Ever wondered what goes into turning a football ground into a genuine community hub?
Introduction
In this episode of Sutton United Talk Time on Podcast, I catch up with Tim Allison to chat about all the behind-the-scenes changes happening at Sutton United. From paint jobs and PA upgrades to creating a more inclusive environment, Tim offers a candid walk-and-talk tour of the club's ongoing transformation. Whether you're a regular on the terraces or new to Gander Green Lane, there's something in here for every U's fan.
Speaker 2
00:00 - 00:07
Hey, it's the podcast guy. Sutton United talk time on the podcast. It's the Sutton Podcast. There it is.
Speaker 1
00:08 - 00:28
Sutton United at the GM Vauxhall Conference have put out first division club in New City. Winners of the FA Cup themselves less than two years ago. And what a moment to enjoy for the fans of this Surrey side. They've had their moments before, but never one like this.
Speaker 1
00:29 - 00:43
But the whistle goes down. Delight for Sutton United. Sutton United for the National League are through to the last 16 of the FA Cup. No longer English football's perennial non-league
Speaker 2
00:44 - 01:02
club. A 123-year crescendo reaches a new peak for Sutton United, who are promoted to the Football League for the third time. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sutton United Talk Time on podcast. Another
Speaker 1
01:02 - 01:03
season
Speaker 2
01:03 - 01:20
for Sutton podcast. Delighted to say we are once again being sponsored by Lucky Star Gin. So thank you to Ken and the whole team there putting their faith in me. And we're going to continue bringing you chats after each match and other interviews smattered in when I can arrange it and organize myself.
Speaker 2
01:21 - 01:35
First up, we are talking to Tim. He gave kind of a time. We wandered around the club a little bit, talking about different things, changes for the season. I had a great vision of doing some background video so you could see it while we were talking.
Speaker 2
01:36 - 01:49
the vision didn't align with the skill set, so you're going to just have us talking, which is amazing. You're going to love that. Do like, share, let me know what you think of the episode. Anything else like that you'd like me to do in the future, let me
Speaker 1
01:49 - 01:49
know, and
Speaker 2
01:49 - 01:50
I'll try and get
Speaker 1
01:50 - 01:50
on
Speaker 2
01:50 - 01:55
it. But yeah, here's Tim. Please enjoy. So Tim, we're in the fan zone.
Speaker 1
01:56 - 01:56
We
Speaker 2
01:56 - 02:05
are. There's a few little changes that I've already seen. Talk me through them. I think I read that this is now a permanent
Speaker 1
02:06 - 02:24
feature? Yes, the stretch tent we had for the last month or so of the season, I would say. I think it coincided perfectly with when the rain stopped. But we've actually found it's a good, as it is today, it's a lovely, hot, sunny day, and it provides shelter from that end of the spectrum, when otherwise it's...
Speaker 1
02:24 - 02:26
Some of us need that, yeah.
Speaker 2
02:26 - 02:26
Yeah, I get
Speaker 1
02:26 - 02:53
that. So the feedback we got from fans, my month basis. We've now acquired this with a little bit of sponsorship as well, which is quite often how we do things to reduce or limit the actual cash flow implications of some of these improvements. So this will be with us permanently until we expand or improve again.
Speaker 1
02:53 - 03:01
So yeah, this is not new you, but it's new for the season. Not ladders. Not new, new. Well, exactly.
Speaker 1
03:02 - 03:05
Let's call it the Madison stretch. Perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 2
03:05 - 03:11
But we've got some of the tables all moved under here. We've got, I can see some football tables either side.
Speaker 1
03:11 - 03:20
The deck chairs are still here. We had one table football in here last year. We've now got a second one. So that's good for the kids.
Speaker 1
03:20 - 03:53
There used to be a little football area there. That's had to go because we're a accommodating the move of the shop that used to be a joint shop between Crystal Palace and ourselves in the fan zone, that's now going to be Crystal Palace only. One of the changes that we're going to have, and it should be happening tomorrow, big reveal, is that the shop is moving from its place in the driveway and that will be going over in that corner there. So we've got a permanent shop in the fan zone where there's a lot more footfall now because people don't come up the drive, they don't need to.
Speaker 1
03:53 - 04:11
So that's going to be another improvement that we're having in here. So the kids' football, that's moved, but the foundation is still going to be running their usual pre-match children's activities just round the other side in the area behind the disability section. So that's continuing, but just in a different format. Just in a
Speaker 2
04:11 - 04:14
different place. Excellent. That means at least that when they're playing their football,
Speaker 1
04:14 - 04:26
it won't suddenly come flying over. Well, there is some slight safety considerations in there as well. But yeah. this is a this is an area for for fun it's a it's a fun zone as well as a fan oh here we
Speaker 2
04:26 - 04:35
go we love that um and again did i read that there's some more ladies toilets coming in this thing because it was only one
Speaker 1
04:35 - 05:24
set so so what what's happened is the toilets have been converted, shall we say, so instead of another unit or another block coming in and finding space for that, what we've done is accommodated within what was the men's toilet space, changing of the internal design where the urinals were and where the taps were and etc. And we're putting a barrier, which is probably the right thing to do in terms of partitioning one from the other, but that's allowed us to create some extra spaces for women, which is great because that's the target market for us and what we're trying to attract families and not just your traditional football audience of the past. But as you know, we host Crystal Palace Women here and will continue to do so in the upcoming season.
Speaker 1
05:24 - 05:33
And their demographic is slightly different from ours. And it's just something that we've been able to do that improves that facility for both sets of fans.
Speaker 2
05:34 - 05:41
Yeah, I mean, it was always slightly, excuse the word, oddly outnumbered where we had men's toilets
Speaker 1
05:41 - 06:20
there. just there and then just over there as well so it's like yeah there's always that balance. This area was first designed four years ago in that hectic summer when we were going up to the football league and we just had to do so many things and the toilets that we got were, they were relatively new but they were second hand from other type facilities and they matched the demographic, use that word again, of a football audience at the time and where they were coming from with a bit more time and being able to think what we actually want rather than what was available we've managed to make a few a few changes
Speaker 1
06:20 - 06:42
and um yeah hopefully that'll be um recognized and liked if you can have a Leica toilet by other people it's designed for but it's one of those things that you wouldn't really know it has happened if you weren't talking about it. Exactly. So it's like a lot of things that goes on in the background and you only notice things when they go wrong. When they're going well and they're improving, you don't often appreciate that.
Speaker 1
06:42 - 06:44
And yeah, it's one of those.
Speaker 2
06:44 - 06:45
And
Speaker 1
06:45 - 06:57
there was also changing. space, baby changing spaces as well. So we've put in or putting in baby changing facilities. One's going in the toilets by the control room.
Speaker 1
06:57 - 07:24
So one of those toilets is being converted into a kind of a unisex family type space and that will have a fold down like we've got indoors. And we're also buying a couple of units. We're putting a baby change mat and utility bench, I'm sure there's a better word than that, but cabinet in the ladies' toilets in the NBA. So that's on order and that should be arriving relatively soon as well.
Speaker 1
07:24 - 07:53
So again, we're thinking outside of the non-traditional, you know, white, middle-aged man type audience that there's nothing wrong with those people, obviously, but thinking in terms of everything that we do, like most venues, to be honest, you know, you go to cinemas, theatres, you know, we're competing for the entertainment power. We're not really thinking that we're a football business. We have to be, as all other clubs are, moving in that direction and just at the margins, incrementally improving where we can, all of our facilities.
Speaker 1
07:53 - 07:58
Yeah, because I do remember, and she'll hate me now for saying it, when Lottie first came, when she was little, and I
Speaker 2
07:58 - 08:06
had to kind of be like, where am I supposed to change her? And I ended up having to shout, going to the ladies in the mains, just to put her on the basin.
Speaker 1
08:06 - 08:23
Yeah, and I'm sure we weren't alone in that respect, across football and across other venues, that these things are designed and thought about with your stereotypical Mum sorts out the kids, Dad's don't. And that's not the reality of how the modern world is. So, you know, we're adapting and we're catching up, I guess, is probably the truth.
Speaker 2
08:23 - 08:33
Lovely. We've had a great chat on this bench. And it was the Time to Talk, I don't know if it's called Time to Talk, but it's the Easy Bench. There's labels here.
Speaker 2
08:34 - 08:42
And the Proper Blokes Club, who have had this for people's mental health. So there's this here in the fan zone. And I think there's a barrel type thing.
Speaker 1
08:42 - 08:56
There's a barrel, similar with the information. Yeah. scannable QR codes to take you to their website if you need to use that. That's sitting in the MBA bar as well, so you might visit that later on.
Speaker 1
08:56 - 08:56
We may
Speaker 2
08:56 - 09:00
well do, yeah. All right, excellent. We'll go have another little wander around. Excuse the legs, everyone.
Speaker 2
09:02 - 09:06
So we've moved here because I couldn't think of another way of bringing up the subject of PA system.
Speaker 1
09:07 - 09:24
It's interesting we've booked here, because I've just realised I'm sitting in one of the director's seats, and I genuinely can't recall the last time I sat in one of these to watch a game of football. It's not often I sit in one spot for 90 minutes anyway, particularly at home, but yeah, it's quite interesting. A little bit of leg room. It's nearly all over
Speaker 2
09:24 - 09:27
the place. I think I've sat in here more 10 minutes.
Speaker 1
09:27 - 09:28
Might be true,
Speaker 2
09:28 - 09:28
yeah.
Speaker 1
09:28 - 09:28
So
Speaker 2
09:29 - 09:36
the PA system, a bit of a joke, bane of our lives, you can barely hear anything in various
Speaker 1
09:36 - 10:08
parts of the ground, but we're having a little bit of a change around and an interim fix, is it? Yes, so the PA system It's of various ages and qualities, like a lot of this club, and it's been patchworked and improved, sticky plastered many times over many years. And we really need to upgrade it, particularly the areas that aren't working particularly well. So what you can't see in that direction, It's the newest part of the ground that was put in when we moved into the Football League and the PA works perfectly fine over there.
Speaker 1
10:08 - 10:18
It's got new speakers. It's got new cables. It's got much more modern technology than where we're currently sitting and other parts of the ground as well. So we're not taking a big bang approach.
Speaker 1
10:19 - 10:46
We are looking at the bits that are least effective at what the purpose of a PA system. Fundamentally, it's a safety thing as well, you know, we hopefully we never need to issue the evacuate type instructions, but that's one of the reasons it's there. But it's also there so people can be informed about what's what's going on. And you're right, at the moment, it's, it's ineffective in certain areas and close to useless in some areas.
