nickbennett_blog

Tag: Martin

  • Follow Up

    In my last post I mentioned someone whose season card was confiscated. That person wishes to remain anonymous but here is Bob’s update.

    Chaps,

    To save me explaining it 10 times later, see below.

    I had a letter from Nigel the Finance Director of SUFC on my doorstep when I got in last night. It said that I owe them £305, that they did not know why I hadn’t paid and that if I didn’t pay within 7 days then I would be taken to court. It also said “The club depends on debts being paid on time” (which is presumably why they didn’t set up the direct debit as instructed and never pay the government when they owe them).

    Spoke to Nigel who apologised for threatening to take me to court and said that the ticket office hadn’t done the handover properly (shocker). I told him that I’m not paying because it’s their mistake and the whole way this matter has been handled has been (at best) amateur. Nigel didn’t like this. Nigel said that the club has acknowledged that it made a mistake and that I was “screwing them into the ground” over it. I explained to Nigel that if I make a big mistake at work then I get the sack. I got the impression that Nigel’s arris is on the line over this balls up. Nigel said that he couldn’t let me off because it would be unfair on the other 3449 season ticket holders. I told him that I was told that I wasn’t the only one this had happened to and that the only way the club would learn was to be hit in the pocket. Apparently there are ‘about half a dozen’ others that are also doing the same as me and Nigel is sending the bailiffs round to get the money. What utter nonsense.

    I told Nigel that he had a decision to make – he can dig his heels in and take me to court and, in all honesty, probably win the £305 and lose me and Fred as fans – or – they can put this down to experience and not ask Doris the tea lady to do the direct debits set-ups next year when I renew my season ticket and continue to take Fred for the rest of his/my lives.

    About 10 minutes later he called to say that he had referred it up to Tara Brady and that I’d be getting a call some time that evening.

    Tara called – “Ello issat Robert?”…… “I think you mean Robin?”…….. “Oh yeah, sh*t, sorry Robin it’s Tara here”. Basically, Nigel hadn’t ‘referred it to Tara’ – he had ‘Blacklisted’ me so that I was not able to go to any more games and that gets referred immediately to Tara with no explanation so I had to explain the whole thing again.

    He followed up his opening gambit with the revelation that the club had indeed “F**ked up big time” and that he “had to have something to go back to the boys with” and could I spread £120 over 12 months? I said that it is now not about the money but about the principle of the way I’ve been treated and he could do one for his £120. Apparently I’ll hear from “the boys” soon. I also told him that I thought I’d had fair value for money so far. How we laughed.

    Apologies for the essay, but hey, what else have you got to do on a Friday?

  • Letter to the Chairman

    Dear Ron Martin, Have you heard this one? A guy walks into a bar and asks the barmaid for a pint of bitter. ‘Sure’ she replies. ‘With every pint of bitter we are giving away a free bottle of champagne and a full steak meal!’ ‘Wow’ replies the startled man ‘..and how much is that?’ ‘That’ll be 50p’ replies the barmaid. ‘I need to come here more often, so are you the landlady?’  asks the man ‘No, I’m the land lords wife. The landlord is upstairs doing to the barmaid what I’m doing to his business’

    The question is Ron, who is upstairs with your wife?

    This can be the only reason why you are dealing with our finances in such a nonchalantly inept way. Our club is haemorrhaging money. The current figure is a staggering £100k a month. A £100k A MONTH LOSS? To run a league 2 football team? It sounds like a task that even Richard Prior in Brewster’s Millions would turn down. Yet you manage it on a monthly basis. Impressive!

    Here are a few starters for you to perhaps plug the holes in this sinking ship. You’ve managed to sell off the programme vendors for what I can only assume is a quick short-term financial gain. Why would any 3rd party want to take up this venture unless they’d worked out that in the long run there’s money to be made? While we are on the subject of a quick buck the brewery-run bars in the ground should also be run in-house. With a bit of imagination, I’m sure we could work out a way of monetising a bar in a football ground. Currently to ensure you receive a pint before the end of the season you have to head to the bar 15 minutes before the end of the 1st half. If you are unlucky you may get the sweet but slightly senile barmaid. Who even with the aid of the calculator and an epoch of time, will try to fleece you out of change. Here’s an idea, tills and more bar staff! Speculate to accumulate Ronald.

