Barrie Hubbard talked in depth with the Official Website and the Star / Green Un's Phil Tooley about a whole host of topics. Here we see the Club Chairman's views on how not winning promotion next season will be viewed and he also outlines how last season's finances ended up.
Q: Will you judge not winning promotion next season as failure?
A: That's a hard thing to say about failure, but we definitely think we should be promoted. Sometimes you can do well and not get promoted, but it might be failure in one respect but in another, it's not failure.
What we all want to see over the next season is a different style. We think we've got a good defence but we can't score goals, we let in a lot fewer goals last season than we did the year before, but we still lost eleven games 1-0 and that, to me, is where we're slipping up, in attack. Every time a defender made a mistake and we were punished, people said he'd had a bad game but forwards can miss ten goals, then score one, and they're everyone's darlings.
As far as failure's concerned, I suppose it would be failure if we don't go up, we really are going to try and in the next week or two, we will have some new players, I'm hoping next week may see some new faces. I really want to do something before season ticket discount ends.
Q: Plenty of criticism following relegation, but how are the finances shaping to ensure we have a real crack at promotion?
A: We obviously hear the criticism and often think everyone's against us but the amount we've had lately has been strong but from a relatively few people. A lot of people are upset we've gone down but a lot realise that for the last five years we've just managed to scrape through. No-body wants to get relegated, financially it's rubbish but as far as we're concerned, we get a parachute payment, we don't have to pay any big bonuses because staying in the League was the trigger for the big bonuses, so financially, we'll not be a lot worse off. Where we will be worse off is with the gates, but we don't know exactly how that will hit us yet.
Q: What average gates are you working on for the new season?
A: As a Board, we tend not to look too close at average crowds for a break even figure, we look at how much money we need as a Club to function, how much can we bring in commercially. We tend to work everything out on £10 a head average from those that attend, after VAT and expenses, it tends to work out at that amount, so a 4000 gate would bring us £40,000, but with half of them as season ticket holders, that works out at £20,000 cash per game.
Gate money was down in the region of £120,000 last season but the biggest downturn was with away crowds, it was very low, only around half the amount last season compared to the season before and that was down on the year before.
In the Carling Cup, if we'd had just one of those games away, we'd have made a fortune but as it happened we hardly made any money on the gate, though we did make £100,000 or so from the televised game against West Ham. The gate money, which has to be shared with the away club, plus win bonuses, higher stewarding costs due to the nature of the games, provided us with little, but the TV money was brilliant.
Q: The Cup run though was largely responsible for Caleb Folan's rise to prominence and subsequent move, what effect did that have on the season's finances?
With Caleb's deal, which brought in £500,000, quarter of that had to go to his previous Club, Leeds and then we paid over £100,000 for Jamie Ward so, after everything was taken into account, we netted £256,000, so that's the true figure we made from that, plus the £100,000 from TV, but we started the season budgeting for a £170,000 loss, plus the £120,000 reduction in gates, we'll end up having made £50 or £60,000 profit over the season, which we're not complaining about at all, it's much better than losing £50,000!
Q: And next season, with 14 Clubs less than 90 miles away, hopefully away crowds may not be as bad as they could be at this level, no doubt you were pleased last weekend?
A: With regard to the away support next season, I was delighted when Bristol Rovers beat Shrewsbury and Morecambe beat Exeter in the play-offs meaning we'll have two more clubs much closer to home in the same division.
Barrie Hubbard was talking to Phil Tooley.
There will be more, all new information, from Barrie in the Green Un's of 2nd, 9th and 16th June, covering his views on Roy McFarland's time at the Club, Lee Richardson's appointment, the latest on the re-location (in 2nd June's edition) and his views on the Club's potential new investors.
