Club Update
The club has met with NLC to obtain clarity regarding their recent announcement referencing their arrangements with the club and in particular our tenure at Broadwood.
We have been advised that currently no guarantees can be offered to the club beyond May 2023 although consideration may be given to an extension at a later date. The consequences will not be lost on anyone and whilst we will continue dialogue with our landlord, we must respond to the current situation. We will at all times return to the table with our landlords to consider any options, but like NLC, we need to look to our own priorities.
Supporters will be aware, we had established two working groups working in parallel to look at making Broadwood viable as we work towards our ambitions to move up the league, but also to revisit relocation should Broadwood not be a viable solution. Events have clearly overtaken any plans to focus on Broadwood other than in the very short term. We would like to express our appreciation to the Broadwood group for their work, and perhaps see some of their ideas in action whilst we have an opportunity to test them. In time, many of the initiatives suggested will be put into practice at a new home.
Any project to relocate the club will be a vast undertaking. Therefore, to support that project the board has appointed all four members of the relocation working group to join the board and to lead on developing a proposal for the relocation of the club. Although their principal focus will be on relocation, collectively they bring a wide range of skills and expertise which will benefit the board in other key areas.
The board, therefore, are delighted to welcome the relocation group members Graeme Kelly, David Halliday, Paul Pettigrew and Bryan Macpherson. The group has already completed a great deal of legwork to date and have a clear view of available options for a permanent home with the autonomy necessary to support the ambitions of every Clyde supporter.
It goes without saying that this is likely to be one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the club. If ever there was time for unity and single-minded support for the Bully Wee, it is now.
We were sad to see the recent departure of our Finance Director Andy Allan who brought a dimension to the club that few will appreciate, hopefully it will not be lost to us. Stepping into the breach on an interim basis is former chairman John Alexander.
An owners meeting has been intimated and we are still coordinating a date for this. However we felt it inappropriate to rush a meeting until we were sure of our position with our landlord. Clearly the benefit of a meeting is the opportunity to answer questions candidly, so we will confirm that date in the next week. In the meantime, the Q&A will return to the club forum. We anticipate that there might be several initial questions so please bear with us getting back up to speed with answers.
We are delighted to have the support of our main sponsor Craig Rodger of Homesbook Factoring who has joined the board of our charitable foundation as head of Grassroots Football, a particular passion for Craig. The foundation is a critical piece of the jigsaw if we are to successfully secure a home of our own, Craig is backing us to do that.
If, like Craig and the others, you would like to offer support around the club and foundation, please, in the first instance contact Gordon Thomson at gordon.thomson@clydefc.co.uk who will collate offers of support. Currently, we are looking at skills that might feed into our project such as legal, architecture, design, engineering, as well as business planning, fund raising and community development. This is not an exhaustive list so please don’t hesitate to come forward as we are sure to find somewhere for everyone to contribute.
If there is something that all of us need to embrace, it is that we need to be one team and support everyone to succeed. Be assured that we will not be short of detractors outside the club, we will only succeed with unity and commitment within all of the Clyde family.