Coventry City Football Club
Supporters’ Consultative Group Meeting
Wednesday 17 November 2015, 6.30pm
Ryton Training Ground
M I N U T E S
Present: Darren Davies (DD), Robert Tidmarsh (RT), Steve Brown (SBr), Pat Raybould (PR), Dec Connolly (DC), Tynan Scope (TS), Chris McGrath (CM) , Ray Stevens (RS) Pat Abel (PA) Jim Brown (JM), Mike Garlick (MG), Colin Henderson (CH) Sandra Garlick (SG), Peter Ward (PW), Kieran Crowley (KC), Dave Busst (DB), Chris Anderson (CA).
Apologies
Jonathan Strange, Steve Barnett, Kev Monks, CJ Joiner, Mark Hornby.
Introduction
The Chairman welcomed everyone to the meeting which had been called at short notice following the resignation of Steve Waggott and the appointment of Chris Anderson.
PW announced that Ian Davidson had stepped down as representative of the London Supporters Club, and welcomed Colin Henderson, Chairman of CCLSC.
CCFC Update
PW welcomed Chris Anderson to the meeting and asked the SCG group to introduce themselves in turn.
CA gave an overview of his career so far in and out of football. CA advised he looks forward to working with the SCG. He is already spending long days getting to grips with the new task, and recognises the scale of the challenge ahead.
CA explained how it is still early days since his appointment at the club and that he is carrying out a full audit on the commercial side of business and praised the way the football side is currently being run. Asked whether he had met Wasps’ representatives, CA said he has as part of his introduction to the role at the club.
The group also raised the possibility of volunteers helping the club in certain areas and CA said this will be an avenue he’ll be looking into as part of the audit. Ticketing issues were raised i.e, inability of buy coach tickets online and on tablet devices, and CA said he is already aware of the problem and that it will form part of the audit.
AOB
DD raised the problem of larger size football shirts not being available (XXL) and was there anything the group could do. TS advised the group that there needs to be a minimum of 500 to 1000 in each size to place an order with the manufacturers. KC advised the best way to tackle the problem would be to petition how many people would be interested and go back to the manufacturers with the number. KC added other clubs suffer from this problem.
PW asked DD how the North Warwickshire Supporters group was going. DD advised that he had ordered memberships cards and badges and when they were ready he would speak to KC to raise the profile of the group.
PR was very happy to report how successful the Junior Sky Blues had become. There are always many children attending to Family Zone each Saturday match day. At the Gillingham game Kirk Stephens is attending in order to donate £150. It was hoped that Tony Mowbray would make an appearance in the future.
RT updated the group with the progress of the Young Supporters group is now up to 200+ members on Twitter, and steadily growing.
TS advised that the club is once again re-engaging with local business and hoping to bring new businesses on board along with old businesses who have returned.
MG suggested that it might be a good idea to put 2 large Sky Blue flags on seats behind the each goal. TS said he would look at this possibility.
CH raised the problem when travelling away of being told to ‘sit anywhere’ even though the tickets had seat numbers. For CCLSC this was a particular problem as the fans travel together in a group and therefore want to sit together. KC said he would speak to the clubs about this before each away game.
JM raised concerns the club aren’t utilised the database of supporters enough with e-mails and marketing initiatives. KC said the club operate a database with over 70,000+ people on it and said it is utilised regularly. JM also raised the poor condition of the CCFC Wall of Fame bricks and TS advised the club has already raised the issue with the stadium.
PA spoke about the Secondary Schools project (tickets for schools) she was very happy how this was going but needed more contacts who are in the schools who are fans. She asked the group is they had any names to share. DC was also happy how this was progressing.
CM was pleased to report back that finally blocks 36 and 37 had a hot beverage kiosk open closed by to save a long trek to the other side of the arena.
Next SCG Meeting TBC.