It was announced in the early stages of the community hall development that the club had lent £25,000 to get the project started.
Anyone would surely know that you can't start such things without some working capital.
Maybe some more of it was used, I certainly hope so if it was needed.
Can't understand why some want such a disconnect between the two, would get it if it was just a sports hall with no bar and we still had only the old facilities. Or we had got rid of Reeves and another couple in order to build it.
It also gets forgotten that the project allowed the referees facilities to be brought to the ever increasing required levels and the away dressing rooms to be made twice as big. I know that this has helped us to get United games here, another invaluable source of income. This money would have to have been found to do this work if there was no CSH project.
As homely as the damp old bar was, the club was never going to survive on it's model of matchday income only every fortnight and pour every penny into players pockets.
I would imagine it will take a few years and some more fundraising yet to turn a profit but it was said that profit from it would then go into ground improvements.
However we now have a facility you wouldn't be embarrassed to hold a family function in, a larger matchday facility and a platform to run the community schemes from as well as the potential for hire for meetings, presentations and in house sportsman dinners. The family day at the beer festival brought the club and it's facilities to a whole new audience, it just would not have been the same without the CSH.
To get that built largely by grants and minimal football club investment was a work of genius in my opinion.