Committee Meeting Minutes – Wednesday 2 November 2022 @ 6.30pm
Present: Paul Peros (PP), Simon Hathaway (SH), Trevor Lambert (TL), Ian Coleman (IC), Maurice Earp (ME), Ali Wolfe (AW), Jemma Hayward (JH), Ben Heath (BH).
Apologies: Michelle Young (MY), Robert Weavers (RW).
Minutes of last meeting (1 June 2022) and matters arising:
- Minutes: Accepted.
- Beauchamp family trust donation: An OxVox donation was held over pending notification that the trust was set up.
Trust AGM
The AGM had been held on 8 October followed by a lively Q&A session. PP thanked the committee and everyone who attended. Notes are drafted: next action is to finalise and distribute them to members shortly.
Stratfield Brake
PP reported that he and AW were due to meet the club the next day at their request to discuss progress. He would then be in a more informed position to update the committee and members in due course. IC tabled for discussion a schematic layout of the SB site overlaid with a stadium footprint as an illustration of the space available for ancillary developments.
We had produced promotional lapel badges bearing the community stadium and club logos, and the hashtag #MakeTheBrake, as a visible symbol to support the SB development. The badges had been offered to the attendees at the Trust AGM as a ‘soft launch’, had been liked by those present, and the next stage will be to publicise and offer them more widely in the coming weeks.
Membership
TL and ME had been working on membership renewals in recent weeks, with reasonable success. We will ask committee members to approach any of the remaining non-renewers they know personally, to encourage further renewals. A small survey of non-renewers was being considered, to establish the most common reasons. TL reported that the membership total on 30 September (the end of the Trust’s financial year) stood at 964. This was good but we needed to grow further and reach out to all sectors of the fan base. A campaign to ‘widen the tent’ of Trust membership and support will be planned and co-ordinated by JH, with ideas from the rest of the committee.
Ticketing proposals for 2023-4
Although OxVox have been promised early sight of next season’s proposals, we agreed that we should be assembling our thoughts now, in advance of any information from the club. We would consider issues which arose this season as well as any anticipated future ones.
Newsletter
SH had completed issue 3 and was working on issue 4. Ideas for articles (and indeed articles!) welcome.
Possible surveys
- Saturday blackout: TL has drafted a survey to gauge fans’ views on the EFL considering an offer to broadcasters to remove the Saturday 3pm embargo on live EFL TV coverage.
- Disabled facilities: AW has drafted a survey on disabled facilities at Grenoble Road.
Projects
Food Bank: Agreed to defer this until after Christmas at a match to be agreed with OUFC.
Big Brothers Big Sisters: No progress update available in RW’s absence.
Cherwell Larder: PP has had further contact, to be discussed outside the meeting.
Africa: No immediate progress to report.
AOB
- Fair Game affiliation for OUFC: This had been suggested by a Trust member. We would discuss this idea outside the meeting.
- International postponement rules: A member had asked us to consider leading a campaign to adjust the rules on international postponements to increase by 1 or 2 the number of call-ups required to trigger a postponement. The committee view was that we didn’t have the ‘bandwidth’ of effort necessary to devote time to this at the present time.
End of meeting
The meeting closed at 8.30pm. Date of next meeting to be agreed.