Haven't posted for years, won't be posting again soon, but I'm effing angry!
What did we get out of the tin pot FCN for? Just to go back there looking like the small time, amateur, parocial outfit we really are?
Stuff that!
If I were Lee and Jordan, I would already be looking for a more professional outfit.
Why doesn't Rowley and his sycophants ship out and sell up to someone with desire and money. Big fish in a very small pond.
Look at us...
Ground is a joke, squad is a joke, board are a joke.
Poor Damian, Jake, Simon, Shaun, Scott, Luca, and co, Chorley or Stockport looks a good bet.
Sports Hall? New bar more like! No sport I know can be played in there, too small and too low, carpet bowls for Mr Rowley anyone?
Money for players would have been better.
And it is too close to the pitch and obscures the view, only muppets would have planned that.
Wake up and smell the coffee, these buffoons have sold us down the river for years.
Well run club? My backside!
History is all we have now, enjoy...
Cough up for proper football gents, or sell up to someone who will.
I've read some dreadful stuff on here over the years, mostly to the point of not actually bothering to read it very much. This has to be one of the nastiest posts and most uncalled for posts I have read for a long time.
You don't really talk about what's on the pitch so I won't either, needless to reinforce that it is always the most important part before I say what I am going to say next. We need points and need them quickly.
Your opening gambit of why did we get out of the Conference North, well it's a side effect of scoring more goals than the opposition and trying to win matches. I think it was also the aim of pretty much every fan, aside from the few that are happy to play at a regional level.
Ask "Rowley and his sycophants ship out and sell up to someone with desire and money" is as ungrateful as it is nonfactual. Rowley and his sycophants don't own it so they can't sell it even if if they wanted too.
They are appointed by the shareholders to run it to and if you want them out then get an enough shareholders together, get a vote of no confidence and get "them" out. Make sure you've got the replacements lined up first please and make sure they are pretty thick skinned. Hopefully the previous board will still be allowed to return to the terraces from where they came.
As for your sports hall rant, it's quite incredible. Any football club would surely welcome such a facility to be built at their ground with open arms, people put weeks, months even years into the planning of that, have you ever seen how large grant application form are? Takes more than a muppet I'm afraid to do build such a thing with such a minimal amount of money to be raised by supporters. Yes it restricts the view from some seats in the stand, that has been talked to death and isn't great but the positives surely outweigh it.
Do you even know what goes in there? You surely can't do if you think it's a venue for "Rowleys" carpet bowls, surely something smaller could have been built at his own expense if he wanted such a place to practice.
As for Sports Hall, new bar more like, you sound like you've just uncovered a great secret and exposed it.
Surely even the most unsavvy business minded Alty fan must have seen that most of the clubs we have ever visited in the past had a social venue that could generate income outside of matchdays. I lost count of the times I sat in these places wishing we had one. Yes the damp and mouldy old bar had some charm but it was room that was used once fortnight, it was hired out about 5 times a year by Alty fans who would ignore its fault and wanted to help the club. No one off the street without an affinity to the club would have used it for a function I'm afraid. Compare that now to whenever anyone asks in a local facebook group for venue recommendations, at least 5 people with no connection to the club recommend it.
The only safe way to grow the club is to provide a facility that could be open 7 days a week, providing income 7 days a week and we now have it. No sports can be played in it? The 100 kids who have football training there every week may differ. It's used for yoga, pliates, slimming groups, pensioners activities, toddler groups, baby groups and it's also a superb function room as well as an extended matchday bar. How dreadful! More power to the muppets I say.
Going to take a few years to see the fruits of it but the community benefits are there already.
So as well as the above it also provides a base for the community schemes that now involve kids from 2 to 17, coaching in schools growing at such a rate that they can't get enough coaches to fulfill all the requests (which makes money as well as the PR side). Everywhere you look there seems to be an Alty team playing these days, boys and girls. I remember days when outside of the fanbase few people had any connection with the club and there was nothing to connect to the community, there is now concrete links there and that can only be a good thing.
A better base for a BTEC scheme where young people combine football with learning (which again makes money).
We never had any of this even when the money men have been in before.
So back to the investors debate. Not arguing that some investment would be good but it has to be the right kind Some more directors willing to throw in £10,000 a season and spread the workload, organise some stuff would be very welcome.
Some wide boy coming in telling me about project Football League in 2 years and the new super stadium will need to do some convincing in my eyes I'm afraid. I've sat in that meeting once in Chequers when John Maunders showed me his super plans in 1992. His first job was to sack all volunteers by letter and replace them with paid people so he could control them, nothing like getting off on the right foot. He didn't need to worry about selling sponsor boards and severed a lot of ties built up over the years as he forced anyone who he spent money with in his company to take a board. Took years to repair and some of it never was.
It took a fair few months of my life trying to save the place with many others when he got bored, put the 1995 Tottenham FA cup money in his suitcase and walked off with his "loans" repaid, like he was of course legally entitled to do. Does money guarantee success? I've not seen much happening at Barrow since the American saviour rode in. Time will tell if he rides out again or makes good his promises.
It's like the days of "you need to come to a meeting under the stand at 12:30, we need £10,000 by the end of the month or this will happen" never took place. The board have made a rod for their own back really by running it well without crying for help every two months. No one wants to talk about money anymore, just what we have to get or what we need.
On the pitch we aren't doing as well as anyone would have hoped but there have been some reasons for that with the injuries and postponements. but that is very different from the points what you are attacking. Whether you like it or not being an Alty fan in a league with some of the giants we share it with means we are going to lose more than we win. You know that though, so why has it suddenly changed? This season we have got back on the national FA cup map, beaten a league side and a kick away from taking another one to a replay I think we would have won. We went out of the trophy last night to what I think was fluke long range shot on an unplayable pitch (for both sides). We need to improve of course we do and we need points fast but the board have always worked hard to make the budget as high as it can be for players.
I could go on all night but my point is, heckle the manager and your least favourite players but the volunteers running your football club don't deserve such abuse, whether it's a one off rant or your or others feelings. If you want things changing, come up with ways you can help to do it. It's piss easy to sit at home telling everyone else what should be done.
Things are far from perfect but in my opinion they are far from deserving that.
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The state of my Alty
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