OSC Meeting monday 9th

[maccawozzagod]

Don't forget folks, that this monday is the Annual General Meeting for the Supporters Club.

Up for grabs are position of chariman, vice-chairman and secretary due to the present committee stepping down.

At present the Supporters Club is not running at full tilt due to lack of active members, new ideas and focus. Hopefully there will be plenty of new people there for the AGM and these new people can help breathe life into this very important part of Accrington Stanley Football Club.

There will also be discussion regarding new ventures for the club to get its teeth into. Are you able to contribute in any way? Are you interested in being part of a club that can have an input into how things are done at the club? Do you feel that you have ideas as to how the club or its fanbase can be improved or portrayed?

If the answer is yes to any of the above then we would like to see you at the meeting on monday. If you are unable to go for whatever reason but still think that you have ideas you would like to get across then PM me and I will try to give everything a mention.

[Bagpuss]

I will be there Rob, my membership has been renewed, I really hope it's not going to be a big disappointment.

[accymel]

Well im in a pickle about it cos with the supporters club gone AWOL over past few months a friend bought me a season & a half worth of membership starting from last xmas so i've been told & i havent received anything regarding new membership which is flippin annoying that its got lost in the records somewhere & cant get hold of them, im certainly not paying twice!!!

I dunno Macca seems a lot of faith needs to be restored in the OSC that the last lot ruined! Will try to be there depends if im well enough to go.

[Henry Morton]

I have so far refrained from reacting to comments about the Supporters's Club on this forum because most of the opinions have been just that - opinions.
When it comes to matters of fact, however, it is necessary for me to reply as I am still the Membership Secretary.

Accymel is a fully paid-up Member for 2006-7 and, like other Members, she will receive her badge and card when they are available. That will be weeks, not months.

I have not had any message, phone call or any other form of contact from her ; I was not contactable (as was posted on the OSC website) for six weeks from mid Aug to the end of Sept due to completing my OU studies for this year. Not "the past few months".

As Bagpuss ponts out, he has renewed his Membership. I have been contactable, as I promised I would be , for the last week.

The Supporters' Club has emphatically not let accymel down and I'm surprised and disappointed at her comments.

Just a reminder . . .there's a lot of work involved in being on the Supporters' Club Committee . I note the term ". . .up for grabs" in a previous post. What a pity that nobody wanted to grab my positions on the Committee when I asked to step down in May.

I have stayed on to try to keep things running smoothly, but I wonder why I bothered when I read such undeservedly critical comment.

[accymel]

To refer to the gentlemans comments, i have sent membership email to confirm details that the OSC wanted as it was a surprise gift & upon receipt i did mail as requested after new year but recieved nothing back & im still waiting for confirmation email as expected for joining OSC site registration as it is i cannot log in for some reason. There was nothing to welcome newbies or give information to new recruits anything that has been known i've found out on here accyweb stanley forum - thanks guys. I thought nothing about my membership - other than nice badge , until my friend whom bought this as a gift asked if my renewal had come thro - to which the site was down committee seemed defunked so was in no position to ring anyone because made clear no answers or communication could be given, also nobody knew really what was going on to advise me further, so seems the OSC is unapproachable.

Im a member of a few clubs btw, Stanley being the expensive membership but no matter i love my club, what really struck me was the dis-service, my other memberships can be bothered to send leaflets, updates, meeting schedules, by proxy voting postals for absentees, emails, even encouragement - nothing other than you have to turn up to the meeting or sod off is the attitude i feel it was, sorry its not always feeible to turn up to all or some meetings as the timing is a bit awkward but appreciate it goes for the majority - so felt out of it. I know how hard it is to set up committee & keep it going, im in the position myself but the key is to listen to members & even non members so that problems are sorted plus keeping your members informed is a key to most of it & i thinks thats where a lot of objection has come about from. Only today i find the site is back on.

Thanks Mr Morton for confirming my membership 410 least i can put a worried friends mind to rest now as he bought it & will wait patiently as i have done

I haven't critised you personally Mr Morton altho i have cristised constructively the club as above, if im ill-informed then that can only mean i've not been informed properly by the club itself & that is down to the committee as a whole not just one member of it is all im saying, i thank you for your response & effort in doing so.