Speaker 1
10:47 - 11:15
at best, what we found when we've looked at it is it's not just the individual speakers or the wiring, the load that's going on the equipment, the hardware behind it all, if you like, is too much for what it was originally designed for, and that's far too old as well. So we're taking the approach that we replace all that first, and then we see what improvements that does to individual areas, and then we address those individual areas afterwards. So it's going to be a phased approach.
Speaker 1
11:16 - 11:50
But what we've done so far is the amplifiers and the bits that make everything work have firstly been moved from where they were to a better location. They've been upgraded so we've got more of that stuff rather than the existing. and we're in a place now where it doesn't overheat and it doesn't create issues that feed back into the speakers, et cetera. So that's a very non-technical way of explaining things, but we should see improvements from day one.
Speaker 1
11:51 - 12:29
And then throughout the course of the season, we will add speakers, we will change the direction of speakers, we will move things slightly so that the sound's going in the right direction, reduce the conflicts where you've got areas where, speakers hitting another speaker and it's creating a distortion etc so it's a work in progress but it's an improvement on where we were before. What we're also introducing for this current season is we're reducing the load on the person that's using them and communicating with the supporters here. Typically, mostly Tony, but not always Tony, is a bit like me on a match day.
Speaker 1
12:29 - 13:04
He's got one head and he's got lots of hats. So he's not just letting people know what's going on in the ground, he's also providing commentary, whether that's on MixLR or some other format. he's recording stuff on his phone, brilliantly by the way, but it's just too much for one person to do everything really well, so we're going to get a second person along as well, which should spread that load and so you'll have almost a dedicated person for inside the stadium and we'll have more integration, hopefully, of the music that's being played and the announcements that are going out and then connections with the big screens and things like that.
Speaker 1
13:04 - 13:35
which is also good not just for the supporters but allows us to link in sponsors and player sponsors. We've all been to other matches and you typically see the substitution taking place as an example. You've got so-and-so coming off being replaced by number 17 sponsored by XYZ limited, those kind of things that we can bring into the match day that again, perhaps won't be noticed by many people, but for the people that that's important to, it adds some value and that value ultimately gets fed back into the club if we can keep the sponsors happy.
Speaker 1
13:35 - 13:51
we get more money coming in and that money goes to either improve facilities or a better plane budget, which everybody wants and has to be paid for somehow. So those are the kind of things behind our thinking of everything that we're doing, but integrated into specifically the PA.
Speaker 2
13:51 - 14:05
Yeah, the return on the investment is going to be worth it. I mean, I don't want to bring up the curver because I'm over it now. I'm not. But the PA system sometimes on there, it's a foreign language.
Speaker 2
14:05 - 14:17
But what was really odd and why I think you're going to need to do some tweaks on match days is because when I was here on some of the lower attended matches, perfect. It was just when we
Speaker 1
14:17 - 14:17
had more people
Speaker 2
14:17 - 14:17
in here
Speaker 1
14:17 - 14:44
that it was got pretty good. Yeah. one of the things that we'll find and we'll find out as we go into the testing phase once the hardware has been upgraded. Most people come to games and they've got a phone in their pocket and that phone can, doesn't always, connect to either Wi-Fi or internets and the load on those systems that often run parallel literally next to each other in a cable sense sometimes, they can create disturbances and
Speaker 1
14:44 - 15:02
things like that. So we've got to go through that phase of discovering what the real problems are, and then ranking them and working out which are the ones that we fix now, which are important, which you need to have, which are nice to have, and that kind of approach. Over the course of the season, we'll see that change, but we might not notice it on a match by match.
Speaker 2
15:02 - 15:04
Yeah, it'll suddenly be one of those things you look back going,
Speaker 1
15:05 - 15:05
Maybe
Speaker 2
15:05 - 15:15
that's what we need to do, is introduce a thing that if you want to come on our Wi-Fi, your phone has to be part of our speakers. So therefore, when you go on the Wi-Fi, your phone can become a speaker.
Speaker 1
15:16 - 15:33
Maybe. There's all sorts of things, I think, that are cleverer than you or I, that can make that match their experience better. And one of them, joking aside, will be improved Wi-Fi and internet access here. And that provides a better match their experience, but it also allows us to integrate things.
Speaker 1
15:33 - 16:02
So people that, when they arrive at the stadium, if they're connected to our website or whatever, we can then get features onto that. particularly younger audience, there's things for them to do on match days in the quieter periods, halftime maybe or before a game. Can we link things up so there's other stuff going on? We just have to be thinking 21st century and you and I have both been coming in long enough to know that there's parts of this club that might not be 20th century.
Speaker 1
16:04 - 16:19
So yeah, all of these things are on our mind about how we improve, but there's a lot of work to do. And in this particular area, it's smaller mouthfuls that we can chew and digest and deliver rather than a gourmet meal that's just going to be too much for us.
Speaker 2
16:19 - 16:29
Absolutely. And there's one other little change, which of video in in a minute the uh down the ring back around the green lane end as a little bit of a facelift of some paint
Speaker 1
16:29 - 16:56
yeah there's various bits that have been painted over the summer mostly inside but out here uh a lot of the white um on the steps is new the yellow um headings have been refreshed um there's there's wet black paint not very far from where we sit in fact we can smell paint at the moment um i have to check myself when i stand up make sure i've not got any more on me um but that end of the ground has had a little bit of an an uplift as well. It's not quite finished yet. We want to get some, a bit more branding in there rather than just colours.
Speaker 1
16:57 - 17:18
And there'll be some other improvements that people will probably notice, perhaps not when they come for the first time, whether that's Tuesday for the Wiccan game or the first regular game of the season, which I know, and actually I think it's now public. It is public, yeah. Okay, so as people look at their calendars and work out when they're coming for the first time, hopefully they will see some of these changes themselves.
Speaker 2
17:18 - 17:34
Absolutely. And you were telling me that the changes, there's no sort of changes with the actual match where you want to stand. So still, we can't stand on the ends because that makes sense, even though people love it. But we can.
Speaker 1
17:35 - 17:58
So the long and boring answer is that there are different ground gradings and rules, depending which league you're in. So when we went up to the Football League, we had to bring in very quickly a lot of more stricter and stringent rules. And when we came down, we could relax some of them. And some of the stuff that we were supposed to impose in year four of our EFL, we didn't have to.
Speaker 1
17:59 - 18:09
But the slightly shorter answer is it would be very similar to last year. So we can't stand on the ends. And that's a well-recognized safety thing. It's an ambulance route at the end, and there isn't a room at the end.
Speaker 1
18:10 - 18:37
and to allow safe movement of people on the sides, people can still use the barriers as a standing space. That'll be a lovely problem to have to introduce when we go back up to the football league, how we will have a larger crowd and less space to put that into, but that's not something that we have to worry about for 12 months time. Exactly, exactly. So kids, you can lean against the barriers, but not sit on the barriers.
Speaker 1
18:37 - 18:39
Just remember that. Yes. You'll be told off. Yes.
Speaker 1
18:39 - 18:43
Let's move on. Yes. We'll leave the groundsman to it. He's cutting the grass lovely over there.
Speaker 1
18:43 - 18:46
It's great to see the grass being cut. Let's go and find something else.
Speaker 2
18:46 - 18:55
Absolutely. So, not many people have been around here. This is the Awake fan dome. Not quite as much cover.
Speaker 2
18:58 - 19:00
So
Speaker 1
19:02 - 19:40
this space was first created when we had the Birmingham game in the first round of the FA Cup last November and obviously that was a big fixture for us and the number of people that would come and we had to think about how do we configure and set up the ground, not just with that fixture in mind, but for the fixtures that we're going to follow for the rest of that season and for seasons that we're going to follow on from that one. So we used to have a bar just on the edge behind the curver and a food unit a bit further away than that. But we cleared this area, which wasn't that great.
Speaker 1
19:40 - 20:08
It's still not Brilliant, let's be honest. But we've now had the bar set up in here for the away fans. And we're conscious that whilst we want to invest in facilities primarily for our own fans and the money that they bring, an important part of our revenue streams do come from away fans and quite often, particularly those coming a long distance, the same as when we travel. People arrive earlier because they don't want to get held up in traffic and miss games.
Speaker 1
20:08 - 20:31
And they also want these facilities when they arrive. I often get complaints to me that I act as the conduit and pass them to other clubs where there isn't sufficient food or drinks or the toilets aren't great and what have you. And we get similar from our visitors as well. We want to put on something that's good.
Speaker 1
20:32 - 21:04
And we are conscious that whether you're a home fan or a away fan, not everybody can get to every game. And if you're an away fan, like many of our fans will be, the fixtures that come out today, and I'm sure they're going through the 23 league fixtures, and they're saying, no, no, yes. And some of those marginal reasons why people come to games might well be how are they looked after? And so if we can attract those 20 pound notes when people are making the marginal decision, do I go to Sutton or do I go to Woking or whatever it might be, then that is a benefit to us.
Speaker 1
21:04 - 21:22
So we do invest in the facilities that we offer the away fans. So we've got a bar, we've got a new catering unit that's going to come in here as well. Probably just out of shot, there's a big trench across here at the moment that we need to fix before fans come in here. We're not far away from the pre-season games, but we're aware.
Speaker 1
21:23 - 21:44
And that allows us to make sure our staff as well have good Welfare facilities and health and safety is all covered. So water can drain away properly. Previously, people serving in the bar can't really wash their hands because that water has nowhere to go. So there's a lot that goes into planning around changes.
Speaker 1
21:45 - 21:58
And we're midway through implementing this. So this will be invisible, as you say, to 99% of people that are going to be watching this. But it's something that goes on in the background, and there are reasons why we do it, and it's partly commercial. It's the right thing to do as well, let's be honest.
Speaker 1
21:58 - 22:25
When we go away, as I've alluded to, we like to be impressed and come away from a place saying, actually, that was a nice club, that was someone who looked after us, that was the right thing. And as I typically find in my job, you don't hear from those people typically. It's the people that are upset by various decisions or changes or things that aren't right for them become a little bit vociferous, should we say, politely. And if I can reduce that traffic that comes into my phone and my inbox, that benefits me as well.
Speaker 1
22:25 - 22:42
So there's lots going on, and this is just a small part of it. No, actually, I remember last time we had a chat, it was about the stewarding as well. And it was at the same point of, we want fans to be going, yes, I had a great time, so I'm definitely going back there. and now we can take a little bit more of their money than just the £20 ticket price.
