Saturday 13 November 2010

A determination to succeed

Oliver Ash
I would like to congratulate all the supporters who came along to the Cray game on Tuesday last. What a horrible evening for a game of football. It needed a win to warm us all up but sadly it wasn’t to be.

We played some good football at times but were not as sharp as Cray at the end and they deserved to win. We have to get our act together quickly now because when you take into account games played we are stuck right down at the bottom.

Perhaps it’s me transmitting bad vibes because my other teams - West Ham and Brive Rugby – are also down the bottom of their respective leagues…Well I promise to keep away for a few weeks now!

Meanwhile Tuesday was the one month anniversary of our take-over. It seems like a year!

I have to say Terry and Bill are doing a fantastic job. I have been receiving 10 emails a day dealing with writs served, tax issues, legal problems, corporate problems, you name it, we’ve got it. But we’re determined to solve all the problems, pay off what legitimate debts have built up and move forward. We are investing in removing restrictive debt and covenants on the new ground.

We are now working on a new commercial plan to generate new revenues as soon as possible with the support of Goodform Ltd, run by a talented friend of mine Stuart Dalrymple (check them out on www.goodform.info).

This month we will also decide on a final plan for the new ground, which will show a few minor changes from the permitted plan. This will enable us to finalise the costings so we know where we stand on the amount of capital we shall need. Then we can prepare the share issue scheme which has been much talked about already. We are looking forward to launching this huge challenge.  

We shall do this without the support of the MBC. We met them on Tuesday evening at the Cray game and impressed upon them our hopes, given the investment we and others were making, that they would support us financially and also ease some of the restrictions in contracts signed previously. Unfortunately we then received a very disappointing email. It’s frustrating but it only makes us more determined.

I look forward to returning to Homelands for the Tonbridge game. I only hope it’s more pleasant than my first such ‘derby’. Three sendings off and lots of unpleasant goings-on. Whatever else happens we’ve got to keep cool on these sorts of occasions. And win of course.