Sad Days For Stags

I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but Mansfield Town have been put up for sale today as the nightmare of losing their Football League membership two years ago continues ~ and it only goes to underline the massive achievement and necessity of OUR club getting out of The Conference when it did at the second attempt.

Former Chairman Andrew Perry headed a three man consortium who bought the club for a pound from former owner Keith Haslam but unfortunately he retained ownership of the Field Mill Ground and still receives rent for it from them. Thus they have the problem of running a professional football club without the income from the stadium apart from gate money rather like the Oxford United situation with Firoz Kassam.

Back in the summer Perry decided he had endured enough and needed to devote more time to his family business and family members and so resigned leaving Andrew Saunders as acting chairman plus two other directors but minus the £125,000 the former chairman had pledged to the club for this season. Thus they have found themselves having to pump in around £10,000 a WEEK between them and at the same time they took the painful decision to close their Centre of Excellence. Despite this they appointed former Gull and all round nice guy Paul Hall as their Head of Youth, but already he has been made redundant and the rest of the development programme closed in order to save the thousand pounds a week it takes to run it.

At a time when OUR club are pushing the boat out and re-establishing the youth development programme that was so disastrously closed by Mike Bateson, spare a thought for a very similar football club to our own and for a very popular and respected former player of ours also.

There but for the grace of God go Torquay United!