A New Year's message from Chairman Simon Gauge.
I hope that you all had a fabulous Christmas and are looking forward to this evening’s New Year celebrations and our trip to AFC Fylde on New Year's Day.
It has been an extremely busy time of year, both on and off the pitch. We held our AGM on the 22nd of December. It is always good to get together with our shareholders, and as well as completing the formal requirements of the evening, it was also a timely opportunity to address questions from the floor. In my view, this was hugely beneficial for both the shareholders and directors alike.
We spoke a lot on the evening about the need for investment into the club. We were clear at the start of the season that we needed to sell the available shares in the club to fulfil our financial obligations for 2023/24, and be in no doubt that the situation has not changed. Whilst we have come close to securing deals with several potential investors, as of yet, we have not managed to get anything over the line.
There are difficulties in attracting investment, not least because of the complicated share structure, but these issues can and must be overcome. There are many advantages to investing in Rochdale AFC over other clubs. Primarily, it is a great club with great people in and around it. We are a well-established club with over 100 years of history. We own our ground with plenty of development potential around it, and from an investment perspective, it offers exceptional potential to significantly increase the club’s value and make a return in the future.
If you add all of this to our location near to Manchester, the exciting developments happening in Rochdale, such as the Northern Gateway development, and the fact that there is a population in the borough of around 225,000 people, it is not hard to find the potential of the club. There will be a suitable investor out there somewhere for us, and we will continue looking hard to find them. In the meantime, as a club, we need to do all we can to keep going. That means continuing to be very prudent in what we spend and trying to raise some much-needed cash.
There are ways in which everybody can contribute to this. At the AGM, shareholders requested that shares were made available for purchase. As an immediate response, the Board has agreed to make 50,000 shares of the unallocated 366,000 shares available for purchase at the agreed minimum share price of £2.35. Applications should be made to shares@rochdaleafc.co.uk. The remainder will be ringfenced for potential major investors.
We would also like to encourage supporters to support us through revenue-generating initiatives currently running at the club:
- Plaques can be purchased for the Dale Fan Wall at £80 and £150 from www.funditnow.co.uk/thedalefanwall. 70% of the revenues from each sale go to Club funds, and your plaque will be displayed in a fabulous installation by the player’s entrance.
- Use the club facilities at the Crown Oil Arena for your meetings, events and celebrations and book in for matchday sponsorships and experiences via commercial@rochdaleafc.co.uk
- Help us to convert some of the returning supporters and first-time visitors who attended the Boxing Day fixture into more regular fans. Increased attendance plays a massive part in driving club revenue.
Further initiatives are being actively explored in conjunction with the Dale Supporters Trust. We will communicate these to shareholders and fans in due course.
On the field, it is also a good time to reflect on the season so far. We made the appointment of Jim McNulty permanent in the summer, and with Kevin Gibbins, John Shannon, Kris Dixon, Ben Ekins, Tom Say, Cameron Lukash, and Jack Northover, he has built a strong team around him. We had a thorough review of our football operations in early 2023, and the board made the appointment with the clear objective of developing a possession-based, attacking style of play that would allow young players to come in and have the opportunity to succeed. We must be a place where clubs from higher up the pyramid want to loan us their best talent, as they must know we are a club where they will develop.
Speaking of development, our Academy continues to perform admirably in difficult circumstances. As many of you will know, Academies are largely externally funded. Upon relegation from the EFL, clubs continue to receive 100% funding in the first season post-relegation, and 50% in the second season post-relegation. In the third season post-relegation, clubs are no longer permitted to operate an Academy in the Premier League / EFL games programme and are therefore not permitted to draw down funding. Against this backdrop of uncertainty, the emergence of George Nevett, as well as the senior debuts of Brad Kelly, Isaac Burgess, and Luke Mann, is a superb achievement and a huge credit to each and every person involved.
We were fully aware that this season would bring a lot of challenges as we transitioned from an EFL playing budget to a National League one. Although our budget is competitive, with some of the playing contracts carried over from the EFL, it means that we have not been able to build a squad as big in numbers as we would have liked. However, we are certainly not short on quality within our squad.
There will be tough times throughout the season when injuries bite. We are suffering from that now, but the quality, spirit and fight among the players, shown no more than during the two Christmas fixtures so far, has been incredible. With one or two of those injured players returning from injury, there is cause for optimism on the horizon. We will try and support Jim the best we can to freshen the squad where we can, but that will be strictly within the financial parameters already set out.
As mentioned above, we tried a new initiative on Boxing Day for the AFC Fylde game to try and attract new supporters to the ground. Although not all those who had purchased tickets turned up, there were many young, first-time visitors to the Crown Oil Arena and we hope that they enjoyed the experience and were pleased to see a 2-0 victory, with a classic Hendo goal, a first professional goal for Kwaku Oduroh, and two assists from our Goalkeeper Louie Moulden!
We continue to work closely with our Community Trust on initiatives such as the Boxing Day game. For attendance purposes, they have partnered with us on the ‘Seats For Schools’ programme, in addition to helping us collectively reach local people from all areas of life. As well as ability counts provision and walking football, teams also run for military veterans, refugees, and more or less any other group you can think of. They also played a critical role in re-establishing our open aged Women’s team, who we look forward to welcoming back to The Crown Oil arena for a second time in April.
I hope that you all have a great New Year’s Eve and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at Fylde tomorrow.
Happy New Year
Simon