Representatives from the Trust attended a meeting at the Club on Monday evening with Andrew Kelly, Tony Pockney, Nick Grindrod and new recruit to the Board Simon Gauge.
Upon walking in, we were told that in the Board meeting that afternoon, Interim Chairman Andrew Kelly had stepped down from his position as Chairman, and subsequently he would be replaced by Simon Gauge who was voted in by his fellow Directors.
We were told that an announcement of the change in Chairmanship was forthcoming as soon as the Club had received the approval of the necessary paperwork from the EFL. Andrew Kelly would be remaining on the Club’s Board of Directors to oversee the Club’s Academy.
This was our first contact with Simon Gauge, and initial thoughts were that he came across as someone who said all the right things, was aware of what was needed to be done to turn things around for the better at the club and was keen to get started on making things right as soon as possible.
We recalled how one of the issues that former Chairman Andrew Kilpatrick suffered from was that fans didn’t know who he was. He had come to the Club and was unknown to most supporters despite him attending a large number of games, and few opportunities were taken to address this issue, something we had pointed out to him at the time.
Therefore it was important that as the new Chairman, Simon took the opportunity to ensure this was not repeated as well as his fellow new directors, and we suggested that he could do a podcast as a way of introducing himself to supporters. The Club took this on board and would look to address this.
At this moment in time, the three new Directors have acquired a nominal amount of shares but have deposited their Board “buy in” and will be looking for a share issue to be approved by shareholders at the earliest opportunity. We asked whether there would be an opportunity for supporters to purchase shares and were told that was something they would be looking at.
Before the events of the last few months, the Trust had been working on the first draft of a Fans’ Charter which set out a twelve month programme of engagement with the Supporters. We provided the Directors with a copy of this and a promise to work on that with them.
We were keen for a meeting between the Full Trust Board to meet with the new Board of Directors at an early opportunity and will be looking to get this sorted asap.