    Hospitality: Cordial and generous reception of or disposition toward guests.

    Maybe you should explain this definition to the staff in ‘hospitality’. David Crown does a fantastic job comparing the day but is let down by the rude and obnoxious staff that surrounds him. On the LAST occasion in ‘hospitality’, my friend asked the woman carving the meat if he could have a bit more. He didn’t ask if he could shove his fist in her arse which the look she gave him would suggest. She proceeded to turn the meat around so she could trim the arsehole off and put it on his plate. This with the constant bickering of the bar staff took the gloss, the undercoat and the wood off an otherwise lovely day. Repeat custom unlikely.

    This is the big one Ron so listen and listen hard. Don’t let people in for FREE for months. I know, pretty drastic huh! It turns out some season card holders’ Direct Debits haven’t gone through. Surely some kind of clerical error? OK, so you’d think the best way to sort this would be to ring the cardholders immediately to get this resolved?  Apparently not. I’ll tell you what we’ll do instead, we’ll wait until midway through the season and then demand £300 by confiscating their season card! I can only assume that the meat carving lady is also in charge of customer relations.

    Ron, treat people in this way and they won’t be coming back and more importantly, they won’t be paying the £300 we so desperately need. The Direct Debit debacle happened to my mate although they actually tried to charge him £305 as there was a £5 admin fee. A fee they were willing to waver if he settled up there and then. How preposterous is this! Just when I think nothing could surprise me anymore the club manages to pull another outrageous stunt. It’s almost a test to see ‘how much they’ll put up with’. Not much more I’m afraid Ron. Until you buck up your ideas you’re going to be a very lonely man sitting in an empty new stadium staring out at fields where the main stand should be.

    Kindest regards,

    Len

    P.S. please please please stop!

  • Ron’s Q and A

    Arrogant, condescending, and rude, but also determined and loyal. After Ron Martin’s Q and A on Monday I personally feel at least a little reassured. The answers Mr Martin gave weren’t always what the fans wanted to hear but came across very honestly. My key fear was that we’d pre-sold assets from the new stadium to Sainsbury’s. Assets which without would mean the club would not be self-sufficient in the future. These fears were laid to rest as it was explained that Sainsbury’s loan was secured against other land held by Ron Martin’s company.

    According to the chairman we haven’t been self-sufficient for a while and it’s only due to some generous handouts from himself that we’ve managed to remain debt free. We’ve never been asked to pay rent on Roots Hall and we wouldn’t for the near future in the new stadium. Ron couldn’t guarantee for how long this would continue. If he was to sell it who knows what the new owners would do.

    This precarious reliance on a benefactor to financially support a club isn’t new. It’s not just at this level either and in fact, I think clubs in the lower leagues are at slightly less risk than Premier league teams. Look at Chelsea and Manchester City. If their playboy owners ever get bored and decide to move on they may struggle to find someone with enough capital to take on all of those expensive player contracts. Fans are sometimes put in a difficult situation where they want to make their feelings known but why bite the hand that feeds you. The financial potential of Southend United currently isn’t a great one. This means that a potential buyer to replace the current chairman isn’t an option.

    If the goals that Mr Martin has set out are accomplished then a Championship side, in a new stadium/retail park with a solid 15,000-20,000 fan base would be a tempting viable investment. This would be good news for everyone involved in the club, including Mr Ron Martin. This dream is a long way off for a team currently in the relegation zone of League 1 and the inability to pay its playing staff. The 14th April deadline set by HMRC could ultimately be the end of the line. So in Ron we trust. Let’s hope he’s a man of his word.

  • Martin’s Shaken and Stirred

    It seems that my pre-season pessimism was not completely unfounded. The Chairman has since proved to be the swindling swine I’d hoped he wouldn’t be. It turns out you do need to replace your defenders if they leave. And not paying any of your staff does wonders for morale. With relegation looming there are few positive notes to take from this season. Supporting a team at this level really is a rollercoaster ride, but I don’t remember it being much lower than this.