[Henry Morton]

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply, accymel.

I think that you're referring to your attempts to register with the Members-Only area which used to be on the Supporters' Club website.

You gave us an email address which was unobtainable ; it seemed to be one at your workplace or somewhere similar, although of course that is only a supposition. Whatever the case, I tried repeatedly to contact you on it in order to confirm your desire to register, but with no success.

Because your Membership was bought as a gift we only have the email details of the donor. It is usual to ask the donor (if it's a surprise gift) to ask the recipient to let us have his or her full details after the gift has been presented, and I believe that this happened in the case of your donor.

The (now non-existent) Members-Only area was a great asset to the Supporters Club website, so I was sorry to see it removed by the webmaster without any similar replacement. I am not, nor was I ever, the webmaster for the site . . . I merely wrote the copy for the pages which you can still see on www.stanleysupporters.co.uk so as to provide information for our Members and prospective Members worldwide.

As the Club knows, the Members-Only area was intended to be the vehicle for Newsletters, publication of Minutes and other areas of interest to Members.
Unfortunately the forum was "hacked" , we were advised, by mischief makers, and it was subsequently removed.

Nevertheless, there has been ample opportunity for dialogue on (as we have recently seen) www.accringtonweb.com/forum and for any Member to contact me by post, telephone or email - as indeed dozens of Members or prospective Members do every month.

I hope that this information is helpful to you and to others.

[maccawozzagod]

I'd love to have seen you stay in your position Mr Morton as I think you do a good job and have a reasonable grasp of what people need or require. My (reasonable) gripes about the OSC have been well chronicled by myself and many others. At this juncture I am not a member of the OSC and have been only once in the past five years. If the club was more transparent and welcoming it would have more praise, more activity and more money, in its present condition it deserves unrepenting criticism.

I know most 'faces' at the club and they know me, I talk to people and I listen to people. Yet I never seemed to know what the OSC was up to. I didn't know what they had raised money for, what was next on the agenda. All I knew of other than the presentation nights was the climbing the terraces sponsored event.

Through expanding communication with members and the media, along with new ideas and initiatives, I believe that the OSC can go on to unprecedented heights (maybe naively?) and can become a powerful ally of both the club and the community.

[accymel]

Thanks Mr Morton will pm you with personal email that is working can only opologise simply i haven't received it & only can think its bounced back or deleted junk filter altho i do check still can go astray, my new mail which i will send least filter isn't in over drive lol.

[AccyJay]

Hello all you lovely ASFC fans. Can anybody tell me the name of the commercial / marketing manager at the club please. I didn't want to start a new thread, because i'd just get loads of reply's saying the same thing.

Thanks.

[southernred]

Accy Jay,

Yes this is slightly off topic;

However the Commercial Person at the Club is Joyce Pickles.

Joyce can be contacted via the club number

Joyce currently assists Wigan Warriors and previously has raised thousands for Burnley FC

[Henry Morton]

Originally Posted by maccawozzagod

Through expanding communication with members and the media, along with new ideas and initiatives, I believe that the OSC can go on to unprecedented heights (maybe naively?) and can become a powerful ally of both the club and the community.

I'm delighted to agree with you almost completely about this particular subject, and I can only say that I've been preaching the same gospel within the OSC for the last few years.

You're not naive, you're passionate - and that's important.

However, I should point out that the OSC has never been short of ideas ; like many similar organisations it's got plenty of creative minds but it's short of people who are prepared to adjust their schedule and lifestyle in order to fulfil the suggestions or promises which they've made.

So that's where the crunch is - commitment.

And it must be said (because it's true) that the greatest commitment and the finest results for the Club have come from the older, more experienced Members over the years.

We really, really, genuinely welcome newer, younger Members to replace us and to continue the tradition. After all, the second rule of management is to plan for succession. But enthusiasm can be a short lived thing (remember the Junior Reds ?) which, if not combined with staying-power, can result in embarrassment and ridicule which reflects very badly upon ASFC itself . And none of us wants that to happen.