Speaker 1
22:42 - 22:51
Absolutely that. We've got great stewards here. They always do well in surveys that we see. We had a survey went out to our supporters over the summer.
Speaker 1
22:51 - 23:07
Thank you everybody who replied. That feedback is genuinely useful to us. And again, that popped up in there. People were very happy with the stewards whose role here isn't just one of providing the security is being genuinely part of that match day experience.
Speaker 1
23:07 - 23:29
And we like them to, you know, the first person you might meet as a steward, if they say hello to you or give you some kind of welcome, that's a great start to the day. They're an integral part of what the match day is. And you're right, that makes, for away fans in particular, a friendly, nice day out. And if that means that you'll come back next year, that's another £20 note.
Speaker 1
23:29 - 23:39
There'll be plenty of other instances where you go somewhere and it's, I'm not going back with a £20 note next year. So we need to be on the right side of that. And I've never complained about the away facilities.
Speaker 2
23:41 - 23:46
For good reason. So we're at the chatting barrel. So why don't we have a chat? Sounds good.
Speaker 2
23:46 - 23:49
A few, well there's some
Speaker 1
23:49 - 24:04
changes to not necessarily the room but to how things are working and one of the things that please people greatly is the cashless and can you kind of Just explain a bit more about the
Speaker 2
24:04 - 24:09
decision. It's not just a, well, that's it. We don't want any cash anymore. There's a bit more to it.
Speaker 2
24:09 - 24:09
Can you come to
Speaker 1
24:09 - 24:19
us for it? Yeah, of course. I'm glad you said there's not many changes. I've now stood still in this room, and I'm looking, and there's marks on the wall, and there's holes.
Speaker 1
24:19 - 24:20
There isn't. There isn't.
Speaker 2
24:20 - 24:20
Move on.
Speaker 1
24:21 - 24:42
other places have been done. It's that thing where you do up a room, and you go, oh, it's great, we've got a new carpet, but look at the curtains, and this room will come onto the agenda. I've done that with the leather sofa, I've got a little baby wipe, because there's a little mark on it, and did that, and then suddenly went, oh God, now I've got to do the whole sofa, because all of a sudden... It's the fourth bridge, isn't it?
Speaker 1
24:42 - 25:05
You start painting at one end, you realise that There's lots to do, and then you'll get back to the beginning. But anyway, back to your question, which is probably a lot more of interest to people watching this. The room itself, very little has changed, but the operation of the bar and other things across the stadium is changing. Some of that is just modernizing, catching up with what other clubs do and best practice.
Speaker 1
25:06 - 25:36
But in here in particular, the move to cashless is one that's driven by a number of things. Firstly, there's the security element of it. We don't want cash on the premises and cash goes missing. I had an interesting conversation with somebody quite high up at Surrey Cricket Club yesterday, and they only went cash just two or three years ago, and it made quite a big difference to their The leakage, I think, is the accounting term for how money disappears.
Speaker 1
25:36 - 26:22
I don't think we've got a particular problem with it, but that's an element behind it. But one of the other main drivers is that particularly at a football stadium and football matches, time of transaction is very important to reducing queues and increasing efficiency, particularly around the 15 minutes leading up to kickoff, the 15 minutes that we've got halftime. We can't have a quiet world with the referee and say, we have another 10 minutes because there's still people wanting to buy drinks, that kind of thing. If we can improve the ability to get those transactions from our point of view so that we get the money, but the delivery of drinks in this instance, or if it's in the shop, um, as quick as, as possible, that's, that's a benefit to, to everybody.
Speaker 1
26:22 - 26:48
Um, as part of that process of going cashless, it enables us to, and what we've done this summer is we've upgraded again, some of the hardware, the stuff that you don't see similar to the PA, uh, all of the till system has been, uh, upgraded over the summer. Um, that allows us to, uh, not just process things. more speedily and quicker. There are buttons on the tills that do certain things and shortcut.
Speaker 1
26:48 - 27:20
It also allows us to make offers to customers. If you were at the event last night, as you and I were, every season ticket holder got 10% off on their drinks, for instance. And that's because we've now got a till system that will recognize who's a season ticket holder, who's staff, who's whatever it might be, and we can tailor our offerings to that. We can now make changes in an easy way, whether it's a regular a league game, or whether it's a league game in the evening, we can do different things.
Speaker 1
27:21 - 27:51
Whether it's a cup competition, be that FA Cup, be that the National League Cup, where we had a completely different demographic in the grounds, lots of youngsters, lots of school kids. And we can work out ways that people who have an account with us, because people now need to open an account to buy tickets and things, we can now use that information for our benefit, which ultimately supports the club, but it allows us to target market to certain people. We can monitor who comes to every game but never comes to the bar, for instance.
Speaker 1
27:51 - 28:17
There are other people that use the bar regularly but don't go in the shop and There's lots of ways. Tesco were here 50 years ago, you know, the club card came out and the useful that data and its importance. Not everybody likes it, but it's a genuine value add to the club. And that's all connected with our ability to do more transactions and capture the data and just do things quicker and more efficiently.
Speaker 1
28:17 - 28:28
So cashless has been part of that as well. So maybe not now, because obviously it's just coming in, but would it be potentially linked to your season ticket that different offers, they can kind of go every
Speaker 2
28:29 - 28:31
10th, 12th pint is free
Speaker 1
28:31 - 28:43
or something like that? Possibly. So it's got the potential to do that. What we're having to do is to bring in new systems that got the ability to talk to other systems, and then we'll integrate them properly.
Speaker 1
28:45 - 29:21
For instance, our ticketing platform, that contract has got one more year to run on it. One of the things when we upgrade an interview and put that tender together for whoever ends up doing our ticketing when that rolls over will be how do we integrate in a much more seamless way rather than a slightly manual way that we've got at the moment such that just like the Tesco club card, you can have offers that are tied in. And that can be whether that's tickets for the game, whether it's stuff just for the shops, stuff that expires at two o'clock on a Saturday.
Speaker 1
29:21 - 29:48
So, you know, we had a number of fixtures last year where there were offerings in the fan zone that if you were there between 1230 when the turns I was open at two o'clock, you got a free drink, for instance. Now, I was I was the mug that had to write out the names of all those thousand season ticket holders and ask them who they were as they come in and give them a slip of paper. And then I had to walk to the bar to get a free drink, which is a brilliant initiative. And it was great.
Speaker 1
29:48 - 30:01
I got to meet a lot of people that I hadn't met before. And I'm sure most of them were the people that they said they were. But with this kind of technology, that's behind the scenes and it's instant. So we're moving from one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum.
Speaker 1
30:01 - 30:19
And again, like I've probably repeated a few times, we've got to do this incrementally and we can't big bang stuff. We have to use the closed seasons to start these processes off and then we'll tweak it as we go through the season. And then in two or three seasons time, we'll all be looking back and going, can you remember when we used to? And it'd be one of those again.
Speaker 1
30:19 - 30:30
Absolutely. Just double checking though, you don't send like a report home to say how many pints Mike's had to Mrs Dowden. I can probably take that. No, definitely don't do that.
Speaker 1
30:31 - 30:35
Also generated emails. There's got a lot of potential in there. It's just one. Yeah.
Speaker 1
30:35 - 30:37
One. We'll avoid that for now, shall we?
Speaker 2
30:38 - 30:46
Absolutely. And Roland's Bar is kind of undergoing a little bit of renovation at the moment. I'll do a quick glimpse through. It's not ready yet, like many other things.
Speaker 2
30:47 - 30:51
But one thing I noticed, or two things I noticed as a walkthrough, is the pool table.
Speaker 1
30:52 - 31:06
Paul Table is now in the bar. That's a welcome return. It's something that again, feedback from our supporters, not just this summer, but in this instance, quite constantly over the last couple of years. So that's now back in the bar.
Speaker 1
31:07 - 31:30
The jukebox is working in the bar as well. It starts in the bar. So there's a number of number of things in there that don't just make match days better, it allows us to be open more often as well for lots of other events. So there are seven days of the week, that's not a surprise for anybody, but we're typically only open for football one or possibly two each week during the season.
Speaker 1
31:30 - 31:56
If we can open for more things, there was an event here last night, England women are playing in the Euros, people can come down and watch that on the screens here and drinks from the bar as part of that, but if you're coming with children, family, friends, then there's opportunity to play pool, throw darts, whatever else it might be as well, so it's a more rounded offering across the week, and there's more to do when you get here.
Speaker 2
31:56 - 32:06
Excellent, and one of the other things, you obviously said who it was, so a lot of credit, because she's put a lot through on the Hall of Fame out there, and also
Speaker 1
32:06 - 32:24
organising the night with Steve yesterday, but the Hall of Fame has had a little bit of a Well, quite a bit of an upgrade. Yeah, there's a definite facelift there. I think I might be wrong here, but it was either old or it was designed to look old, because it was a Hall of Fame when it was historic. But it looked a bit faded, a bit tired.
Speaker 1
32:25 - 32:40
And we freshened that whole thing up. So yeah, please, please come and have a look at it. And there's a lot of exciting information on there. We're also conscious that It's very easy for us to think of people who've been coming here for years and years, and we know lots of people who've been coming here for years and years.
Speaker 1
32:40 - 33:11
The reality is it wasn't that long ago that there were only a thousand people coming to a Games. When we came to the Football League and we were getting about 3,000 regularly, and we've maintained most of those, by definition we've got a lot of fans that have only really known us. a very short period of time and for them to learn about the history of this place and some of the people that have not just played on the pitch but been a part of this community club for a long time, it's a great feature that we've got within the clubhouse for people to come and discover a bit more about us.
Speaker 1
33:11 - 33:21
And that applies to the 2,000 people that come to games that don't come into the clubhouse. Only 10% of people actually come in here. There's lots to do when you come in here. It's not just somewhere to have a drink.
Speaker 1
33:21 - 33:32
There's things to do and there's lots of people to chat with and become friends with and what have you. And we need to be encouraging more people to come in and enjoy all aspects of football. Yeah,
Speaker 2
33:32 - 33:34
I mean, it's definitely
Speaker 1
33:34 - 33:44
a thing you could feel at various different times with people who are new. Like, for example, I know we've changed things around with Emil. They kind of come along and go, oh, it's a private event, and go off. So now it's all making it known.
