The unofficial AFC Rushden & Diamonds messageboard

Interesting Meeting

For any nosy friends from up the A6, Yes your Chairman did approach us last November and proposed a merger, seems he thought he had the upper hand and the team would have been called K*ttering Diamonds. KC said F-off.

Sorry i am doing this as i remember titbits.

We lost 2 sponsors last season and the 100k that went with them, we sued Haart and made them pay what they owed us. No new sponsor yet for next season.

Paul Hart did win his case againt us and we paid him 28k and we paid 80k in legal costs.

Ground share and merger proposed - but KC didn't rule out a ground share in the future if the terms were right.

A good Forum, Paul Driver, Justin, Michael and Keith all looked very relaxed and gave a great performance I thought, with a good mixture of humour and some serious messages. I thought Justin oozed confidence about the pending play-offs.

I hate the new shirt, but will probably buy one after having it reinforced what a precarious financial situation we're still in..............well, if we make it to Wembley I will ;)

Though all of them came over as very sincere, my only serious worry is that JEMS have not been secured on contracts (terms agreed and a hand-shake) and negotiations will continue in the summer. If we go up, I think they'll stay, if we don't............hmmmm !!

That bit about Paul Hart makes me incredibly mad. I don't want to write any more on the matter incase he sues me.

We need an average attendence of 2000 to break even and KC said that his pockets are now empty and it is not viable for him to put more money in.

We will now have to survive on gate receipts and sponsor money and yes us fans digging deeper than ever before, of course promotion would help the cause as it would be worth around 600k extra income.

Errrrm , other bits:

Hotel - £11m estimated cost, banks not keen to lend the money and KC unwilling to put club up as collateral.

JEMS chose the new kit - they're allowed one bad decision in a season I guess ;)

Looking at what they can do to benefit from the NHS facilities (use of car parking and fees already agreed) and other ideas being considered.

What is our current average attendance?

BartonRaz wrote:What is our current average attendance?

1524, but should go up after Luton game! ;)

1558 is our average (or something like that), so not good enough at all, KC clearly is desperate for the fans to start to return but even recently with our success, we're still not getting anywhere near as many fans through the gates as we were in FL. Just over 2000 home fans tomorrow is good compared to the rest of the season but we can't afford to just get that for the big games, we need to be getting that on average, so promotion to the FL will be huge for club. I'm actually worried for our future if we don't go up though, as with the current situation, would we be in a position to make a promotion push next season? That's considering JEMS and the team may not be still here in August as we know the mangement team and some of the players are capable of a higher level.

On a positive note, as I said on the other thread, it was an excellent and interesting evening, so thanks to all 4 of the panel for being so honest throughout!

Who knows what the situation would be like if we achieved what we were expected to achieve - another average mid-table finish :roll: