Accy to survive?

[Christies Child]

As a 'sad old git' I've been wasting some time this morning trawling the various forums of other League 2 clubs to see who they are hoping to bring in during the forthcoming transfer window.

However an article on the Accy site concerning the minimum seating required at the end of the 3rd season as a league club really brought it home to me the importance of the new Stadium is in guaranteeing our future as a league club.

League regulations demand that all clubs by the end of their 3rd year as a league club must have provision in place for a minimum of 2000 seats. Fans at Accy seem increasingly worried that financial pressures are going to bring the future of their club into some doubt, as the cost of extra seats to make up the required 2000 may not be affordable with their current gates of less than 1500 as well as a serious question as where would they put the additional 1000 or so required?

Yet again this is an indication of how critical the timing of our new stadium is to guarantee our existance as a football league club. Any delay could result in our expulsion as a league club becoming a reality. OK worse case sinario would be an extra 1000 seats at CP, but logically the only place for their installation would be in the North Stand at a cost that would (questionably) seriously deter future investment in the playing squad.

Thankfully due to the excellent financial management and forward planning by our Board the prospect of loosing our FL place is hopefully not in doubt. But it's a timely reminder to us all just how important the new development is in guaranteeing FL status.

[Phoenix]

Either I've missed something or you haven't explained how are "Accy to survive"

[PUNKISDEAD]

Yeah
this post does not do what it says on the tin!!

[Christies Child]

Whoops....suprising what a '?' in the right place can do...

[maccawozzagod]

Accy fans are split between furious or entirely non-plussed by the whole thing.

The club knew three years what was required but have taken three years to come up with the most ridiculous plan of fulfilling the criteria.

The club stance is that with having no money we cannot afford to build a self-financing, income generating, all singing-all dancing structure to replace the 'cow-shed'. Therefore we will have a mixture of seating (three rows and blue seats) in the existing cow shed with no alteration to the current structure. This will not provide anywhere near the required extra seating so the remaining seats will go on the Clayton End. This will take up the first few rows of the end and will travel the full length. Standing room will still be available behind these seats and they will be (probably) be red.

The main stand (already seated) fans stance is that this is an ideal way of meeting the criteria as cheaply as possibly and with the minimum of fuss.

The Clayton Enders stance is pretty much that they risk destroying the atmosphere created by the Ultras by putting in seats. They are acting without consideration for the fans that stand on that end who choose to stand and watch football. They are acting without consideration for the club itself by further adding tinpottedness to the ground by making it look even more mish-mash and non-league than it currently is.

The club answers by stating that as we can't fill that end anyway then there will be no change to anyone - you can sit or stand regardless.


In fairness to the club it is a ridiculous situation. We don't get 2000 fans in total so why should we have to be able to seat that many. Eric Whalley did write to the Football League asking for special dispensation, his reply was that we knew the rules when we joined in 2003.

My personal opinion is that they have had three years to come up ways of financing the new stand and having it paid for by now. I suggested at least half a dozen ways of getting capital raised but nothing ever happened. The problem I have with it all is that the club may very well have explored other avenues but as they never talk to the fans or communicate throught the website until they are denying things, we just expect them to have done nothing at all. I posted three years ago that the club would probably put seats on the Clayton End and they'd announce it at such time that there was no time for any action otherwise. I hate to tell people that I told them so but .......

Many of the problems we currently have with low crowds etc are as a result of failure to put the money in at the right times and applying short term fixes (ie cheapest) to long term problems. If we had covered the Clayton End at the right time (when we got into the Conference) then we would have been in a better position to capitalise on the new fans we gained when we had the good cup run, and then we won promotion to the FL.

We'd probably have been able to afford a new stand with an extra 400 fans a week ........