WHAT SHOULD THE TRUST DO

IMO the Trust needs a land mark objective (with eventual success) to stamp itself on the face of Cardiff City. The initiatives already in place like visiting schools etc are very admirable and should continue, but they will never change the perception of the Trust as a small bunch of PC do gooders more interested in pet projects rather than what should be their core interest, fans of Cardiff City.

I am putting myself up for election to the Trust Board and if by any chance I got elected I would have 3 major objectives which I believe would make the Trust more appealing to supporters of Cardiff City.

The first and most important would be a fully scale lobbying of the club to switch the family stand to the Canton End and put the 'singing area' in the Grange End, the reason being to improve the match day atmosphere at CCS as it is plainly clear now that the atmosphere is directly related to the banter between the 2 sets of supporters.

I understand there will be obvious concerns but for me this club has moved on and the presence of segregation and CCTV makes crowd disturbances within the stadium highly unlikely and it also makes sense to move the family stand to the Canton, as it cuts out the long walk with children right around the stadium.

This aspiration wouldn’t happen overnight and we would need a huge amount of supporting evidence for it to ever see the light of day so I would like to see the trust carry out surveys of the fan base to gauge opinion and even speak with away fans to find out their views on the atmosphere at CCS. If the Trust was ever to pull this one off its standing would soar into outer space!

My second aspiration would be to completely overhaul the membership schemes of the Trust. They are far too complicated and I believe they are a barrier to fans joining up. I would scrap the whole Jason Perry, Andy Legg and Phil Dwyer thing and introduce a flat rate £3 per person joining fee. The Trust should be about attracting numbers not raising cash to purchase shares. ATM the price scale even at £12 is too prohibitive for an organisation which hasn’t yet proved itself. At £3 the average fan might think it’s worth a punt?

Finally there must be a structure where the Trust consults with the membership on a more regular basis. At least one Trust Board member should have the responsibility of monitoring the emails they receive and responding quickly. There should also be more emails sent by the Trust encouraging members to email their views and if any serious issues like supporting the march ever happen again, there should be an automatic balloting of the membership.

That is my ‘manifesto’ and I honestly believe it would make a difference to the Trust and enhance its standing amongst the fan base.

IMO the Trust needs a land mark objective (with eventual success) to stamp itself on the face of Cardiff City. The initiatives already in place like visiting schools etc are very admirable and should continue, but they will never change the perception of the Trust as a small bunch of PC do gooders more interested in pet projects rather than what should be their core interest, fans of Cardiff City.

I am putting myself up for election to the Trust Board and if by any chance I got elected I would have 3 major objectives which I believe would make the Trust more appealing to supporters of Cardiff City.

The first and most important would be a fully scale lobbying of the club to switch the family stand to the Canton End and put the 'singing area' in the Grange End, the reason being to improve the match day atmosphere at CCS as it is plainly clear now that the atmosphere is directly related to the banter between the 2 sets of supporters.

I understand there will be obvious concerns but for me this club has moved on and the presence of segregation and CCTV makes crowd disturbances within the stadium highly unlikely and it also makes sense to move the family stand to the Canton, as it cuts out the long walk with children right around the stadium.

This aspiration wouldn’t happen overnight and we would need a huge amount of supporting evidence for it to ever see the light of day so I would like to see the trust carry out surveys of the fan base to gauge opinion and even speak with away fans to find out their views on the atmosphere at CCS. If the Trust was ever to pull this one off its standing would soar into outer space!

My second aspiration would be to completely overhaul the membership schemes of the Trust. They are far too complicated and I believe they are a barrier to fans joining up. I would scrap the whole Jason Perry, Andy Legg and Phil Dwyer thing and introduce a flat rate £3 per person joining fee. The Trust should be about attracting numbers not raising cash to purchase shares. ATM the price scale even at £12 is too prohibitive for an organisation which hasn’t yet proved itself. At £3 the average fan might think it’s worth a punt?

Finally there must be a structure where the Trust consults with the membership on a more regular basis. At least one Trust Board member should have the responsibility of monitoring the emails they receive and responding quickly. There should also be more emails sent by the Trust encouraging members to email their views and if any serious issues like supporting the march ever happen again, there should be an automatic balloting of the membership.

That is my ‘manifesto’ and I honestly believe it would make a difference to the Trust and enhance its standing amongst the fan base.

