At tonight's Supporters Consultative Group (SCG) meeting, which started at a later time of 6pm, some lively debate centred around the still proposed move of the away fans from the Jewson stand onto one of the corners, with the club now preferring the corner between the Telegraph and NTL stand in blocks 24-27. There are many reasons for this but one is a projected £300,000 per year projected saving in policing costs.
However the Arena safety group, and it must be said the SCG itself, prefer the scoreboard corner of blocks 13 to part of 17 (needed to include the disabled platform for the away section).
Not only would this allow supporters to recreate a singing home section to help sing across the away support, but the concourse area is much better than that behind the Telegraph stand with a wider area and it must be said better spread outlet points. This was seen on a brief tour of the Jewson stand, during which an area that could be developed for a home members sports bar (the proceeds from which would go to the club and not to Compass) which we're sure would be a huge hit.
Further benefits could be the use of a lounge area already behind the stand for Diamond club members with very easy access from there to the seating areas.
Further meetings with Arena Coventry Ltd (ACL) and the emergency services are planned but the time is fast approaching where a decision will have to be made, to enable plans to be put into place for any building work to commence, as well as the determining of season ticket pricing for next season.
Other items discussed were the requests for players and staff to be available for fans forums, one of which will hopefully cover the Leamington,
The football League are looking into using a company to rival EBay for the selling of football memorabilia, which in turn the club would look to use to auction off a match day mascot position to the highest bidder.
With reference to the supporters cars that were attacked and damaged whilst at the Bristol match, the club are passing the details onto ACL and will also be requesting that, until the casino is completed, Car Park A is used for supporters cars whilst travel to the away match. As stated earlier on this site those who were unfortunately affected this weekend should contact ACL directly to progress this.
Although it is still in the embryonic stage the club are looking into an ‘International' day at the Ricoh for the Barnsley home match, where they would like to invite members of the various international communities along to the match, along with hoped for senior FA figures, to have a family day out and show that Coventry is at the forefront of such initiatives. This would hopefully include special packages for overseas supporters attending the match, so watch out for further details as this takes shape over the coming weeks where a pitch blessing by the leaders of
Back to Highfield road there is a proposal to have a mosaic designed to represent the past history of the site and Sarah Paine of the council is after thoughts and ideas on what this design should look like. She can be contacted in the first instance on 76-550564 only.
The group then discussed the raising of money for the club by using the un-issued share mountain that is currently available, for not only would this generate much needed capital but it would also allow many supporters to have a closer bond with the club. The Sky Blue Trust has advocated this for some time and has in the past proposed a ‘save and purchase' scheme for supporters. The suggestion was positively received and will be investigated further.
It was mentioned that the Railway Arches were opened for the Boxing Day match allowing supporters much better access to the Tesco's site, but it appeared to have been closed for the following match, plus it seems to be susceptible to flooding given the recent bad weather conditions in the city. The club will raise this with ACL and it will also be raised at Wednesdays Monitoring group meeting with ACL.