Speaker 1
33:44 - 34:25
Just come in, the bar's open, and all that kind of stuff for people to know that they're welcome. Everything that we can do that creates an opportunity to interface and talk with people and discover what they want and what we provide and all those kind of things are important. We were both first time visitors a long time ago, but you only become a regular by coming the first time and enjoying it enough to come back. And it's part of what we should all be doing, whether you're me with a role or whether you're just an ordinary fan, is to make this a welcoming place for everybody.
Speaker 1
34:25 - 34:45
And that's what makes lots of football clubs, wherever they are in the pyramid, places that people enjoy being part of and come to, whether there's football happening or not. And we need to be part of that in here as well. I don't know. I think Claire's at the end where it just goes on.
Speaker 1
34:45 - 34:54
But there's a committee of people being a little bit serious about it. They decide who's important enough to go on there. But I'm not on there yet. I'm not expecting to be there anywhere anytime soon.
Speaker 1
34:54 - 35:10
But yeah, we enroll typically three people every year. And it's important they're not just footballers. And if they are footballers, they're not just men's first team footballers. that team's been in existence a lot longer than a lot of the other teams, so it's weighted in that way.
Speaker 1
35:10 - 35:30
But there's lots of people that are an important cog in the Sutton United football club machine, and they're represented on that board as well. So there's an opportunity for you, I'm sure. Yeah, absolutely. There's lots of things that the club do that I'm really, really proud of, but one of the things was when we did the Hall of Fame Festival, that Rose was one of the first people in there.
Speaker 1
35:30 - 35:57
I was just like, That's what it's all about. It's not just, as you say, about on the pitch, it's everyone doing a little thing. Yeah, I mean, I've not seen a lot of Hall of Fame in other clubs, but you often walk down a corridor, sometimes in a public space, sometimes not. And you'll have row after row of photos and they're either ex-chairmen or ex-players, and it's great that you can actually see people that are different to that, that are represented and honoured across the football club.
Speaker 1
35:57 - 36:11
And Rose is a good example of that. There's lots of people with long histories in this place, either currently still here or sadly no longer with us, and they are recognised and remembered and still part of the place. They're on the wall. Absolutely.
Speaker 1
36:12 - 36:14
Right, shall we move on? Yes, let's find something else.
Speaker 2
36:14 - 36:31
So another odd place to film, but I couldn't quite work out how to get the message across, but we're by the infamous Green Gates, which are now going to be closed on match days. And it's going to be, I think it was described as public and non-public spaces. Can you kind of give us a little bit
Speaker 1
36:31 - 36:56
more about that? Again, this is part of the modern world, I guess, and the sad events of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester led to, you know, a horrific incident. But that's now fed its way through legislation and any kind of entertainment venue or public venue has now got more stringent obligations placed upon it. And nobody wants anything happening anyway.
Speaker 1
36:56 - 37:27
And the way the world has got, there are certain types of people that are looking at how they can do things that we don't want to happen. Now, it's not right for us to go into exactly what we've done because you don't want to broadcast where our shortcomings might be or what have you. So, but in a general sense, we've had to uplift how we manage our building, whether that's on a match day or a non-match day. And so we've had to, these guys have been here a while now, but we're having to be a bit more stringent about who can come through or not.
Speaker 1
37:27 - 37:41
And there are operational issues because cars need to come through. Yes. Certain people do need to come through but the general public on a match day won't be coming through. They don't need to because hospitality is this side.
Speaker 1
37:41 - 38:21
If you're coming to hospitality you walk as far as here and go into the NBA and if you're just a regular fan coming to a game everything that's for you and the entrances are the turnstiles either at the top of the the lane here through Gate A, away supporters through Gate B still, or into the fan zone through Gate C. So this space is, as is typical in lots of other clubs, and certainly when we're in EFL League Two, which is where we consider ourselves and our peer groups to behave, these public, non-public spaces and segregation between players, match officials, staff and the ordinary public are quite normal, but it's just a bit new here.
Speaker 1
38:21 - 38:50
And we've been phasing this in, but with Martin's law now coming to effect and the obligations on us now that will become even more stringent as that passes its way into operational use over the next two years means that gates such as this are now in place that people can't come this way. Now that means that the office which is open during the week for people to come and talk to us about various things or buy tickets or whatever it might be, that's not going to be available for them on match days
Speaker 2
38:50 - 38:51
anymore.
Speaker 1
38:52 - 39:19
Similarly, if you're previously people have been coming into the stadium this way because they're users of this room, for instance, there's been some flexibility around who can come in the main entrance and who can't. going to be a very limited number of people coming through and you'll need passes. So it's staff, it's players, staff also includes volunteers, you know, very important part of what we do on a match day. We have a number of stewards and people that are helping out in various roles.
Speaker 1
39:20 - 39:40
They'll come in, they'll register, they'll get their ticket scanners for the turn of sales, all those kind of things. They're legitimate uses. Your ordinary fan who's coming to watch the game is on the wrong side of that, unfortunately. But you come through the turnstiles, and once you come to the turnstiles, everything is available to you, the bars, the fan zone, whatever it is, you can access from inside, you don't need to be coming this way.
Speaker 2
39:40 - 40:04
No, and we had a conversation at some point last year, because I was arriving early, Slotty's doing a bar, and I was just wandering in, and kind of halfway through the season, we were like, your season ticket hasn't been scanned. just hadn't occurred and so there is potential that people are unwittingly just wandering in and thinking I haven't done something and this potentially
Speaker 1
40:04 - 40:32
makes a loss as well. It's tiny but it's important though and so this is driven primarily on a security basis but there are other factors behind it as well and there might be a bit of leakage like we say people that come into games that aren't paying or aren't contributing in the way that everybody else does, quite rightly, but also like we were talking about in the bar, scanning of your ticket is an important way of us knowing, have you come to 20 games or two games? If you come to 20 games, how do we reward you?
Speaker 1
40:32 - 40:48
If you come to two games, how can we encourage you to come more? Those kinds of things are an important part. If we're missing, and in instances like yourself, core people at the club that aren't doing that, then it's important to kind of capture it and use that, frankly, for the benefit of all of us.
Speaker 2
40:49 - 40:49
I mean,
Speaker 1
40:50 - 41:01
again, it depends on when you get the data, how you get the data, but it can also be a little reach out thing. So if someone hasn't been for a few weeks, you could be, are you okay? And just a little... Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting angle on that as well.
Speaker 1
41:03 - 41:32
without diverting completely. When we had COVID going, it was really interesting that we were going and visiting people. Adrian and myself both knocked on people's doors, either delivering newsletters or season tickets for the upcoming, whatever it might have been. And it was amazing how many people were so thankful for their family, which is how they saw us, reaching out and talking to them and visiting them and some of the stories you heard, you know, so different times, different contexts, but yeah, it's an important one.
Speaker 1
41:32 - 41:47
If there are people that are regulars that aren't regular for whatever reason, you know, why is that, you know, not just from a commercial perspective, but Can we help? Can we be involved in things? A caring side. There is a caring side to this club.
Speaker 1
41:47 - 42:17
There always has been. And despite the shift in emphasis to its commercial nature and the increase in the activity and all the rest of it, which has part of a successful business football club, that caring community side is still a key part of it and it's still there. Perhaps it's a bit more hidden and lost in the other stuff that we're doing, but it's a core part of the DNA of the club and we don't intend losing that or changing it. No, I mean it's a bit of a shift and a change, but like I've said for a long time, some of the things that
Speaker 2
42:18 - 42:27
we were able to do, like just wander out, chat to the players who are standing there. It just doesn't happen. And it's probably, although
Speaker 1
42:27 - 42:33
myself and a lot of other people are like, oh, it's changed. Probably a long time coming. Change is difficult. We get that.
Speaker 1
42:34 - 42:47
Change affects different people in different ways. Some changes affect a small amount of people. Some changes affect everything that's going on across the club. Change is usually for a good reason, even if you're one of the people that's affected slightly by it.
Speaker 1
42:47 - 42:53
It's never personal. It shouldn't be emotional. But you're right. Change happens through society.
Speaker 1
42:53 - 43:18
And our norms and our peer group that we check ourselves against, we're usually doing what other clubs are doing. Or if there's a reason why they're doing it and we're not, we either should be doing it when we need to change or we're doing it because there's something special and unique about us. And we don't want to lose all of those. But we just have to, that evolution and that change that comes with it is just part of part of everyday life now.
Speaker 1
43:19 - 43:20
And that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2
43:22 - 43:28
So you're saying that there wasn't a meeting that you all got together and said, how can we make Michael miserable by giving the
Speaker 1
43:28 - 43:40
Curver away to the Wayfans? I don't think we had to worry about making you miserable. I think there's a queue of people, and the evidence was before us that we didn't really need to involve ourselves too much in that. But yeah, we can have that meeting another time.
Speaker 1
43:40 - 43:53
Yeah, absolutely. Right, let's move on then. We're in a changing room. One thing I was told when I got my media pass is it doesn't give you access to the changing rooms, which I was delighted about, I have to say, because I've been in changing rooms before.
Speaker 1
43:54 - 43:54
Not a lot of
Speaker 2
43:54 - 43:57
changing here. You're keen to tell us about the new toilets.
Speaker 1
43:59 - 44:08
Yeah, well, you're right. Not everybody gets an access or various pass at the stadium. They're quite rare. And even those with them don't want to spend too much time in the toilets.
Speaker 1
44:08 - 44:28
But yeah, it's there's been a few repairs over the over the summer in this part of the club that's not seen by many people. So it's not only. supporters that have got new toilet facilities. We had a urinal issue, shall we say, halfway through last season and that's now been fixed over the summer.
Speaker 1
44:28 - 44:54
But joking aside, there's a lot of toilets in this place, there's a lot of drainage, it's not all as joined up and connected as well as it should be for buildings of this age. So there's been some work done on that as well. Hopefully, people will notice the difference. Certainly, some of the aromas will have been slightly fresher, shall we say, than we used to.
Speaker 1
44:54 - 45:15
But again, this is a phased implementation. And I think we've had phase two or four in Toilet Gate, if that's the right way of describing it. So more less visible, but sometimes noticeable requirements have been dealt with. So, yeah.
Speaker 1
45:15 - 45:27
Absolutely. Well, Jason's come in here because we've had... This is one of the coolest places. I mean, not just cool as in the kitchens, but temperature-wise, on a day like this, I'll move my desk down here.
Speaker 1
45:27 - 45:34
I have the warmest place in the club. We don't have blinds, we just have direct sunlight. It's probably all that extra stuff. Yeah, I'm tempted.
