OxVox meeting on Saturday 5 January 2008

1. There were 39 adults and 6 juniors present, mostly members with a sprinkling of non-members, plus Supporters’ Direct (SD) representative, Jacqui Forster.

2. Trevor Lambert opened the meeting and thanked people for attending. He asked non-members to consider joining the Trust. He also explained that an invitation to the meeting had been sent to Nick Merry (and Jim Smith). The running order would have changed had they turned up. As it was, Jacqui Forster was invited to give a short talk about SD in general before the meeting returned to local issues.

3. Jacqui described SD as being an organising outfit and tried to ensure that good ideas (and not so good ones) were shared between all trusts. She and her colleagues were there solely to provide a service to all affiliated trusts. SD was pleased to report that 13 trusts now run their clubs, and in some cases been instrumental in a club continuing to exist. One of its objectives is for each football club to have supporter representation on its Board and is pleased that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport holds a similar view.

SD intends to roll out a new initiative to train trust officers and encourage ordinary members to stand for election to the trust committee. OxVox volunteered for a further new initiative on ways of communicating with its members.

In response to questions Jacqui could not see how SD could improve dialogue between the Trust and the Football Club when the latter refused to respond to letters and invitations and had adopted a bunker mentality. She did add, however, that the BSP was very supportive of the trust movement. SD did not have a patron but a number of MPs, including the PM, were members of supporter trusts.

4. Turning to OUFC's situation, we discussed the current lack of communication from the club to the fans (both the trust and fans in general). This seemed to be a contributing factor to a loss of collective spirit, which along with the poor playing performances and the slide in gates and finances represented a serious threat to the Club's future. There was a debate about the Club’s wage bill and that £900K for 2007/08 was supposition in the absence of any update from the Club. The playing staff had changed since August and there was a school of thought that players retiring or leaving along with less expensive players being selected would have seen this figure reduced to help compensate for a lower income level. While we were not seeing the negativity the previous owner used to display towards the fans (saying in one interview that he was prepared to play games in an empty stadium), attendees agreed that the club needs to keep open the channels of communication in bad times as well as good.

All attendees agreed that we needed to know what the future plans were for the club, for example the level of future involvement of Ian Lenagan, and what the plan was for the club to rebuild on the field and in the community, and to stem the current losses and move towards a break even point as soon as possible.

The message to the committee was loud and clear and the following resolution was approved by a near unanimous vote (only 1 vote against:)

“The Trust will adopt a more assertive approach in its communications with the Club bearing in mind that supporters contribute £1.4m to the Club and deserve more consideration.”

Chris Davis
Secretary
9 January 2008