs of running this club and paying the players.
If we clear whatever debts have accumulated so far then you still have a big gap between match income and outgoings.
And when I've gone out to Irthlingborough, Rushden, Oundle, Wellingborough to raise funds over the last 10 years I get the same response - we don't want Rushden & Diamonds we preferrred it when it was Rushden Town or Irthlingborough Diamonds, or we support Liverpool, Man U, Arsenal etc etc.
The only support I've seen is from existing supporters and those rare footie fans that support any club trying to make ends meet.
So big questions after my ramblings :-

1. Are we trying to shore up and prop up something that just wont work financially unless we have a large befactor that doesn't mind losing money ?
2. How much does R&D actually owe and to whom ?
3. What should the Trust be doing in this situation ?

Finally I must just say the Trust has become a fundrasining entity basically and please don't forget the 1000's of pounds raised by people like myself who have already got off their arses for the last 10 years to keep bringing money into the club and giving so much of their time ! The trust contains fans just like the rest of you/us so is at the centre of this also - at least the fundraising section as it's more accurately called is. So we really need to bring all strands together and get those experts throughout the fanbase and not alienate fans yet again. We're all in this together so let's join toegther and not bring up more divisions which will finally end this club we all love.
As always communications is the key.

oops it is @saveRDFC

bozzer wrote:Twitter account set up....get following!! and retweeting and all that stuff!

Bozzer shall do you want to do a link exchange with my save RDFC facebok page and maybe partner up to make the Save RDFC a larger campaign

After my rant - some positive ideas....

1. Emergency Fans Forum. Can someone replace the Wrexham & Kiddie game info on the board outside the club with FANS FORUM in big letters with Date and Time ? Might catch a few more punters.

2. I also work on Radio Diamonds. So why not have a 24 hour Fans phone-in, requests, adverts, money raising kind of show thing. We can get interviews and all manner of things. We can update with the details from the fans forum on Tuesday - might even try and record that so we have the full picture. I know it's only internet radio but if we can generate interest and get that ball rolling it'll be an easy cost free event that everyone can take part in even if the weathers bad etc etc. Appologies to other Radio Diamonds peeps for not asking before I blabbed out this idea.

3. There's the International England C V Portugal on 19th May. Let's get down there and raise some money - somehow or at least get the message across to more people that may nor normally visit Nene Park that much.

4. Create a programme of what we are saving. Show how the club supports so many youth teams and centres of excellence. All of which will go if the club folds. Let's show how good R&D is and that actually it is worth saving.

5. Longer term we need events to recognise 20 years of R&D next year. I guess these often need money to make money but it's been a cracking 20 years of ups and downs and it would be good to tell our story in some way and sell that.

That's me run out.......

Oliv, yes good idea how do we do that!! lol

bozzer wrote:Oliv, yes good idea how do we do that!! lol

For now you can just post this link on your twitter page:

We can link them so all your posts go onto both and all my posts go onto both but that could lead to us tripping over each other with repeated posts so for now I'll just ut a link on to yours aswell.

Great ideas there, Colin but with regards to point 3 (edited) you may not have realised that the FA have yesterday decided to switch the England 'C' fixture to Sixfields.

Well that's point 3 gone then.

Regarding BM's point about fundraising above, I do agree that the Fundraising should be co-ordinated via the Trust, and it's something I will raise on Tuesday at the meeting to see how we can get this to work. We need a clear statement on any fund-raising page about how the money is being managed, and how it will be used - and this should involve the Trust too.

Some of us are already doing great work in preparing to raise funds - I'd suggest these ideas be linked with what the Trust are planning on Tuesday, and wait until after then to actually take donations.

There are also some good fund raising ideas being passed to me via the email - diamonds2011@btinternet.com - I'll summarise these on the new website later on today.

just an idea perhaps we can get intouch with a few of the diamond legends to try and give a hand with raising the profile of the the club, it might hit home with some of the lost support weve had