Speaker 1
45:34 - 46:04
There's two lovely tables here. I'm sure we can have... turn this into my office multitask five days of the week yeah um so with the players i know um under the doz era we had new players coming every week two three a week but with the new rules it's certain amounts of time now i know we don't have an actual transfer window um but how is it for you guys behind the scenes with suddenly a whole bunch of players leaving and a whole bunch of new players coming in.
Speaker 1
46:05 - 46:25
How difficult is it to juggle everything and get these things over the line? I was about to say it's much calmer this year than last year, but this summer has been completely hectic, but not for those reasons. It's the decorating and I wouldn't be able to be doing that this time last year. Last year, we had 25 players, I think, and we kept two, three.
Speaker 1
46:26 - 46:59
This time, we'll end up with a squad broadly the same size, but we've had a turnover of 10 or 12. Some of those end of contracts and it didn't work. Some of those less so, players move on. If you were here last night, the Will Davis story, we were talking about how successfully we've created in him a commercial asset that we've added value to not just him as a player, to us in terms of transfer and they move on for that reason.
Speaker 1
46:59 - 47:21
And some of them, for other reasons, personal to themselves. And we've had a few of those. So unlike this time last year, where we weren't sure until that day at Milton Keynes, which league were we going to be in and what was the squad going to look like? ultimately we felt just short and that created a large turnover.
Speaker 1
47:22 - 47:58
We were fairly confident that we weren't either going up or going down from two-thirds of the way through the season last year, if not earlier. And so the planning for what was coming next started a lot sooner and that in combination with knowing that the the numbers of those transactions was going to be smaller, has allowed us to better plan, I guess, is a way of putting it. And Steve touched on this last night as well. We've also adopted more data driven approach to recruitment.
Speaker 1
47:59 - 48:22
This time last year, I'm not saying there wasn't any data involved, but it was only a small part of that. And the people behind that data, that wasn't their comfort zone or their ordinary way of doing football business. We've now got people that specialise in this. I think a number of us have read the book, How to Win the Premier League, talking about Liverpool's data-driven approach.
Speaker 1
48:22 - 48:56
We're all aware of Brighton and Brentford and how they're adding significant values to their club, getting young players in, developing them, turning them into assets, sending them on, replacing them, recycling. Not that long ago, when Brighton were bottom of Division Two, like we were three, the end of last season. So, you know, it'd be great to think that we'll be sitting here in 10 years time in the premiership and looking back on this conversation. But joking aside, you know, that's a genuine way for a club like ourselves that probably has a playing budget that's mid table at best.
Speaker 1
48:57 - 49:33
How do we perform better than that, use our budget more wisely, but also deliver the end product that people come through our gates to watch, which is a successful and attractive team. And that's part of the process. So from the January window, pretty much, there's been work behind the scenes with the data guys, with Terry Bullivan, as well as Steve Morrison and John Mealy, thinking about what will the team look like for the upcoming season, reflecting on last year's recruitment, what went well, what didn't go well, what were the missing pieces.
Speaker 1
49:33 - 49:55
I think by consensus, we all love having a young team, but what comes with that is a lack of maturity, a lack of backbone at times. I think that was a word that came up last night. And we tried to address that. And you're right, despite there not being a transfer window that we have to operate to, the pool of players that are available are somewhat dictated by that, by those windows.
Speaker 1
49:56 - 50:38
Alex Bourdieu will come midway through the season, but there's not many players that have that age and league experience that are going to be available outside of a window because they're tied into the football league where that operates. So we've We adapt around all that. And I think what we see in some of the people that can be sitting here with their shirts come Saturday, three o'clock in a few weeks time, there'll be a bit more depth and breadth of experience and what they can bring to what still is a very young group of players that we're looking to gel into some greater than the parts as it goes and create that team that's going to deliver out there.
Speaker 1
50:39 - 50:55
But also, deliver what they want in terms of the journey into the football league, whether it's with us or not. And that will allow us to recuperate some of that investment as well. So we'll have more Will Davises and others. That's our model.
Speaker 1
50:55 - 51:09
I think Steve said last night, he was surprised that we've only had one of those. We were expecting two or three, might still be two or three before we kick a ball at an angle, we don't know. That's the model. We've now got another group of players that we've added to that.
Speaker 1
51:10 - 51:30
Steve said it last night. We've got exciting players joining us from the division below that have either scored or assisted double double digit announcer times for who they played for last year. It might be unrealistic to expect them to do the same at a higher level. But even if they only deliver think he said 50% last night.
Speaker 1
51:30 - 51:56
And he's right. Some of the wingers, I think he used an example, I'm not going to drop names, because you know, this isn't about people that are no longer with us. But the goals and assists that we got for our winners last year were low simple digits in many cases. So if we can turn those double digits into high single figures, spread those goals around a bit more so that we're not so reliant on the Will Davis or the Madison in this case.
Speaker 1
51:58 - 52:15
We will all benefit as a team. And I'm sure the same applies at the back. Now, there are interesting questions about the number of defenders we've got this year, and is that right? And it's not actually that different, and it's not that different from when Matt was here before.
Speaker 1
52:17 - 52:58
big strong tall centre backs that know how to clear the ball and get it away from danger so we don't let in as many goals, that's just as important as well. So it's going to be interesting to see how this group develop and become a team but what's obvious already and we're only one week into training that that dynamic that exists within that group and the way that they play together as a team, which is important, but how they act together as a group at work in their workplace, similar to you have a workplace and I have a workplace, we all recognize when stuff's working well and it's fresh and energetic and delivering. And we're seeing that already.
Speaker 1
52:58 - 53:14
So there's lots to look forward to. Let's hope that the important 90 minutes clicks as well. But they're a good bunch of players, similar to what we've had in the past. We don't typically have bad players and bad people and bad apples.
Speaker 1
53:16 - 53:39
There is a sense that something's coming together here. And it feels a bit more joined up because, as we said, it wasn't all rushed into a shorter period and more people change going on. It can be a bit more focused and a bit more thought through. And we, I know someone who spoke to Tommy Woodrington, who was furious that we got Aaron.
Speaker 1
53:39 - 53:39
It was
Speaker 2
53:39 - 53:40
like,
Speaker 1
53:40 - 53:40
in a
Speaker 2
53:40 - 53:46
nice way. He's going to do so well. He's going to bring on those kids. And he said,
Speaker 1
53:47 - 53:53
you've got a really good player. Not in a, oh, I just want rid of him. It was after it was all done. It was gutted that you got him.
Speaker 1
53:54 - 54:27
It's great to hear, and we know that that's true, but this is an important part of the recruitment process as well. It's not a surprise to us when we hear those conversations, because part of our due diligence, whether it's me talking to other clubs, whether it's Steve talking to other managers, people that have been manager of that player or played alongside them, we get to know a bit more about the person as well as what they do on the pitch. whole person is an important part of why they fit into our particular jigsaw and what we're trying to create.
Speaker 1
54:27 - 54:58
So it's good to hear those conversations taking place. And it's always nice to upset a few people in a way that we've got people that they want, and we must be doing something right. But I think particularly in that case, you're right, that will add something to this team that was perhaps missing last year and will be something that we can kind of strike up as something we need to deal with or worry about. Obviously, we've got a reputation even before the last couple of years of not standing in players' way.
Speaker 1
54:59 - 55:43
How important do you think that is when it comes to recruitment to be seen as a club of, we are going to help you jump forward? Yeah, I think when people sit and talk about it and ask those questions and think it through, It's obvious and it's a reason why you do it. It's because it's not so much the players that are leaving, it's the players that are joining, it's the recruitment. And when we sell the story of why you want to come to this club as opposed to other clubs, we can demonstrate that the David Adger boys of this world, Will's now moving on, there'll be others I'm sure, that that same process will will kick in with.
Speaker 1
55:45 - 56:24
We know we're a stepping stone for a lot of these particularly younger players. And potentially, it works in other ways, or the more senior players who we just touched on that coming towards the end of their careers, they could be part of that development. Because for them, they're moving into coaching or, or an agent or whatever it might be as well. And we want to be a club where people can see that we we deliver on when we, when we have conversations about this can work out for you for these reasons, we can find examples where where that's literally happened, you know, we're seeing that in the academy that
Speaker 1
56:24 - 56:52
the youngsters sadly that that's not going to continue in the same format, but there's success stories, you know, in the younger age groups, we've brought in an under 19s team now, which allows us to have a more fluid player pathway. All of these things are important, but particularly in terms of recruitment, and football is a massive world and a massive industry, and it's huge. but it's also very small at the same time. It's very strange.
Speaker 1
56:52 - 57:23
Everybody knows everybody for good reasons, for bad reasons. And if you are somewhere that can genuinely demonstrate how you can add value to people or to relationships, whatever it might be, that adds value to us as well. And we've always been, as you've touched on, we've never been a club that's stood in the way of players moving on from when I first came here in the late 70s, throughout the 80s, 90s, we've had lots of players that have used us as part of their pathway and their stepping stone and some of them come back.
Speaker 1
57:26 - 57:38
There's not a bad example. Mickey Stevens is still here. Jimmy Decker's been and gone a number of times. But even in the player world, we have good recruitment and good relationships whilst we're here.
Speaker 1
57:39 - 57:50
People come back. Tanto is a very recent example of that. He could quite easily have not come back on loan to us that time. And we both benefited from that.
Speaker 1
57:50 - 58:15
And he's now gone on to divisions above us. where he's been at Stockport and now down the road at Charlton again he's come full circle he's a local lad to Charlton so now there's lots of examples where it works and it certainly works for us and we shouldn't be We shouldn't be embarrassed by the fact that that's part of what our business model is now, is to bring in people, develop them. It works for us commercially.
Speaker 1
58:15 - 58:27
It works for us out on the pitch. It works for us in ways that are more intangible. You know, we've got great relationships with lots of clubs and that, certainly in my job, that really helps as well. So it's part of who we are.
Speaker 1
58:28 - 58:41
Yeah, there's only very few clubs in the world that can't be classed as a stepping stone club. at some level. Yeah, but I'm sure lots of them are obstacles or waterfalls, whatever the opposite of the stepping stone
Speaker 2
58:41 - 58:43
is. And you mentioned about the data
Speaker 1
58:44 - 58:55
driven and see some people, oh, here we go, here we go. But there was a really interesting evening when Terry was talking, and he's all for it, which Terry's
Speaker 2
58:57 - 58:58
you see Terry Bullivant, you
Speaker 1
58:58 - 58:58
hear
Speaker 2
58:58 - 58:58
Terry
Speaker 1
58:58 - 58:58
Bullivant,
Speaker 2
58:58 - 58:59
old
Speaker 1
58:59 - 59:15
school, proper football, and he is all over the place. If you drew the Venn diagram of Terry Bullivant's world and the data world, you wouldn't consider there'd be a huge overlap in the middle. And it's not that Terry's anti-data by any stretch. Terry's one of the most flexible football people.