    Let’s start with the off-the-field shenanigans shall we? The troubles seem to have come from trying to get the finances together for a new stadium. The Chairman has my sympathies here as no one had predicted how much the economy would slump. However, there are examples of other teams that seemed to have coped perfectly well in these conditions and have actually thrived in them. It pains me to say it but we need to look at Colchester United as an example of how to run a club. With half the gate we get they’ve managed to build a new stadium, get a play-off challenging squad together and have enough surplus playing staff that they can bail out their local misfits by loaning players out.

    I love my club to bits but as an organisation it’s a complete mess. From Season Cards not functioning correctly to the failure to organise eight people around a table in the Blues lounge. All these basic things that shouldn’t be an issue always have been. It needs someone with a bit of know-how to come in and review everything the club is doing and turn it on its head. On Saturday I learned that The Groundsman’s bar is actually run by the brewery, another revenue stream turned away. Everything at the club seems to have been done to make a quick buck without any forethought into long-term revenue!

    They’ve made some good marketing campaigns. I loved the shareholder brochures and the season card renewal booklets. And the little things like the Christmas Card and the Birthday letters are all nice touches. This year’s birthday letter wasn’t on the usual nice-headed paper though, which to be honest I’d rather they saved their stamp money. I’ve recently started following the club shop on Twitter. On the first game they were meant to send a half-time offer, I didn’t receive this because of ‘technical difficulties’. It’s a Tweet for crying out loud! It takes literally 3 seconds to do from any smartphone.

    I showed my concern after the game on Saturday by joining the 100-strong protests. Ron Martin has since organised a Q & A this Monday. I fear that this PR Guru will manage to avoid any of the meaningful questions by spinning some legal/financial spiel.

    Martin out!

  • Beloved Blues Saved!

    Talk about last-minute reprieve. On the doorsteps of the courtroom, it was announced that the chairman Mr Ron Martin would settle the outstanding tax bill this Friday. Ron had promised that it ‘would go down to the wire’ and he wasn’t wrong. The more cynical side of me is thinking that maybe our media-hungry chairman had the money the entire time and the last-minute shenanigans were a bit of a PR stunt. The fans were not happy with Mr Martin being in this predicament in the first place. Especially as there was a promise made earlier in the year that we would have no problem in settling this bill. I’m hoping that this will be an end to the matter and that after Friday we can close this chapter on Southend United’s darkest hour….watch this space.

    Southend join several other clubs named recently as being taken to court by HMRC. Is it just the current global economic climate that so many clubs find themselves in this situation or is this the Government being tougher in an attempt to re-coop funds to make inroads in the country’s huge deficit? Either way, I believe although on the face of it football could be seen as a luxury item, it needs to survive for the sanity of everyone. With nothing but doom and gloom on every corner, it’s great to spend at least an hour and a half every week away from it all.

    As a club, we’ve never been excessive in any way. Our biggest-ever signing was Mike Marsh from Galatasaray in 1995 for £500k, we’ve been at the hall for over 30 years and have a history of selling on our biggest assets (most recently Freddie Eastwood and Nicky Bailey). The only reason we’ve come to this is that we’ve been trying to move the club forward into a new stadium. Then the economic meltdown happened…typical. The next hurdle for us is survival which even with our 10 points intact is still going to be a big test. Our fragile squad was tested last week, with Steve Tilson (our manager) dusting off the boots to take part in a mid-week Essex Senior Cup tie.

    Friday’s showdown with Gillingham was always going to be an uphill struggle. For once though luck was on our side. The Gills had a shot cleared off the line (which looked dubious) and a perfectly good free kick chalked off for pushing. The second half was completely dominated by Gillingham who brought on 3 subs and looked the fresher side. Then in the 92 minute, an intricate control/shot from Lee Barnard lifted all the blues supporter’s spirits, and the administrative hearing was forgotten (well at least for a brief moment). This blogger started hugging the old man next to him and it seemed appropriate at the time. So the FA cup is next up but we need something nearing a miracle as without top scorer Barnard and midfield lynchpin Alan McCormack I cannot see us getting anything at Gillingham. A real shame as the money from a Cup run could be very handy at the moment.