SFC launches Supporter Services

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

By Terry Trevis, LSSC match ticket co-ordinator

Last night I attended the what turned out to be the launch of the Saints Supporters Services Department at St.Mary’s.

This department will be set up primarily to deal with Supporters Relations, Co-Ordination of Supporters Clubs, Memberships, Match Tickets, Travel, Stadium Tours, Set up of Club Museum and Saints Insurance Services.

Launch was presided over by Lawrie McMenemy, Andy Oldknow (Commercial Director) & David Luker who will be head of this new department, and besides members of some of the supporters groups was also attended by representatives of local media.

The Department's main aims can be gleaned from this article - http://saintsfc.co.uk/news/?page_id=7521 -, but its first priority is to get supporters representation on the board.

With this in mind they need to have 1650 members signed up to a recognised organisation e.g. Saints Trust (ST) , this could include Supporters Organisations who are affiliated to ST or another body altogether.

To get this organised they are proposing inviting a representative from each of the supporters groups to St Mary’s within the next month for possible a whole day to discuss the options and to find a way to enable Fans Representation on the board to become a reality.

With the timescales involved it seems to me that a representative will need to be chosen at your LSSC committee meeting next week, but also a decision as regarding whether or not London Saints wish to be part of any body needs to be put to our members.

One thing that should be stressed is that SFC in no way want to affect the Independence of the Individual Supporters Clubs, but what they are looking for is for each club to report to one supporter who then reports on to the board.

That supporter will then feedback from the board to the supporters clubs. This should work well with issues such as ticket prices and maybe may help members of supporters clubs to get discounted season tickets especially if they are travelling over 100 miles round trips to home games, something I believe Charlton already offer.

Also at the meeting was approached by Steve Goodwin (Saints Trust) about the possibility of doing another presentation to London Saints as he felt previous one had not gone down too well, also only about 12 members present at AGM, but more importantly because the circumstances had changed since with the new board in place but he feels ST still has important role to play in the future of the club especially regarding fan representation on the board.

I suggested to him that it might be possible for someone to come up to London if and when we have a public meeting with someone from the club E.g. Michael Wilde, and have passed on email addresses so they can contact us regarding the possibility of any meeting.

Hope this puts you all in the picture regarding last night meeting