Rolls: No chasing the dream 
NEW Weymouth chairman and owner George Rolls wants to put the “joke” of the past behind the club in the search of a stabilised future.
And on his first full working day at the Terras, he declared that a new stadium and Blue Square Premier Football would be a major part of the future.
However, the ex-Cambridge chairman assured supporters that he won’t go “chasing the dream” at the expense of the club’s future, while doing his best to finally put the Terras’ recent past behind them.
“I want to get back to the level that I think Weymouth is, which is at the top echelons of non-League football,” said Rolls. “A big part of it is getting on with the landlord and making sure they deliver the new stadium that is in the option agreement.
“You get a new stadium and get the income streams from a new stadium then that’s when a business can stand on its own two feet and kick on another step.
“There’s not many clubs that move to a new stadium that don’t do well.
“At the moment our income streams are very much disabled here.”
He added: “In five years’ time the club has got to be looking at being in a new stadium. If it’s not in a new stadium or at least the bricks being built on a new stadium then the club is always going to struggle because of the income levels.”
ON THE PITCH
Although the club languish at the foot of Blue Square South, the new chairman is keen to bring success back to the Terras on the field.
“On the pitch I’m not going to promise anything,” said Rolls. “I’m not one of these people who will come out and say in five years we’re going to be playing in the Football League because realistically that’s not going to happen.
“Ideally we’ll be a Blue Square Premier club, but if we’re in the Blue Square South we’ll be a club that’s got money in the bank and sustaining the support, meaning that for generations there’s going to be a Weymouth.”
The man in the manager’s seat should also be the man who has turned the team around with some tremendous performances in recent weeks – none more so than the 3-0 win over local rivals Dorchester Town.
“Ian Hutchinson is the manager of this football club and while he is manager he will choose what his players are and what transfers he gets in,” said Rolls. “All we can do as a board is guide him and say we have player X who is on X amount less than player Y and does he fit?
“If he says yes then we’ll go and make it happen for him. The only difference that Ian will find is that he won’t be in charge of actually dealing with the contracts – that will be down to myself because in our experience we tend to negotiate better than a footballer.”
He also hopes to use his contacts to find players for Hutchinson, not just from his old club Cambridge.
“Because I was at Cambridge doesn’t mean we’re going to go and pick players out from Cambridge,” said Rolls. “The manager might not think any of them are good enough and at the end of the day he is the guy who lives and dies by his results so he has to be the guy that has to choose what players come in and what players go.”
SUPPORTERS AND THE COMMUNITY
“The fans are the lifeblood of any club and I think if you had seen Weymouth go out of business on Friday then you would have had a lot of upset people around,” said Rolls. “It’s about building on the fanbase which I know this club has already got and that will only happen with you performing out on the pitch on a Saturday or a Tuesday.
“The one thing we are going to do is allow children free entrance for the rest of the season as long as they are with a paying adult.”
He also hopes that will begin to repair the damage with a community disillusioned by the Terras’ constant turmoil of recent times.
“It’s going to take time for them to believe in us and trust us,” said Rolls. “We understand that, we are not here for any agendas and we just want the fans to come back, support the team and make sure we stay up this year.”
FUTURE OF THE BOARD
The board’s main task will be to service the mounting debt the club has, and Rolls plans to begin to do that with sensible budgeting.
Pranas Preidzius, a business associate of Rolls and a member of the Lithuanian Chamber of Commerce in the UK, will join as vice-chairman to help run the rule over the books.
Former Terras’ director Ian Winsor will also re-join the board, while the Terras Trust and the Supporters Club – or an amalgamation of the two – will also be represented.
Proposed buyer Chris Ryan will not be joining the board at this stage, and no snap decisions will be made on anyone else.
Rolls said: “We’ll look at each person on their merit and they have got to have a role and responsibility before joining the board and we have to make sure every other board member is happy with them.”
He added: “We’re lucky that me and Pranas aren’t Weymouth supporters, we’ll look at this purely as a business and we’ll make sure we can’t spend what we haven’t got.
“We’re a long way yet from getting the income through the door that we need to break even so it’s going to be 18 months of hard work. All I can promise you is that my board of directors will work hard to deliver what we say we’re going to deliver.”
THE PAST
Although Rolls pumped £50,000 into the club on Friday to become its owner, he is still not 100 per cent certain of what the situation is with the club’s debt.
However, he will sitting down over the next few days to formulate his plan of action.
“We’ve got a plan in place where we want to be but we need to actually find out what the true nitty gritty of the place is,” he said. “It’s been an absolute joke here for too long a time.”
Rolls has had the opportunity to speak with the club’s major creditors, including former chairman Malcolm Curtis, and agree payment plans with them.
He said: “Malcolm Curtis has been very good on the telephone with me and has agreed certain plans back for his loans.
“I don’t think there are any hidden agendas from Malcolm, he has got the club at heart.
“What happened and why things happened, I’m not interested in that but Malcolm Curtis could have put this club into liquidation last week if he wished to and he didn’t.”
PERSONAL LIFE
Committing to a club 200 miles away will clearly impact on Rolls’ home life as well as his business life, but he has the full support of those most important to him.
He said: “My wife Amanda is great, she doesn’t like football that much herself but she knows it’s always been a passion of mine, from going when I played in earlier days and she backs me in whatever I want to do.
“We’re looking at this as a business as well. I’m not going to be a plastic person who comes in here and has a Weymouth scarf wrapped round my shoulders from day one because we’re not Weymouth supporters.
“We want Weymouth to win and will cheer them on but this is a really exciting challenge for us and if things go well and go where we want it to go then I can see us relocating and moving the family down here anyway.
“That’s how much of a commitment that my wife is prepared to do and the children as well. I’m sure my two girls will love playing on the beach in the summer.”
If Weymouth FC get involved with George Rolls they will pay the price.
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