Speaker 1
59:16 - 59:56
The length of time he's been in the industry and the changes that have happened over those time, and he's gone with them. He recognizes the benefit. of data even you know the young age group is a lot of recruitment and scouting in the in the academy world and there's there's a lot less data in that world there is in the in the adult game but it you know he recognizes the importance of that and whilst it's not his particular skill set or the map of how he operates, he, he recognizes the importance and how we can extract value from that as long as well as the other ways of doing things and blend them together.
Speaker 1
59:57 - 1:00:21
And it's not, it's not atypical now that, you know, Recruitment isn't done solely by the manager who wants to fix a particular hole in his team and wants the best left back he can find. That way of football working isn't there. We're perhaps further down that transition and journey than other clubs are. And that should be an advantage to us in the league that we're at.
Speaker 1
1:00:23 - 1:00:56
I don't think you'd really be able to compete without data in league two or league one now. It's such a core part of not just recruitment, but how you analyze the team that you're gonna be playing in your next match, how you assess yourself. There's lots of uses for data and it is part of the football world now, whether we like it or not, whether you're a youngster that's very comfortable with a phone in your hand and exploring websites and tech or whether you're someone who stood for, 50 odd years on the terraces or longer that wasn't brought up that way.
Speaker 1
1:00:57 - 1:01:06
It's part of the world and we embrace it and hopefully the visible benefits of that approach will be there for people to see even if they're not data users
Speaker 2
1:01:06 - 1:01:07
themselves.
Speaker 1
1:01:10 - 1:01:26
slightly anti it without using this, you're going to get left behind because everyone else is using it anyway. So, and it's those marginal differences, whether it's a benefit or a deficit. You look at this league last year, and I'm sure it'll be the same. the year to come.
Speaker 1
1:01:27 - 1:01:44
And it applies to the two divisions below us as well. The difference between playoffs and flirting with relegation. And I think we were 15, 15, 16 wins, draws, losses all last year. You look around the teams that are five, six, seven, eight points above us and similar below us.
Speaker 1
1:01:45 - 1:02:28
We're all winning, losing and drawing roughly a third of our games fat tight. So if you can convert that loss into a draw or that draw into a win over the course of the 46 game season, whatever it turns out to be, you can be in the playoffs where you wouldn't otherwise be. So all of these marginal things, whether it's in the data, whether it's in the nutrition, the recovery, training facilities, all these kind of things that we're all trying to nudge higher each week and month, all those 1% they genuinely count. So finding the 1% improvements and eliminating the 1% of things that are holding you back, that they're all important.
Speaker 1
1:02:30 - 1:02:32
We live in a marginal world. That's the reality. All
Speaker 2
1:02:32 - 1:02:42
right, shall we move on? Yep. So, nice and cosy on the sofa in the new, I think it's, they're going to call it the Ryan Cantor's lounge or
Speaker 1
1:02:42 - 1:02:50
it's the player and corporate bar. I don't know what the new name is. I don't think it's been decided yet, has it? No, so I think the sponsorship is right.
Speaker 1
1:02:51 - 1:03:24
The actual name, I'm not sure yet, but what you touched on is essentially correct. This space of the club, we've got very limited real estate here to work with. But one of the missing pieces that we've had previously is an effective place for players, their families, sponsors to have as a lounge and a special place. And we've made the decision to create that within this room for the upcoming season.
Speaker 1
1:03:28 - 1:03:55
Again, we've had a lot of feedback from fans, and this was reflected in the survey, that the integration with the players isn't as good as perhaps it could be or has been in the past. And there are reasons for that. Steve was touching on it again last night, that the modern world of players is different to what a lot of people are used to. We've been quite blessed in the past with players such as Harry Buterman, great example.
Speaker 1
1:03:55 - 1:04:23
Josh Coley to an extent a more more recent player that do integrate really well and involve their families. Harry Buterman's dad was always here. We all got to know them as well, but they're rare examples. And the reality is at the moment that the players finish their work and tend to go home as lots of people do in their ordinary courses of whatever they do in their lives.
Speaker 1
1:04:23 - 1:05:05
And you've got to remember the players also had this as their place of work Monday to Friday as well. So it's not when we're at Harlington that this was a special place for them on a match day and we have to try and change the dynamics so that there's a chance for supporters to have better relationships with the players that they come to see as fans. Part of that is outside, how can we get them to do a bit more celebrating either during the game for the score goals, Many times we have players that run off to empty parts of the stadium or to Paul Loughlin to have a picture taken rather than celebrate with the fans.
Speaker 1
1:05:05 - 1:05:21
At the end of a game, and we didn't win that many of them, or as many as we all wanted to last season, to celebrate that victory and John Meaney's fist pumps. And one of the questions last night was, you know, John, why do you always do it in one part of the ground? Can you share that round a bit? Point taken, never really thought about
Speaker 2
1:05:21 - 1:05:21
it.
Speaker 1
1:05:22 - 1:06:02
These kind of marginal ways that people can feel closer to the players and the staff are important. We earlier touched on, in terms of recruitment as well, what is it that allows us at the margins to successfully recruit a player to be part of this club and this team, et cetera, rather than some of the alternatives. And we found this particularly when we were in League Two, you're not just recruiting the player, you're recruiting their family, If they're moving, what are the local schools like? What are the job prospects for wives and partners?
Speaker 1
1:06:03 - 1:06:32
How can they feel part of the club as well, et cetera? And these missing pieces, we're trying to... create, and that ultimately allows us to have better players again, better performances, et cetera, et cetera. But part of that, with our limited real estate, is that we're going to make decisions that are going to disappoint or upset certain people that are used to certain things.
Speaker 1
1:06:32 - 1:06:48
And that particular change affects them a lot more than others. So the feedback we've had is that we want to have players that spend more time here and are more integrated with the fan base. And how do we do that at the moment? They're going straight home.
Speaker 1
1:06:48 - 1:07:06
If they have a place here that they and their families can have, that means they'll stay here longer. Now, it does mean that they're the wrong side of the door, but it's but it's a step in the right direction. It's a start. And it will be the case that some of them We'll leave here and move to the other bars as has been touched on.
Speaker 1
1:07:07 - 1:07:36
And again, it came up last night. That might be a way that the strike is a key. We're having players that are comfortable to mix with the fans and put on the sparkly sequin jacket and get to know people better before games. people are going to be here, they can go into hospitality, and hopefully as part of that, you will have players that are comfortable to do, just like we're doing now, sit on a sofa and have a little bit of a, how are you, who are you, et cetera,
Speaker 1
1:07:36 - 1:08:09
et cetera type conversation. They'd be more willing to integrate in the fan zone because it's a place of comfort to them. So the motives of doing it are well clear, the implementation of it, It's difficult. And we recognize that there are 50, 60, 70 people that use this room last year as part of a membership scheme, many of them for many years before that predate those membership schemes that like the use of this space.
Speaker 1
1:08:10 - 1:08:25
It is a more comfortable space than some of the other bars. It's less crowded. It's got a different dynamic to some of the other places. We understand that, but we made the decision that this is the route we're going down.
Speaker 1
1:08:25 - 1:08:57
And there is disappointment. I've had, as you can imagine, degrees of feedback and emails and telephone conversations and hopefully conversations like this where we can strip the emotion from things and explain the reasons why we're doing it. It's a start of a direction of travel that ultimately, despite it not being something that is wanted or appreciated by 50 people, that's 1% of the people that are part of this football club. And I have to make decisions for good, for bad, right or wrong.
Speaker 1
1:08:58 - 1:09:19
And I won't get everything right for sure. This might be one of them, we don't know yet. But it's with that background of trying to satisfy 5000 people that come to games not just 50 people in this room. And similarly we can create an atmosphere where there is a great culture of fans supporters and whatever like there's only 1 percent of the borough of Sutton that currently come to these games as well.
Speaker 1
1:09:19 - 1:09:26
There's a huge untapped. market for me out there as well. So yes, 50 people's feelings are important. Of course they are.
Speaker 1
1:09:26 - 1:09:48
We respect people that have been coming for as long as I have and longer. They're an important part of this club, but I've got to be looking forward as well. There's lots of other people, whether they're already part of this or will be coming to us as new, that will have 50 years in front of them in the same way that I've had 50 years behind me being part of this club. So that's the background to what we're doing.
Speaker 1
1:09:49 - 1:10:30
again similar to we're talking about the players and where you're trying to attract sponsors and we're trying to expect it sort of attract bigger sponsors no more nationwide sponsors who will have options of lots of people and they'd rather have a little space that they can feel yeah actually this is this comfortable i like being here absolutely it's It's an essential necessary part of a successful football club, particularly one that's got ambitions to grow, get back into the football league, et cetera. We need to operate in that way that we are attractive to all of these niches. And the corporate world is a part of that.
Speaker 1
1:10:30 - 1:11:03
It's no secret for anybody who just wants to spend a few seconds clicking on companies house. You look at how much money we're losing, not just this season, but many seasons going back. even in the years of the wonderful cup runs and the great things that have happened to this club, we struggle to operate at a break-even basis in the good years. So that gap has to be funded by somebody somehow, whether that's ultimately owners or whether it's through the corporate world.
Speaker 1
1:11:04 - 1:11:41
And we need to find ways of attracting that corporate dollar, if you like, into the building, not just the supporters one. and the club and its supporters and the people that this place matter to, ultimately the beneficiaries of these decisions that allow more money to come in to the football club, whatever means that is. We all stand here on the terraces and want to see a successful team and we at the margin have a little moan about how the quality of our players perhaps isn't as great as other clubs and we look at other clubs that are spending a quarter of a million came up as a figure last night of a player that swapped clubs even within this division to go somewhere else.
Speaker 1
1:11:41 - 1:12:03
And that's a world we can't operate in. And we never will be able to operate in if we carry on in a world where we've got a financial gap that we have to fill every year. So we do have to think about the right thing for the football club through the lens of the commercial as well as the supporters. And we all are supporters, I guess, get that at the end of the day.
