Text at top (next game etc)

Next Game: Brentwood In The FA Trophy At Edgar Street On Saturday 16th November At 3.00pm

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Williams Confident HUST Can Go Forward


HUST board member Chris Williams who took this evening's meeting spoke to BN afterwards.

"We were fortunate that we had eight candidates for eight places on the new board so we are now a HUST board of nine people.

"We've also had a volunteer to be our minute secretary.

"We've got some very good people to help us with the work we need to undertake over the next couple of years.

"The first meeting we will have as a board will be next Thursday night at 7pm and part of that meeting we will be allocating tasks to each of the new board members and we will also be trying to create a plan of work that we can look at strategically over the next couple of years to see where we are and where we want to be.

"To enable us to get to those new places what we might need to do is to co-opt some people with specialist skills to enable us to do that. And that's part of the task we will be taking forward. Hopefully that will work."

Williams was asked how the Trust's aim to be a 50% shareholder in the club was going and how long might it take to get there?

"We have a very supportive relationship with the football club as a Trust. They know that the amount of investment put in has exceeded what we originally said and they've allowed us more time to do that.

"I'm confident that the Trust will be able to raise the finance that we need to gain 50%. My own feeling is that we should do that certainly well within the timescale as we now have a reasonable timescale in which to do that.

"What we've got to do after this period of six months of inertia is to get everything back on track again and start doing the activities and the fundraising things we were doing in the past to give us that income to make us a sustainable Trust and also put us in a position where we can get 50% ownership.

"We've never had that opportunity at Hereford before and now we have that chance to do that so my real objective is to try to get to that 50% And then we can start to look at the other issues that around that."

It was pointed out to Williams that one of the criticisms of the board was that they hadn't managed to get four HUST members on the HFC board. Did he see that ever happening?

"I can't speak for the board but my own personal opinion would be that if we own 50% of the club there is a good case to address 50% shareholding in the football board. 

"We're not that now it's 3/4 and that's out of balance.

"What I would hope is once we get to that figure then we can talk from a position of strength rather than from a position of weakness."

BN - So it's not beyond the realms of possibility that there may be four Trust members on the main HFC board in good time?

"Yes, in good time. That's exactly the key point in good time. I don't know what the board's reaction would be, I don't know what the benefactor's reaction might be but what I do know is until we get to that 50% shared ownership we don't have a position to negotiate.

"The ambition when we started this was to look at a 100% fan owned club but the model wouldn't work for Hereford. We have a great asset in Edgar Street. It's one of the best things we've got, the stadium itself. It can earn us an income, it puts us in a really strong position as far as football is concerned.

"But it's also a liability, it's high maintenance, it takes a lot of keeping up to scratch. I announced tonight at the meeting that we've got the CCTV to sort out by the start of next season. CCTV is expensive and we've got to put it in because the crowds we are getting demand - we are getting League Two crowds and we're trying to manage with a CCTV system which is probably only working at 60% capacity.

"So the model for us is great, I think it works really well. It's not what we ideally wanted, it's not a perfect world but it's given us this foothold to try and get the fans of Hereford United who really, in my opinion, saved the club because of the way they behaved when the London people came in.

"It gave us the opportunity, we grasped it, we've taken it. It's the best deal we got at the time. 97% of fans voted for it."