[maccawozzagod]

Please bear with me on this post as it might just ramble a bit!

Over the last few months and years many people whose blood runs the Red and White of Stanley have ceased many of their activities. This might have been Supporters Club meetings, Gold Bond participation, sponsorships, drinking in The Crown or the clubhouse, making extra purchases at the ground or even attending matches themselves. I for one had ceased doing all of the above at some time or all times. The reasons for these actions would have been varied and particular but all of them boiled to the fact that not one of us could condone the actions of those charged with looking after the finances at our club.

That gloom has lifted now. Could anybody in or around the club accuse Ilyas Khan of being there to line his own pocket? Could anybody doubt the involvement of the man and question his motives? No. The Trust is back – or should be. I would imagine that 98% of the hardcore will now believe the club and its future to be secure, but we all know that it will take more than that for the town and its inhabitants to believe in our little club again.

Ilyas will administer his own special brand of first aid to the club and its finances. I imagine that he will put people and procedures in place to bolster the infrastructure of the club. He may empower John Coleman with the means to improve probably the greatest squad this club has ever had. What he can’t do on his own is go out there and make the town believe again. He can’t cover every blade of grass and talk to every constituent. We can.

I would like to think that as many people as are bodily or geographically able will stand up and be counted now in an effort to thank Ilyas for the faith and belief that he has shown in us and our club. How can we do our bit to get the club back in prosperity? Let’s be under no illusions that Ilyas will bankroll the club and continue to be its financial crutch. He wants the club to be self-sufficient. He wants us the fans to choose its next direction. Well we can start to do this NOW.

The obvious avenue is that we all attend as many matches as possible and encourage others to come too. Nice and easy and pretty much what we try to do anyway (apart from the previous conscientious objectors)

The less easy ones are to try to get involved off the pitch. How many of you have heeded the call to shovel snow off the pitch? It doesn’t matter whether you had reasons to not want to do it, will you do it next time?

Are you able to offer your time to aid the club with efforts towards the Gold Bond draw? I’ll come back to this one later on.

Can you attend Supporters Club meetings and are you willing to get stuck in and give Pendle Red and his team a helping hand?

Do you know of anyone who may be in a position to sponsor the club in any way? It might be something that already exists, stadium, shirt, match, ball, advertising board etc or it might be something that you have thought of yourself, for example when we had corner flags and injury time sponsored!! Every little helps and if you have the ear of somebody like that then please have a word.

Have you got a particular skill set that the club could make use of? You might be a plumber, builder, joiner or a roofer and your skills could be put to use for an hour or two here and there. From what I can remember of sitting in the main stand (Clayton End) the gaps that are still there every week seem to correspond with where the leaks are – and I certainly wouldn’t sit in those spaces again. But to the right tradesman it might cost fifty notes and an hour to put right with some bitumen and a blowlamp. It might be that you are in marketing, or sales, or banking, or refuse, or media ……… whatever it is the club might be able to make use of you. My suggestion would be that if you have anything to offer then let’s set up some form of register that the club could call on if needs be. I’d love to see (for example) two plumbers step forward so that one plumber doesn’t get the call every time, come on folks let’s share the workload.

That brings me back to the Gold Bond. This used to be a really important portion of the clubs income. I have a feeling that it has slipped away in recent times and is in urgent need of repair. It is an income that provides revenue for the club every week (or month) of the year and helps to stem the tide when close season is upon us, or games called off. I personally have never particularly liked the format of the draw and would have preferred to have an exclusively local Accrington Draw. But it needs to have way more income in order to support that. At the last educated guess Stanley were generating around £1200 a week from this but it has been over £2000. Can we push it to £10,000?

I would like to see some pledges from Accrington fans, as goodwill to the club in this new dawn, to attempt to push the Gold Bond. This could be as much or as little of a push as possible. The club tries to encourage members to be on direct debit. So, you knock on the door of the people on your street/block and try to tap up family, friends, work colleagues. If you can get them to sign up, and agree to DD then your work is done. Piece of cake? It should be shouldn’t it? And there are incentives as well. I can’t remember the exact numbers but a couple of seasons ago it was something like a season ticket for 20 members. You can also earn commission, and if a ticket that has come from your work is a winner then you earn on that as well! It really could be so simple that one nights work from you and the club is well on the road to recovery.

This is going to be my pledge. I will attempt to sign up 100 members



The last thing I would ask on this post is that if any of it has struck a chord with you, or you agree with my sentiments, don’t just nod your head, get up and do something. If nothing else then please remember my words. You might not be arsed to do something this week but next week you might. Or if my words inspire you then please try to use them to inspire others.

We can do this. Just believe.