Oh and can someone please put a scan of the programme notes on here. I missed the Ashton match as I was in Coventry looking at the Uni with my daughter.
[Welcomes Ashton and reviews Durham and Buxton]
Off the pitch we have had a couple more significant financial setbacks. A £75,000 loan had been taken out by the previous owners which we knew would need repaying at some point in time. We had been covering the interest on the loan and over the past few weeks we have been negotiating to extend the period of the loan however, as is typical in the current financial climate, the lending bank have demanded repayment. We have managed to arrange for it to be repaid over the next 12 months, but it is a real blow when the club still continues to lose money and it certainly was not budgeted for.
We were also in the middle of a rent review on the ground, where the owners were attempting to put the rent up from £52,000 to £250,000 per year. Due to the unreasonable nature of the increase that was demanded there were no grounds for negotiation, therefore the matter ended in arbitratiton. Our experts presented good arguments that the rent should actually be reduced rather than increased, however we learned on Thursday that the rent had now been set at £72,000 per year by the arbitrator. The increase is a bad enough blow, but the worst aspect is that is figure is back dated (with interest), so coupled with the costs of our experts, and the arbitration process, this will cost us in the region of £110,000 to £120,000.
I have to admit this almost brought me to the point of walking away as there is a limit to what Neil and I can do, but having slept on things I realised that we had put far too much work into the club over the past two years and the reasons for getting involved back in 2007 are still the same, so we fight on. I just hope that our home performances start to match some of our great away performances. The home fans will then see what progress is being made and hopefully the gates will improve again to help us through what is a very difficult patch.
[Covers injury to steward, welcomes sponsors, hopes for three points and wishes everyone a safe journey home]
My apologies if I am infinging anyone's copyright - I think this needs as full an audience as possible.
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