Rochdale supporters turned up in good numbers to Monday's fans' forum organised by the Rochdale Supporters Trust. We have the first half of Monday Night's notes online now...

Graham Rawlinson opened up the fans’ forum with a speech on the commercial department. 

“Commercial Break” 

Rawlinson started by stating that he were shocked with what he found when he first joined the Rochdale AFC board, it shocked him that then manager Steve Parkin had himself, 8 players, an assistant manager and a physio.

Parkin had a list of 15 possible signings at that point too, which were all to be signed with practically no playing budget. 

Thankfully that isn’t the case now. 

Now we have 23 players at Spotland on a sustainable wage budget with plenty of support staff too.

Infact, the current management have the biggest wage budget in our club’s 101 year history to manage the squad with. 

We’ve also just opened up our new injury recovery facilities which the club received financial assistance from the Dale Supporters Trust too. 

The club now also have an up to date accounting system to replace the outdated system that we have put up with for too long.  

We will also see a complex new ticket system which will allow supporters to take advantage of discounts as well as being able to purchase multi-tickets or simply a single ticket all online. 

Rawlinson moved onto how the club goes about paying for these new and current services as well as some other interesting figures too. The club funds the club’s commercial services by the funds made from the matchday attendances as well as its turnover. 

Dale’s average attendance at Spotland for League games only has been… 

Out of all 3 fans attracting schemes last season, only 1 wasn’t a success, costing the club a figure of around £6,000. 

The Early Bird season ticket scheme was again a success ahead of the current season with a total of 900+ Rochdale supporters taking advantage of the offer.

And as it stands at the moment, 1,140 Rochdale fans have season tickets so far. 

Amongst many of the new schemes and strategies the club has in its plans for the future, the club are currently working with Ticketmaster in regards to ways they can contact the 16,000+ supporters that went to Wembley. 

The club has revised its family ticket policy with families being able to sit in the WMG for the same price they could have sat in the Family Stand. 

The club also knew that the decision to increase in price with the season tickets and on the turnstiles for those that pay on the day would not be a popular one.

However they would like to, once again, point out that this is only the second price increase in five years and they would not increase the prices if they did not feel it were required. 

All prices are for the benefit of Rochdale AFC and to give Keith Hill the best tools possible to achieve the seven year aim of playing in the Coca-Cola Championship. 

“Business Development” 

There have been lots of rumours and such doing the rounds in recent weeks and Rawlinson took this opportunity to give supporters some more facts and figures. The club has improved its revenue stream by a significant amount in recent the last few years… 

Sponsorship deals: 

Matchday Hospitality Boxes: 

Other Hospitality Offers: 

Advertising Boards: 

The club would like to make a request for new Advertising Board sponsors ahead of the new season…

As well as a request for those that haven’t renewed their board for whichever reason that they do so ASAP. 

On the Commercial side, the Commercial department made the figures below from merchandise sales… 

Merchandise Sales: 

Also, on top of last year’s profits were around £10,000 worth of merchandise used by the club with its various Matchday and football in the Community activities. 

Replica Shirt Sales: 

 *All of which were the Black and White Centenary shirts. 

Rawlinson concluded that the board does listen to the supporters and should be seen to take account for every decision (non-footballing that is) by the supporters of Rochdale AFC. And the board will always provide what the management need, even if it proves to be an unpopular decision with some. 

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Youth Football 

Chris Beech was the second member of the panel to speak to the Rochdale supporters and he informed us on the progress made by the various youth teams. 

The last 12 months have been very productive for Rochdale AFC and its youth teams. 6 of Rochdale’s youth players made the step up to the first team squad last season, with 4 debuts and 3 youth players being given professional contracts, in the form of Will Buckley, Kyle Lambert and Raphale Evans. 

There was also the successful fast tracking of talents such as Matty Hughes whose transfer to Celtic this summer is Dale’s biggest youth transfer since Stephen Bywater joined West Ham United. 

Due to the various successes by the club this season, the YTS has been given £14,000 to be spent on its players.

With £3,000 paying for a pre-season trip which were highly productive and will be key for the future. 

The £14,000 also allowed for the purchase of video analysis equipment which is only possible due to the good practice by the club. 

The youth teams are always moving forward with new ideas, equipment, set ups etc.

Tony Ellis has had the difficult task of changing the set up to a more suitable and time productive set up. With the centre of excellence providing education to its players 2 nights a week now, instead of the original 4, which was set in place before Ellis arrived. 

The youth teams have recently been added to with the talented players that are Daniel Anderson and Chris Brown. 

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Stadium Company and the Play-Offs 

Chief Executive Colin Garlick was the next panel member to make a presentation to the club’s supporters and he was a man determined to defend the club in regards to some recent comments from various sources. 

Hornet’s complaints: 

The current ownership of the Stadium Company currently stands as the below: 

In theory, the Stadium Company should be sustained by all parties, however, this is not the case. Despite the truth being that the Stadium Company receives voluntary help as well as funds from Rochdale AFC to sustain it, with nothing coming from the Hornets. 