So, let's look forward to Monday's AGM in a spirit of friendship, progress and adventure.

[maccawozzagod]

I sincerely hope that all the present active members of the club continue to attend and participate if the proposed new influx of people happens.

There are and have been plenty of ideas in the past but the problem is that they are usually of an existing or old hat ilk. Sponsored events are all well and good but it usually reliles on the same people doing the event and organising it and the same people doing the sponsoring. It ends up being a lot of hard work for little financial return.

I think that the new order should consist of as many types of people as possible all fighting the same cause. Let those who want to do sponsored events do so, but I think we need to look at fresher, bigger ideas as the way forward. The vision I have of the club is that of an important and respected part of the wider community as well as football. We need ideas to propel the profile forward rather than the purse strings. Hopefully the former would lead to the latter.

The Ultras once flirted briefly with the idea of trying to construct the worlds biggest flag. It was binned as an idea a) for cost reasons b) logistical reasons and c) what to do with it afterwards.

Lets just step outside of the box for one minute and try to expand this particular idea for examples sake. Firstly we could obviously get the local fabric shops to provide material for as close to cost price as possible and then get business sponsorship to provide the funds. In return the companies sponsoring us would get a) association with ASFC, b) association with a record breaking event and the innumerable press opportunities that would provide and c) association with something that will stand in the Guinness Book of Records for at least one year.

People would definitley be needed in numbers to build and transport the thing but I am sure we could get the numbers. We would need somewhere huge to hang it. Maybe off Express Gifts? I dont know if that is big enough, but the Coppice would be.

Afterwards it could be cut up into smaller pieces and auctioned off on E-bay. Own a piece of the record breaking flag for a tenner. I would. It could be sold in larger pieces to other clubs who play in red or white for them to use.

The net result would be that the club would benefit from ridiculous amounts of exposure in every football related media in the country, on every local TV news bulletin, the radio, the internet. It would be the talk in every pub in the country. No? Remember the big England flag that toured the country before the World Cup? That wasn't even a record breaker. That event would raise the profile alright and I guarantee would help get people through the gates. The sale of the flag would raise plenty of money for OSC (and local charity if I get my way) funds. If the club proposed putting 200 quid towards a Supporters Club flag, would you vote yes or no? If they voted yes how many people would be involved in it? Take the idea to the max and you could get everybody involved, and their wives/husbands/kids, and their neighbours maybe.

The club could and should scale the heights and be the flagship supporters group in the country. It has the potential to reach further into the community than the club ever could. We are proud to be fans of the biggest little club in the world, lets show the masses why we are the best fans in the country.

[simon]

Originally Posted by maccawozzagod

The Ultras once flirted briefly with the idea of trying to construct the worlds biggest flag. It was binned as an idea a) for cost reasons b) logistical reasons and c) what to do with it afterwards.

Lets just step outside of the box for one minute and try to expand this particular idea for examples sake. Firstly we could obviously get the local fabric shops to provide material for as close to cost price as possible and then get business sponsorship to provide the funds. In return the companies sponsoring us would get a) association with ASFC, b) association with a record breaking event and the innumerable press opportunities that would provide and c) association with something that will stand in the Guinness Book of Records for at least one year.

People would definitley be needed in numbers to build and transport the thing but I am sure we could get the numbers. We would need somewhere huge to hang it. Maybe off Express Gifts? I dont know if that is big enough, but the Coppice would be.

Afterwards it could be cut up into smaller pieces and auctioned off on E-bay. Own a piece of the record breaking flag for a tenner. I would. It could be sold in larger pieces to other clubs who play in red or white for them to use.

What A fantastic idea

[AccyJay]

Originally Posted by southernred

Accy Jay,

Yes this is slightly off topic;

However the Commercial Person at the Club is Joyce Pickles.

Joyce can be contacted via the club number

Joyce currently assists Wigan Warriors and previously has raised thousands for Burnley FC

Much appreciated, sorry to wander.

[Henry Morton]

Just a reminder that anyone wishing to be involved in tomorrow's Meeting must be a current Member.
I'll be in the Sports Bar early (6.30pm) to register renewals and new applications . Thanks.