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The point I’m trying to make is hednesford Town is a football club that needs to stand on its own feet and by doing that it needs to have various financial streams to make that possible,the travel club is potentially one of those streams more to the point it’s hednesford town travel but club if people want to travel by other means then that is there choice ,but I find that rather strange because as supporters I would like to think you would want the best financially for the club.
What I’m saying is the club needs to bring money in and if this stream brings revenue in then as someone being brought in to commercially make a difference I just would not be doing my job if I never looked at taking on this financial stream ....in my experience to make a success of something it’s better everyone works together,it makes thing a lot easier.
The Travel Club has been independently run by supporters since 1996 prior to this and my time it was run by the club but unfortunately there was a falling out that resulted in it becoming independent, others will know more as to why. Since my involvement we have facilitated positive engagement with the football club and we now have a very close working relationship with the club. That includes on matchdays volunteers from the Travel Club assist with turnstiles, programme selling and previously stewarding in addition to helping with pitch maintenance, fixing of floodlights and other tasks around the ground over last 20 plus years.
So in that respect whilst we haven't directly generated income for the club we have saved the club monies through our volunteering and we are more than willing to continue to volunteer and maintain as individuals our close working relationship with the club.
The Travel Club has always been run on a non for profit basis with fans travel costs set at a level to so that the amount of monies made each season was sufficient to ensure there was enough capital at the end of each season to cover any costs for the following season plus estimated income from fares. This financial structure has worked well to the extent that the cost of fares has not been increased for over five years. In our negotiations with the coach company whilst we both understand they are a business and need to generate a profit, a balance has to be struck between this and fares being affordable for fans to attract sufficient numbers to make it financially viable for all concerned.
So whilst there may have been some scope for the club to generate income from yourselves running a Travel Club, as someone who has managed the Travel Clubs finances for 12 plus years I can say that the scope to do so would be somewhat limited. In addition as someone who has also been responsible for the booking and arranging of coaches, setting of fares departure times and managing of Gold Membership scheme, social media etc not withstanding the additional significant task of taking day passenger bookings, I am sure Ken can advise further on its many and varied complications. Coupled with the numerous tasks of running the actual coach on the day which are many and varied requiring a designated person to undertake.These are all additional tasks that the club would have to undertake if it were to take on responsibility of running a Travel Club that which may necessitate additional paid staff to complete as myself Phil and Ken can testify to can be time consuming and not just restricted to normal office hours.
I hope this helps to clarify matters and we look forward to yourselves and us as fans continuing to work together and build upon further our existing positive relationship with the club so that we can all move the club forward.
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