What a difference ........
Posted: 02 Jun 2015, 21:00
..... two years can make!
Two years (and a couples of weeks) ago, we had just survived relegation out of the Football League under Alan Knill and season ticket sales stood at 834 !!!!!
http://www.torquayunited.com/news/artic ... 28671.aspx
Two years on, and with the absolutely disastrous management of the football club both ON and OFF the field, not only are we faced with the club (or more accurately Thea Bristow) having posted estimated losses totalling £1 million for the two years ending at the end of this month, but we are also no longer a member of the Football League and are in a complete state of limbo with the ownership of the club. ... and now we learn that the club has sold the princely sum of 57 (yes fifty seven!!!) season tickets so far for next season!
http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/T ... story.html?
Personally I am struggling to comprehend what has happened over the last few months to bring us to this sorry situation. The whole process has, in my opinion, been horrendously mismanaged by not only Thea Bristow but the whole of the Board of TUFC.
I fail to see why Thea Bristow needed to go to the totally unnecessary expense of "employing" Kelvin Thomas in the first place - money that would have been better spent on TUFC! He ( Thomas) has been an unmitigated disaster as far as his main role was concerned - disposing of Thea's shares, and is now no doubt sitting by his poolside in Florida patting himself on the back for a job well done in earning himself a nice little pile of ( Thea's ) cash over the last six months or so, whilst at the same time (incredulously) still finding that Thea wishes to thank him enormously for all the help he has given her!!!!
In my opinion, Thea should have saved her money, used the people she has confidence in ( Alex Rowe perhaps???) and not have gone public on her desire to dispose of her majority interest back in January. Instead she should quietly have put out feelers to those who may have been interested.
Let's face it, as things stand, the most likely (fingers crossed) new owners of TUFC are likely to be made up of a consortium led by her own Commercial Manager and it seems a group of loyal fans and sponsors .... in other words, they were right "under her nose" and yet she has seen fit to waste (no doubt) tens of thousands of £s on the "consultancy" advice of Kevin Thomas .... who, we should remind ourselves, only came to HER attention because he represented a body of people that had expressed their own interest in buying TUFC!!!!
Her next mistake was to hand over her shares to the "remaining" Directors of TUFC a couple of weeks ago following the failed bid by Truro City Chairman Peter Masters (allegedly) which fell through ( allegedly) when his team (Truro City FC) gained promotion to the Conference South - in other words just one league below us! Given his (alleged) withdrawal based on the result of a football match ( the Southern League Play Off Final - which Truro won) you really do have to question what it was that possessed Thea and Kelvin Tnomas to give them ( allegedly) exclusivity rights when if these facts are true,he appears to have been more concerned with Truro City and a potential ground share at Plainmoor than he ever was in running TUFC (allegedly).
As for the Directors she has entrusted her majority share with, with the greatest respect to Messrs Phillips, Palk and Coote - the "remaining" Directors we are led to believe - how can it be that those who have probably contributed (financially) close to the least amount of £s during the existence of this consortium - based on information freely available from Companies House - are now, it seems, left with the whole future of TUFC in their hands??? Whilst not wishing to denigrate the efforts made by these gentlemen - I don't know the inner workings of the Board sufficiently well to make such comment - it does seem strange that those who seemingly have "contributed" the least (well almost) financially are now trusted with the responsibility of choosing the next owner(s) by the ONE person (Thea Bristow) whose contribution (together with her late husband Paul) has completely dwarfed that of these three gentlemen - to the extent that, in the words of Bill Phillips himself, you could call their contribution "small beer" (a rather disparaging remark he recently made about the funds available to TUST) by way of comparison.
Personally, my first doubts about the competency of this Board started several years ago when they first posted a huge loss (c £700k?) in June of that year .... after a Fans Forum in January of that year when the then Chairman Simon Baker suggested ( when asked) that we were looking at a more or less a break even figure for that trading year!!!! Unfortunately, nothing they have done since has suggested that they were ever really on top of the finances - the impression being that everyone just sat back and let Thea write out the cheques regardless of the consequences for the future .... and sadly (for her personally) just to prove the point, as we know, Thea ended up having to write off loans of c £3 million - which only goes to prove that that was surely pretty much what happened in the intervening years.
All that is left, is the hope that there is a "future" for TUFC. I stop short of saying "a better future" for TUFC as I am not sure that that is possible given that Thea Bristow seems to have personally underwritten losses of c £500k it seems for the last half a dozen years - not sustainable surely without a mega rich individual with more money than sense rocking up - which as we have been " FOR SALE" for 6 months or so ow, seems highly unlikely to say the least!!!
I just hope that the Edwards consortium can get their takeover of the club through and that we can stabilise the club (our best hope for now) but you do worry that there are "skeletons lurking in the cupboard" .... no doubt based around ££ ... which might still see this deal fail. For the future of TUFC you just hope and pray that any problems can be overcome.