Some good ideas for discussion in there , which you should put in your address to members. The notice of the Trust AGM and nomination forms are being sent out next week and you then have time to get your nomination form back in and your candidates statement done so it can be mailed out to all the members at the end of April.

The more members that stand for election to the 4 available places on the Trust board the better.Anyone can do so , provided they are currently a member of the Trust.

Great post Tony and we singing off the same hymn sheet, the points you have brought up are all valid and several of them i brought up at the last Trust/community meeting they had in Cardiff last month.

The subs should be minimal, it ain't about raising money, the Trust in all reality could neve raise enough finance to pay one players wages let alone have a major share holding in any real financial terms, leave that to the money men and investors, it's the issues that affect the fans week in week out the Trust should be championing.

I know its old ground, but the march would have been an ideal chance for the Trust to get a lot more people on board.

Let's play a big part in supporting the Academy, how good will it feel as a fan knowing you have helped to bring a player through the ranks and he turns out to be the next Aaron Ramsey.

Fighting things like these crap civil banning orders should be a priority,psuhing for thing like no bans for fans until they are found guilty, why should fans be banned before they have been tried, how do we put up with that.

some very good ideas here


especially the membership side of things ..we need more , we need more people from all over our support area ..and we need to branch out

gwyn raised this point and meetings in towns outside cardiff at a previous meeting



in terms of the cost , if we are to put on regular events we need funds to do .....we have an andy legg question and answer night coming up ..and these things have to be paid for ...but I fully agree the scheme can seem a bit complicated ..it was based on what other trusts had done ...but if it needs changing ..

we do have the anti social behaviour initiative and we have pressed the club on ticket prices and price of food ...but with this current regime in charge , its been a tough task


if we had more members and more input then we might succeed if things change

one look at last nights crowd showed that match day prices are far too high


but with reagrd to how the trust actually works , I think we should draw an anology with the supporters club

someone thinks the supporters club should look for cheaper buses ?.....fair point

someone thinks the supporters club should have a new pick up point at kenfig hill ?..fair point

someone thinks that the player of the year do should be at canton rugby club to save money and be a black tie event instead of jeans and a t shirt ?....fair point

all suggestions and opinions that can be worked on


but .....thats whole different ball game from possibly trying to change the way its actually set up , via its constitution and written policy and objectives ..which are subject to due process



one of the main thrusts of the trust was to enter into dialogue with the club ..its totally different from the " direct action " march ..which I thought was a very useful approach but not one that it was really possible for the trust to openly support

the trust ethos via its constitution etc is fundamentally different from what say the rams or supporters club or the march was

for me its about a bit of tweaking ...

better , more simplified membership

working with the club to improve day to day match enjoyment ( eg atmosphere )

working with club to improve marketing

better communication between trust and its mmebers ..tonys suggeston

Tried to get some information on the trust had to do a bit of searching which most people would not do,

I thought this info waould have been easily available on the trust website under the "about the trust bit"

Until recently I had no idea the trust had a board of directors or that there were 9 of them or that people could be voted onto the board, I did not know who the board were and did not want to pay £12 to find out, I also did not know that 4 directors stand down in april and 4 more are voted on whilst the other 5 re elected.

I did not know the trust had a message board but would not have as it is part of the MM message board which I do not use- I did have a look on there whilst i was on the site and dont think I will be going there again, not to keen on this site, even Billy The Badge was getting abuse for selling the scarfs - Had the trust or supporters club come up with the idea of the scarfs I am sure they would all be queueing up to give Billy a fiver rather than avoiding them like the plague (slightly off topic but felt Billy was unfairly being slated)

I found this out by reading old posts on the Trust / MM message board as an unregistered guest

looking at the trust website I thought the joint statement from the Trust / CCSC was a weak effort - why could they not have supported the march - ok old ground but its my opinion

did the trust oppose the land sale?

still undecided to join !

