End of Season Update from the Chairman

I just wanted to give a quick end of season “Off the Pitch” update, as there’s been quite a lot going on, as ever, and I know people are conscious and keen to understand where we are with the redevelopment. It is progressing steadily with our partners Rengen.

There are a few plans being developed and a number of options, but fundamentally it’s about refurbishing the Grandstand and adding a couple of elements of residential property either side of the Grandstand. And we are making progress with the concepts, although we haven’t seen the financials yet, and that’s the next stage. But Rengen and ourselves are quietly confident that is moving in the right direction.

I think you are all pretty much aware that there is a plan to replace the grass pitch with a 3G (synthetic) pitch?  The rationale is financial, primarily, as it will transform our profit and loss for the Club, it turns us from making a small loss to making a small profit, which is fundamentally important for our long-term financial sustainability, consistently the number one priority for all us.

As many of you know, Peter Headington has been leading on the 3G project which is fantastic, and he’s done a great. Joy Saunders has also still been helping with the redevelopment, however we need some more help!

If you feel you could contribute to the successful running of the Club, whether in as sales or marketing role, providing administrative support, helping to organise volunteers or with maintenance around the ground, please contact us now by emailing info@bathcityfootballclub.co.uk.

Whilst we’re majority community-owned, we are still a limited company and have to run it as a business, so there’s a lot of work to be done, and we have just one full-time employee and the rest of us are all volunteers or work part time. Fundamentally the Club runs on volunteers. If you think about it, it’s a volunteer who runs the sales and marketing, puts news on the website and social media to let you all know what is going on, a volunteer who lets you in at the turnstiles, another does the interviews post-match and writes the newsletter, and the list goes on and on!

So, I’m really asking for you all to have a think about what else you could help with at the Club, whether it be a smaller role, a few hours helping on something you enjoys, or using your “day job” skills to help – e.g. setting up some macros and spreadsheets to upgrade our forecasting/budgeting – or stepping up to become a Director.

We rightly tightened our governance set-up over the last few years, so we can only do two three-year terms, and a number of people who have been involved with the Club for a long time are now stepping down over the summer, so we’re really looking for some new people to step up and fill some of those gaps. Have a think about what you could do for your Club and see where you could help a bit? Get in touch at info@bathcityfootballclub.co.uk.

It has been a good season, the highlight in many ways being the set-up of the women’s team but, again, that requires even more volunteers or it will overstretch the existing ones!

And for the men’s team it has been a good season, despite the terrible injury to Alex, and it’s been a delight to see his recovery continue. The impact of that was significant and we also lost some momentum around that time with terrible weather, but we bounced back and were knocking on the door of play-offs for quite some time and finished the season with the Somerset Cup victory.

So, ultimately, I just wanted to say a big “thank-you” for all your support this season and to also just have a think about what else you might be able to do as a volunteer to keep this amazing Club running well into the future.

Thanks a lot.

Nick