Two years (and a couples of weeks) ago, we had just survived relegation out of the Football League under Alan Knill and season ticket sales stood at 834 !!!!!
http://www.torquayunited.com/news/artic ... 28671.aspx
Two years on, and with the absolutely disastrous management of the football club both ON and OFF the field, not only are we faced with the club (or more accurately Thea Bristow) having posted estimated losses totalling £1 million for the two years ending at the end of this month, but we are also no longer a member of the Football League and are in a complete state of limbo with the ownership of the club. ... and now we learn that the club has sold the princely sum of 57 (yes fifty seven!!!) season tickets so far for next season!
http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/T ... story.html?
Personally I am struggling to comprehend what has happened over the last few months to bring us to this sorry situation. The whole process has, in my opinion, been horrendously mismanaged by not only Thea Bristow but the whole of the Board of TUFC.
I fail to see why Thea Bristow needed to go to the totally unnecessary expense of "employing" Kelvin Thomas in the first place - money that would have been better spent on TUFC! He ( Thomas) has been an unmitigated disaster as far as his main role was concerned - disposing of Thea's shares, and is now no doubt sitting by his poolside in Florida patting himself on the back for a job well done in earning himself a nice little pile of ( Thea's ) cash over the last six months or so, whilst at the same time (incredulously) still finding that Thea wishes to thank him enormously for all the help he has given her!!!!
In my opinion, Thea should have saved her money, used the people she has confidence in ( Alex Rowe perhaps???) and not have gone public on her desire to dispose of her majority interest back in January. Instead she should quietly have put out feelers to those who may have been interested.
Let's face it, as things stand, the most likely (fingers crossed) new owners of TUFC are likely to be made up of a consortium led by her own Commercial Manager and it seems a group of loyal fans and sponsors .... in other words, they were right "under her nose" and yet she has seen fit to waste (no doubt) tens of thousands of £s on the "consultancy" advice of Kevin Thomas .... who, we should remind ourselves, only came to HER attention because he represented a body of people that had expressed their own interest in buying TUFC!!!!
Her next mistake was to hand over her shares to the "remaining" Directors of TUFC a couple of weeks ago following the failed bid by Truro City Chairman Peter Masters (allegedly) which fell through ( allegedly) when his team (Truro City FC) gained promotion to the Conference South - in other words just one league below us! Given his (alleged) withdrawal based on the result of a football match ( the Southern League Play Off Final - which Truro won) you really do have to question what it was that possessed Thea and Kelvin Tnomas to give them ( allegedly) exclusivity rights when if these facts are true,he appears to have been more concerned with Truro City and a potential ground share at Plainmoor than he ever was in running TUFC (allegedly).
As for the Directors she has entrusted her majority share with, with the greatest respect to Messrs Phillips, Palk and Coote - the "remaining" Directors we are led to believe - how can it be that those who have probably contributed (financially) close to the least amount of £s during the existence of this consortium - based on information freely available from Companies House - are now, it seems, left with the whole future of TUFC in their hands??? Whilst not wishing to denigrate the efforts made by these gentlemen - I don't know the inner workings of the Board sufficiently well to make such comment - it does seem strange that those who seemingly have "contributed" the least (well almost) financially are now trusted with the responsibility of choosing the next owner(s) by the ONE person (Thea Bristow) whose contribution (together with her late husband Paul) has completely dwarfed that of these three gentlemen - to the extent that, in the words of Bill Phillips himself, you could call their contribution "small beer" (a rather disparaging remark he recently made about the funds available to TUST) by way of comparison.
Personally, my first doubts about the competency of this Board started several years ago when they first posted a huge loss (c £700k?) in June of that year .... after a Fans Forum in January of that year when the then Chairman Simon Baker suggested ( when asked) that we were looking at a more or less a break even figure for that trading year!!!! Unfortunately, nothing they have done since has suggested that they were ever really on top of the finances - the impression being that everyone just sat back and let Thea write out the cheques regardless of the consequences for the future .... and sadly (for her personally) just to prove the point, as we know, Thea ended up having to write off loans of c £3 million - which only goes to prove that that was surely pretty much what happened in the intervening years.
All that is left, is the hope that there is a "future" for TUFC. I stop short of saying "a better future" for TUFC as I am not sure that that is possible given that Thea Bristow seems to have personally underwritten losses of c £500k it seems for the last half a dozen years - not sustainable surely without a mega rich individual with more money than sense rocking up - which as we have been " FOR SALE" for 6 months or so ow, seems highly unlikely to say the least!!!
I just hope that the Edwards consortium can get their takeover of the club through and that we can stabilise the club (our best hope for now) but you do worry that there are "skeletons lurking in the cupboard" .... no doubt based around ££ ... which might still see this deal fail. For the future of TUFC you just hope and pray that any problems can be overcome.