The most farcical part of it all is the fact that all three parties have an equal vote on matters, with votes only being passed if 75% agree. This means everyone has to agree! 

And to set a more rumours straight, Rochdale Hornets owe the Stadium Company £28,800 in rent from this season alone. 

On the other hand, Rochdale AFC have loaned the Stadium Company £10,000 with Council paying £17,500 for room hire till the end of the financial year. 

Rochdale AFC is also up to date with its rent. At this point, the club stressed that they do not usually opt to hang out the dirty linen, but in this particular case it felt the need to defend itself.

In regards to the complaints many of us will have read on the back of the Observer recently, Garlick moved onto the situation before Hornets home fixture against Workington. 

The Stadium Company was never asked if the pitch could be used for the school finals that Hornets had apparently planned for months in advance. 

And the Stadium Company only postponed the event as, what the Hornets are well aware of too, is the fact that 6-8 weeks is the standard time period that pitches used for professional sports require for maintenance. 

In the end, we only got 4 weeks to maintain the Spotland pitch, which the Hornets did co-operate with as they had a home game which they moved due to it falling in the middle of the above 4 week period. 

There was never an injunction letter sent to the Hornets at any point in regards to their plans for the Workington game. 

2 letters were sent, the latter of the two being from the legal department of Rochdale Council which was sent to remind Hornets of their legal requirements. 

The original letter was ignored by the Hornets with verbal requests also being ignored before both letters. 

There is no conspiracy between the Council and the Football Club against the Hornets and the Football Club and Council desire to help the council, we don’t want to see them suffer. 

The club is set to make future proposals to the Stadium Company in regards to resolving the payment issues. 

Play-Offs: 

Rochdale AFC did not make as much money from the Play-Offs as were reported at the time. 

In total from we made £73,000 from our share of the pot (£33,000) and the Sky money (40k) for the semi-finals. 

Dale’s takings on the gates covered most of the costs, with the costs for the semi-finals being £95,000. 

Dale received no TV money for coverage of the Play-Off Final, the money instead went into another pot, which we’re still waiting to find out what the final figure will be. 

In total profit from the final, there was around £1,250,000 made. 

However, we expect to receive 10% or less from that. Costs were covered and by the income at the moment, despite the final figure still being disputed,

Dale made around £110,000. There is a profit of around £20,000 expected. Still, it was a fantastic achievement by all. 

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Seven Year Plan 

After a short video from Paul Conway, assistant manager David Flitcroft was next, with the aim of updating us on where we currently are in the ‘seven year plan’. 

We are currently on course to achieve what we have set out in the 7 year plan, with the only real concern being the lack of a full-time training facility still. 

To put it in perspective, there is 250 training days in the year and the only time the team have trained on grass has been during the Pre-season tour of Spain. 

Paul Conway, James Barrow and Guy Proctor are all being taken on full-time at Rochdale AFC, and they make up a support team that would rival any in the Championship and possibly the Premiership too. 

Injuries cost Rochdale AFC £165,000 last season. This is something the club have combated, with the introduction of new schemes such as deep water running, which we all saw Chris Dagnall benefit from last season! 

All in all, £25,000 has been invested in reducing the injuries cost this season. We are still a selling club and unfortunately we had to sell Glenn Murray.

However, with the current structures we have place, we are allowing the likes of Matty Hughes to come through and we want to start developing our own Murray type strikers and Perkins type midfielders. 

Although we had to recruit this time in Murray’s case, we’re hoping the next Murray will be ready to step in when we sell another striker and so on. 

Although we are a selling club, it is key we keep hold of players long enough for the club to progress, and when we do sell players, we want to be looking at fees like Stockport County received for Liam Dickinson.

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A Thank You to the Dale Supporters Trust

Director Andrew Kelly, (or AK if you know him like Beech does), started off his speech by thanking the Trust for its efforts with the club and its continued work with the club in the future. He thanked the Trust for their assistance with the new injury recovery suite whilst also promising to speak to the Trust about new initiatives once the AGM has passed. 

Football in the Community 

Andrew Kelly then moved onto the work that Keith Hicks and his staff do in the local community. The Football in the Community team has recently been handed charity status and is looking at new initiatives it can use to get out there and help the local community through football, which is vital. 

And now for what we have spent! 

The Football Club budgets to lose £250,000 every season, we can only really combat this with cup runs or by selling players. 

How we’ve done in the last few years: 

The board has also acted to prevent something re-occurring which happened when Kelly had recently joined the board. 

Despite Rochdale AFC spending so much time and money bringing now Blackpool FC goalkeeper Matthew Gilks through, as well as bringing Alan Goodall from the Welsh Leagues, we received nothing for either of them. 

This will not be allowed to happen again. 

To combat this, the club has revised current contracts with players by an added £85,000 to the current wage budget, with £9,000 also going on the NI. 

Also, unfortunately for Dale, the costs during the season are always increasing, with more travel costs, stadium costs and police costs. With the police wanting £48,000 this time round, as they want money for being outside of Spotland Stadium, as well as inside.

The second half of the forum, which consisted of questions to the panel from supporters, will be online at some point in the afternoon.

Photo: Action Images

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