I fully agree that the trust needs to improve its communication and the way it presents itself

with reagrd to people getting to know about us there was a link to the trust on this forum , its been removed ..and I fully understand why given the atmosphere was getting a bit silly ..hopefully if the trust is seen as a good thing as time goes on ..it can be put back up ?

but thats down to the site management on here ..and thats their right and their decision


you wouldnt have had to pay £12 to fimd out who the trust board were to be fair

the reason why people stand down is to keep the process moving and ensure we continually have new faces having the chance to step forward

I agree that there seems to be some daft comments about the scarves .....I am in the trust and I like em ...they looked great all held up at the watford game ..and plenty of users of the MM board think they weregreat ..so as on this site , you will have both postive and negative commets

the land sale was not opposed by anyone as far as I am concerned ..at the time it seemed we had no choice but to accept it !!

the march was a direct action approach ...something I supported ..but the trust was in a difficult position over that ..so it was felt that it could only say publicly that it supported peaceful protest and that people were free to join the march


and as a member of the trust , thats what I did


with regard to sites there are critisisms of this one and people also say the same ..they wont come on here , like you wont go on there

its swings and roundabouts

Why not a section in the match programme every week, why not an advertising board around the stadium, there's plenty of space and surely we can convince the club to give us one for free.

And my personal bug bear, why not an office that can be reached from people who sit in other patrs of the stadium than the area its in at present, no one in a large section of the ground knows it even exists.

like the supporters club , we didnt have much choice in where they gave us a " stall "

when vince and his lads turned up , the place was a shambles

this is why we have to build a working relationship with the new board , should they come ..and why we cant be seen as too direct , if you know what I mean

we hope to get volunteers outside the family section soon

Why not a section in the match programme every week, why not an advertising board around the stadium, there's plenty of space and surely we can convince the club to give us one for free.

And my personal bug bear, why not an office that can be reached from people who sit in other patrs of the stadium than the area its in at present, no one in a large section of the ground knows it even exists.

Gwyn.

Hope you don`t mind me butting in on this conversation.

There IS a section in the matchday programme each time.Its put in by Phil Nifield for us .

On advertising boards , I think most of them at the moment are either the standard ones that automatically come with being in the League (i.e. they are national sponsors the club doesn`t have to get itself) or are local businesses the club owes money to who have taken free advertising space instead. We could ask the new owners if and when they arrive but I suspect (and hope) that they will be far better than the current mob at marketing and will look to fill the spaces with paying customers.Certainly no harm in us asking though.

When the Trust was given the current area within the ground ,which can be accessed only by the Ninian and Canton areas as you say (I think that`s about 70% of the total attendance mind at present if you exclude away fans) we were also promised regular free access to the Grandstand and Family Stand areas to distribute leaflets , chat to members and potential members etc..

Despite frequent nagging , this has never happened. Instead , we have done the occasional visit to outside the entrances for those areas to do this work (Carl was very helpful to me at one match in particular with this in getting stuff into the Family Stand seats). Last night , one Trust member was outside the family stand until shortly before kick-off.You are quite right that more and better work could be done on this though - maybe getting Trust members who sit in the Grandstand and Family areas to regularly be available in a designated space for fans to approach before kick-off.(its a chore mind!).

Thanks for the input and ideas

Keith

Sludge

thanks for the replies

Why not a section in the match programme every week, why not an advertising board around the stadium, there's plenty of space and surely we can convince the club to give us one for free.

And my personal bug bear, why not an office that can be reached from people who sit in other patrs of the stadium than the area its in at present, no one in a large section of the ground knows it even exists.

gwyn

there is an office complex above greggs etc where paul guy and now mac have offices.
perhaps it might be an idea to approach pmg and see if there is a small office we could have free or even for a nominal rent.
at least then its an office close to the ground an people can walk in and join and discuss any idea's with the trust committee on matchdays

I'm sure PMG will be more than happy telling the Trust to Feck off after recent happenings,lol

Sludge

thanks for the replies

no problem

and I fully agree that the trust website , its advertising and the way it promotes itself needs improving

I'm sure PMG will be more than happy telling the Trust to Feck off after recent happenings,lol

lol

I met TG on his pre match walkabout at the Watford game and he seems a very approachable bloke to me and maybe an Oriental Sam Hammam ? Seriously tho I think that all of the above points should be put to him and his new board when they take over the club and she what thay can offer us , have to be more pro supporters than the current regime are !

I don't need an ego boost, I don't worry about the flak, my God remember them awful town wrecking, booze swilling animals called the Rams that I created, water and duck's back spring to mind, my concience is clean.

lol - The rams were argueably the best thing to happen to the club in the last 10 yrs . Great trips !!