Speaker 1
1:12:04 - 1:12:30
for us to benefit with a better team and a better performance that allows us to go up the pyramid and have all these wonderful memories that we'll look back on in 10, 20, 50 years time, it's because of running this place as a successful business ultimately and that's what we have to do in our decision making. And not only on the players, Steve touched on this last night, but it's something I've noticed. A lot of them don't drink.
Speaker 1
1:12:30 - 1:12:45
That's just the way they are now. A lot of them aren't as brash and everything as they are on the pitch or as they seem in training. Some of them are quite shy when you start trying to talk to them one-to-one. And the modern world is a lot of players
Speaker 2
1:12:46 - 1:12:50
don't want to say anything. because it can suddenly come back and bite them.
Speaker 1
1:12:50 - 1:13:12
Yeah, I think the modern world is more like that. And we've got to remember at the end of the day, these are people, we all work with people, we have people in our families and our friendship groups, and we understand the differences between people. And why would it be any different with footballers or people that appear comfortable in front of 5000 people doing what they're good at. It's not just a modern thing.
Speaker 1
1:13:12 - 1:13:18
I always think of Louis John. I know Louis quite well because he lives just down the road from me. We stayed in touch. But Louis.
Speaker 1
1:13:20 - 1:13:47
is a great example of somebody who on the pitch can exude all kinds of confidence and never shy of having a word with the referee or the players alongside him or whatever. The Louis that you would meet in the bar or in the street is a completely different person. And that I think is true of many of this group as well. And you're right in both of those things that they're not used to drinking and socializing in the way that players in the past perhaps might have done.
Speaker 1
1:13:48 - 1:14:30
Certainly the more shy or awkward or those type of characters. And everything they do now is visible and can come back round. So there is an innate caution within them that they don't want to say the wrong thing or get captured in an awkward or compromised position and that is the modern world. So we need to find a way for them to be comfortable amongst people that they feel comfortable being with which is typically friends and what other groups provide that comfort to them, but also have a way where they can step outside the door and be comfortable, whether that's
Speaker 1
1:14:30 - 1:15:02
for a shorter period of time or in more controlled ways, being with fans. And that's where we're going. Again, it's another example where This exists in lots of other football clubs, you know, having a player's family area or a lounge or an area where it allows the wife's partners, kids, grandparents, whatever it might be, to come into a safe and welcoming environment for them. where we lack is the real estate here.
Speaker 1
1:15:02 - 1:15:28
So other clubs have the ability to have a number of different lounges for a number of different purposes. And we see them in our away travels. There's often not just a boardroom, but there's one or two or three different hospitality spaces. And then there's public places and then there's fan zones and then there's the local pubs and everything that all become the pieces of the puzzle that is the jigsaw of the football club in that town.
Speaker 1
1:15:29 - 1:15:52
In an ideal world, we would have more space and we'd have more money and we'd have more of lots of things. And we could satisfy a lot more people. Ultimately, if I do my job well and others around with me, we'll get to that point where we are growing, not just the football side of the football club but the literal physical side of the football club and we have been over the years. Three thousand people now come to games.
Speaker 1
1:15:53 - 1:16:15
A huge number of those use the fan zone. Now the fans are not the place for everybody and some people will never use it but I can't imagine the number of people that are currently in the fan zone and the people that currently use this room previously last season and the number of people that use the NBA hospitality and the number of people that are in Roland's bar all crowding into what we had before. This is an example of.
Speaker 1
1:16:16 - 1:16:37
the success and the growth that we've had because people have made the right decisions on and off the pitch that create these problems. I hesitate to call this a nice problem to have, but it is as a result of success and ambition to grow the club. And disappointing though it may be to 50 people, it's done with that background. Yeah.
Speaker 1
1:16:38 - 1:16:59
I think again, Steve touched on it last night is the changes are happening. And you said some of it is to benefit us. longer down the line because if we can get more money in here, track more sponsors, more money on the pitch, more money on the facilities and so on. Some of the comments, I'm sure you've heard them all, but some of the comments were people like using this bar because there's less of a queue.
Speaker 1
1:16:59 - 1:17:27
We've kind of touched on that when we were in the other bar where we're trying to do a little bit more with the queuing system, which undoubtedly will be worse for a few games while people get used to the tills. Because it is a slightly different way of working and a different way of, we're going to end up being at the bar because you tap on the till, not bring the machine to you. So allow a bit of time for that to bed in. One of the other things was glasses.
Speaker 1
1:17:28 - 1:17:43
And I know everyone, I prefer glasses. And I know lots of people say they like to drink in here because of glasses. I always thought you weren't supposed to at all. Well, this is interesting because this has come up.
Speaker 1
1:17:45 - 1:17:57
What we would like to do is to trial running glasses in all of the bars. So the glass issue should disappear. Now, I'm not saying that the glass isn't a genuine concern. I prefer a glass.
Speaker 1
1:17:57 - 1:18:04
It'd be great if we all could have glass. The glass might be just one of those things, you know, and another thing. This is why we don't like it. I don't know.
Speaker 1
1:18:05 - 1:18:33
What we're looking to do is to trial rolling out use of glass everywhere across the club, apart from the fan zones, for legitimate football legislation type reasons. And we've had that conversation with the local council that don't just own this building, but they are the licensor. And it turns out we shouldn't be using glasses anyway. So we've kind of put our foot a little bit in it, but we're OK, I think.
Speaker 1
1:18:35 - 1:18:57
But the point is we've made these representations to the council and say, well, okay, glass use is an interesting topic, but in the boardroom, we use glasses and that's never been an issue. If you're in hospitality, wine glasses are on the table. That's never really been an issue. Can we do glass everywhere?
Speaker 1
1:18:58 - 1:19:10
Now they're pointing out when the license, they're happy for us to use what they call toughened glass. Now I don't work in that. in this particular industry. And what's the difference between glass and toughened glass?
Speaker 1
1:19:10 - 1:19:53
Well, I can tell you one of the differences, it's about 13 pounds to buy a toughened glass pint to use. Now, I'm sure everybody in this room and across the club won't want me putting a pound on the pints to pay for the necessary, et cetera. Cutting this into a shortened answer is something we're aware of and we're looking to do and find ways to address these issues. We don't want for one of the crew phrase to be annoying or whatever our customers and people who come to this place who genuinely support what we're trying to do in us making decisions or a provision that isn't what they want.
Speaker 1
1:19:53 - 1:20:23
We want to be listening as we have done through surveys and feedback and provide what they want or what they can find elsewhere. but we don't have easy light switches that we can just flick from on to off to make these things happen. So I genuinely don't know where this is going to land and how long it will take us to persuade the people that make the decisions outside of this building for us to all be having the drinks that we want in the vessels that we like using. But that feedback's definitely been taken on board and we're working towards it.
Speaker 1
1:20:24 - 1:20:52
And hopefully we will have happy people or less unhappy people with some of the solutions to the situation where we currently find ourselves and there's still be support to the club and enjoying their drinks and the conversations and their friendships in a different way as we go through this change. So, potentially what I'm hearing is we shouldn't be moaning about losing the glasses, we shouldn't be denying that we've had them for four years when we shouldn't have. Well, that's one interpretation, yeah.
Speaker 1
1:20:54 - 1:21:39
What we're trying to demonstrate, I guess, is that the reasons that we're making decisions are legitimate and for the betterment of the entire football club. And it's not the opposite where we're trying to change things to upset individuals or groups of people that are unfortunate in being the recipients of that change. But within that, we're also welcoming the feedback and listening to the things that clearly matter to people and it's important to their match day and their relationship with this club and what can we do within the confines of the restrictions that we find ourselves in to best rectify some of the things and improve in certain ways despite that going on.
Speaker 1
1:21:39 - 1:21:57
And Glass is probably a good example of that. There'll be knock-ons as well. Moving from plastic to glass means that there's less wastage from an environmental point of view, which will please a lot of people. It will mean that we'll have to invest some more money in glass cleaning.
Speaker 1
1:21:59 - 1:22:25
What people need to think about is when they have a nice clean glass, they don't want a warm one, they want a clean one, it goes through a cycle of you using it, putting it on a table, it goes back somewhere, it gets washed, it then has to get dried, it has to get treated, etc. for it to become the nice clean glass for you to use at halftime. the same again after the match and the next time you come to the building. That's not so easy to do with the infrastructure that we've got behind the scenes again.
Speaker 1
1:22:26 - 1:22:53
If anybody goes behind the bar, they'll work. They'll realize the confines of that space and the restrictions on our real estate apply equally to our staff. We're trying to provide the service that's important to the customers as the customers find themselves in a busier place. Again, this stems from the success over the last a dozen years or so, we'll be gone from less than a thousand fans to more than 3,000, more than 5,000 fans on certain occasions.
Speaker 1
1:22:53 - 1:23:15
So we have to live with and find solutions to the consequences of those problems created by that success. Of course we do. They're not always easy, but we're listening and we're genuinely trying to provide what's right the aggregate of the club rather than trying to do things to annoy particular individuals.
Speaker 2
1:23:15 - 1:23:26
Yeah it's the 18, it's the 80-20 isn't it? You've kind of, if you can please 80% of the people then that's a good, that's a good thing and 20% may love it
Speaker 1
1:23:27 - 1:24:11
or hate it. And people generally will adapt and change and not everybody will come on that journey with us, but it's impossible to keep everybody happy all the time, you know, Genuinely, it's going to be difficult in any environment to do that. where you're trying to uplift and upgrade and improve a football club or any other business with growing numbers of supporters or consumers, if you like, of that business, it's difficult and there'll be hiccups and whatever on that journey. But if we're moving even in a nonlinear fashion from down here to up there, that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 2
1:24:12 - 1:24:15
OK, well, we're going to wrap up in a second, but there was a question
Speaker 1
1:24:15 - 1:24:34
and you've just touched on the down here to up here. The question was put to Steve yesterday that yourself and I think it was Gary, I think, who said we want League One football in the next five to ten years. It was put to Steve as an expectation. Was it an expectation or was it just a want?
Speaker 1
1:24:37 - 1:24:53
This goes back to the AGM, which was a few months ago. And prior to that, again, from feedback, people wanted to know a bit more about the ownership group. And they're not just who they were, but what their ambitions were for the club. And did they align with the ordinary fans, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1
1:24:53 - 1:25:09
And four of us put down on paper. And I think each of us touched on a period of time coming from here to there. Mine wasn't division one in five years. I won't name the individual that said that.
