i’ ve been asked by bruno to clarify/put right a statement that he deleted in a posting by jgfc.
jgfc mentioned sums of money raised by wuisa for the benefit of the club and has confused my efforts to raise money for the ‘stand fund’ account with those of the ‘wuisa’.
the stand fund was an account set up to raise money for the new stand. both graham and i were signatories to that account but to all intents and purposes i ran it.
clearly the monies in that fund were for the club to spend on the new stand and over a period of time to the best of my recollection some £26k was raised for the fund.
it was nibbled away when graham sought funds from the stand fund for the purchase of the lease on the co-op training ground and the money for the lease was approved at a meeting of fans at the club.
some monies were raised by fans contributing to the weekly lottery by standing order which were paid into the stand fund. since i was managing the fund i became the recipient of complaints from winners who had not been paid. I passed these complaints on to the club and did not receive a satisfactory answer and i no longer wanted to be associated with any part of the fundraising. i immediately surrendered the books to graham and to the best of my knowledge there was about £15k in the account at the time i handed it back to him.
the wuisa which was formed by a number of dissatisfied fans at the end of the season when the infamous ‘hales out’ banner appeared. as i’ve said many times it is truly democratic. No decisions on expenditure are taken without the agreement of the committee and those decisions are reported to the membership at each agm. the committee ensures the financial proberty of the association. everything is open and above board. i don’t intend to get involved in the cut and thrust on this board as i and the committee are only accountable to members of the wuisa.
one major expenditure was the purchase of an ‘interferential’ machine for the use of the club physio to treat players’ injuries for the sum of £2k. this machine needs servicing once per year to maintain its efficiency - i do hope it is being serviced annually. why would i ever doubt it?
one more thing about the criticism of not attending games - people seem to be saying that you cannot be a true supporter unless you attend the matches. in fact in the days of the wpc in the eyes of the club you were not a true supporter of the club unless you purchased a season ticket. supporters of clubs like manchester united would find that a tad difficult.
if the wsu is an association i would like someone to tell me if it has a constitution, an elected chairman, secretary and treasurer and if the officers stand for election at each agm. if that is so put me down for membership. if that is not so how can they claim to be representing the fans - without those qualifications they would not be admitted to membership of the football supporters association. clearly nonsense - they, like friends of welling united and the wpc, are merely the commercial arm of the club. i don’t have any complaints about them being the commercial arm of the club and earning buckets of money for the club as long as they declare that that is what they are rather than pose as a democratic association.