Speaker 1
1:25:11 - 1:25:24
Anyway, mine was to return back to football league within five years. So I'm a division out. But genuinely, I think I said within 25 years being in the championship. And I do genuinely believe that.
Speaker 1
1:25:24 - 1:25:44
And I hope I've got 25 years to I hope I've got 25 years full stop. I've got 25 years to see that happen. But it is interesting because what does that create in terms of expectation. And when I was saying it was much more incremental and like the conversation we've been having here.
Speaker 1
1:25:44 - 1:26:20
How can we improve slightly so we get slightly better players in. How do we get sponsors in that allow us to do X or Y and Z, bring money in that we can invest not just in the football, but in the building, which allows us to have another lounge somewhere such that we can reintroduce a members lounge, for example. So over that 20-25 years, we do become a Millwall or a QPR or whatever it might be. How do we develop the far side of the ground that we were going to do if we were still in the football league and that will bring within it other facilities, not just seats over there, but probably bars, more food, more this, more, and allow us to be
Speaker 1
1:26:20 - 1:26:51
flexible and deliver these kinds of things. Five years is a very short timeframe and football's very, I think I've probably said this to a number of people, possibly even yourself, it's the strangers of industries because most clubs like us, we've been around since the 19th century, we touched upon that earlier on, 1898, We've been around comfortably more than 100 years as have lots of football clubs. So long term is the right time frame to measure the success of football clubs.
Speaker 1
1:26:52 - 1:27:10
But the current season, the next game, the average tenure of a manager is about a year. Player contracts, one or two years is normal. player can get injured in the next game and that's the end of their career. It's also a very, very, very short term industry.
Speaker 1
1:27:10 - 1:27:28
And so the now and the next is also super important. And how do you how do you overlap those two or a 25 year period like I'm talking about or a five year period like Martin Copus might have been talking about? And words are always easy. You know, saying We want to be a division one club in five years.
Speaker 1
1:27:29 - 1:27:44
Great. You know, to be fair, there are some people probably watching this that don't want that and that's fine. I like the honesty of those that actually tell me that rather than those that want all the good but point out all the negatives on the way as well. That's a different story.
Speaker 1
1:27:45 - 1:27:54
But the words are the easy bit. The difficult bit is actually making it happen. And to do that, you've got to make difficult decisions at times. You've got to change culture in places.
Speaker 1
1:27:54 - 1:28:03
Culture in this place is different to how it was before we became a football league club. The staffing and volunteering is completely different. The business model is different. The model on the pitch now is different.
Speaker 1
1:28:04 - 1:28:14
It's much younger compared to when Matt was here. It's about developing the players and moving the model. Matt wasn't anti that, don't get me wrong. David Edgeboy, we've already touched on, is a great example where that happened under his stewardship.
Speaker 1
1:28:16 - 1:28:49
But those changes and the change in the cultures of the things that are going to allow us to hopefully deliver those ambitions at five years or 25 years and attract overseas owners the new sponsors that the new players to us that that will be on that journey. either as the short-term version of what a football club is or the long-term version, people like myself and Bruce and Adrian and countless other people that have been in this place for as long as we have been. So it's easy to say, difficult to do. Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1
1:28:50 - 1:29:11
Well, thank you very, very much and we look forward to the season starting. Hopefully you'll get a rest in the next few days. I'll get a rest at some point. I think it's important for everybody, particularly the people that have been working with me over the last few weeks, that we get back into that regular rhythm of football and it's going to be great that the pre-season games are starting here again, which we didn't have last year,
Speaker 1
1:29:11 - 1:29:32
remember? No. On Tuesday and we've got some great teams coming to visit us. Slightly disappointed we've had a couple cancel on us which are out without control and then we'll come through those hopefully Our supporters will get to see some of the changes that have happened here, get to begin to know the players that are part of this team for the
Speaker 1
1:29:32 - 1:29:56
upcoming season. And then we'll hit the ground running away at York, I can say that now, for the first fixture of the season. And hopefully by the end of August, when we've played the teams that finished, I think, second, third, and fourth in the league last year, we'll have a bit of an idea of where we stand. I'm optimistic we'll be doing OK and we'll be around the playoffs and we'll think we're doing OK here.
Speaker 1
1:29:57 - 1:30:17
And if not, and we're down to the bottom, we've got the comfort that we've got plenty more games, we've played the hard work. So, yeah, let's get back into the rhythm of football and we'll move back into the ordinary of what the club is for many people. And genuinely looking forward to seeing so many people again. It was great last night, more than 100 people coming to an event that last year only 50 people came to.
Speaker 1
1:30:17 - 1:30:48
that's a great reflection on where the club is going and how people are buying into what we're trying to do on the pitch under Steve or off the pitch under me, if you like, and seeing those people and renewing those friendships, but also meeting new people that wouldn't have come to an event like that previously. And I'm looking forward to the first game here where hopefully I can relax and there's not too much going on and meet with regular new and old fans that we love seeing in this place. Have a seat in the garden.
Speaker 1
1:30:48 - 1:31:06
I'm not sure that's going to happen. I remember when I last sat in it was actually watching our women's team. When I come to watch the women I do often sit in there and catch up with other people as well as wandering around. I'm less likely to be changing toilet rolls and carrying them off or whatever at a women's game.
Speaker 1
1:31:06 - 1:31:42
But yeah, sadly, they're still not going to be here this season, but we've brought them closer into the fold from Chips. They're going to be at David Weir, and we've got an under-19s team that we can follow over the coming season, and they're going to be playing a number of different places, but they were one of those as well. FA Youth Cup and Women's FA Cup Games will host those teams here as well. So the breadth of the club, not just the first team, you know, we're creating that environment through change again, where people can support the entire club easier than they have done over the last two, three, four years.
Speaker 1
1:31:42 - 1:31:42
yeah
Speaker 2
1:31:43 - 1:31:45
and also the event last night wasn't
Speaker 1
1:31:45 - 1:32:22
recorded so we can kind of say what we want happened and I think Steve did say that he was going to learn the John Meany at this point. I think Steve is beginning to enjoy himself a bit more and his relationship with the fans has changed over the last 18 months and people you know first impressions do count they are important we get that but what people need to remember is he was brought here with a specific job to do, ultimately he failed, which was to keep us up. But what that meant was on match days, and most people see him on match days and only at home games, not away games, in the majority of people's instances, and they will judge him on what he was trying to do.
Speaker 1
1:32:22 - 1:33:02
And he was very tunnel-driven, focused on what was important to not just him, the entire club at that time. And the downside of that is that those first impressions and following on from people that, such as Matt, Doz before him, that were different types of people, that expectation of what our managers should be or what people want from their manager, that was quite difficult. 18 months in, I think that relationship with the ordinary fan is a different one with Steve. And last night, he claimed to be very enthused, which I think got the biggest laugh of the night.
Speaker 1
1:33:04 - 1:33:36
But he genuinely, I think, is in a better place with the club and its fans now that he can have the type of conversations that were normal under Matt, if you like. that growing relationship, I think we'll see develop further over the course of the year. And that's what we all want. Yeah, it goes back to again, the players, this is their place of work, Steve's place of work, and things not going well.
Speaker 1
1:33:37 - 1:33:55
you're not going to go right okay go and chat to everyone now so they can all tell me how it's going awfully and terrible and he's in a bit of a foul mood um as you would be um so yeah I can see where people might go oh I don't like that but no he's definitely People have learned to understand a bit
Speaker 2
1:33:56 - 1:33:57
more and he's understood a lot
Speaker 1
1:33:57 - 1:33:57
more.
Speaker 2
1:33:58 - 1:34:08
But the chuckle last night was because he was saying something in a very monotone voice and then went, oh, this is me being really excited, by the way. That was certainly made me laugh.
Speaker 1
1:34:09 - 1:35:01
But he I've really seen him boring to use that but I have I have a closer and longer deeper relationship with with Steven the ordinary fan and I I understanding of a bit more than than others but it's great that the fans are getting that opportunity whether it's events last like last night or over the course of the season and Steve is actually a very approachable, dry but funny type person and he's not frightened of having a conversation or a disagreement with people. I think, you know, he perhaps won't mind me saying this but I'll say it anyway, I think he got hurt a little bit of his experiences at Cardiff and other clubs where it's more difficult to have that close relationship with fans. And he's played at lots of big clubs, you know, your Millwalls and your Leeds and your Norwiches and what have you.
Speaker 1
1:35:01 - 1:35:35
And where he tried to be that more approachable and cuddly manager, trying to please everybody approach, which isn't naturally him, I guess, that backfired a little bit at times. And, you know, You can't win. You go on the pitch and you fist pump when you're winning and some people like it and some people think it's a bit whatever. And then you don't win the next game and you go off because, as you described, you're emotionally upset or you need to calm down before you do media.
Speaker 1
1:35:35 - 1:35:44
You don't want to get involved in something else. And then people label you with, you know, You only do it when you win it. You're not this and you're not that. So you can't please everybody.
Speaker 1
1:35:44 - 1:35:56
It's like everything else we described earlier. You have to be yourself at the end of the day. But the genuine Steve that he is. is actually quite an approachable and funny and whatever type of person.
Speaker 1
1:35:57 - 1:36:19
We just need to see a bit more of it perhaps. And that's a two way thing as well that people need to embrace and engage with him in the same way with other mates and the players of course. We're going full circle. We're trying to create that environment where everybody is closer and more supportive and wanting to be in the building or on the pitch or whatever it might be as part of our club.
Speaker 1
1:36:20 - 1:36:29
So let's all do that. We'll see more of Steve and his team and the players, I'm sure, within that framework. Excellent. Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1
1:36:29 - 1:36:32
No problem. Thank you. See you later.
Speaker 2
1:36:32 - 1:36:42
And that's it. Another episode of Sutton United Talk Time on Podcast wrapped up. And we're going to be bringing you a few more over preseason. And just before the season starts, we will,
Speaker 1
1:36:42 - 1:36:43
we've got an interview lined up with
Speaker 2
1:36:43 - 1:36:44
Morrow.
Speaker 1
1:36:44 - 1:36:48
So hopefully we'll be able to get his thoughts on pre-season and what the season ahead is going
Speaker 2
1:36:48 - 1:37:00
to bring us. Um, thanks once again to Tim, thanks to Lucky Star Gin, thanks to you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Sutton Unite Talk Time on podcast. I wish I could speak, um, but take care and we'll catch up soon.
Speaker 2
1:37:00 - 1:37:03
Bye bye
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