RamsTrust's latestest QA session a success
By RamsTrust
October 17 2003
A succesful and entertaining evening was had by all at the RamsTrust's second question and answer session at the Spot Banqueting centre in Derby.

RAMSTRUST’S Q & A FORUM
16th October 2003
The Spot Banqueting Suite, Derby.

Panelists: Steve Nicholson – Sports Editor of the Derby Evening Telegraph
Neil Hallam – Derby Trader Columnist
MC: Andrew James – former East Midlands Today and VisionRams Presenter.

(late apology from Robbie Van Der Laan)

The Spot Banqueting Suite played host to one of the best evenings’ entertainment for Rams’ fans in a long time, and it was a shame that only 63 people turned up. It was non-attenders who missed out because there was inside information, humour, football knowledge and conviviality.

Most of the evening was taken up with pre-submitted questions from Trust members and there was ample opportunity at the end for questions from the floor.

To the question asking the panel who had been the best player thus far this season, Steve said Michael Johnson without hesitation and Neil felt that all had played well.
The second question asked about where we would finish this season and Neil gave the opinion that anything but relegation would be a triumph and Steve said that mid-table was probable but new investment was the key although very few clubs in Division 1 have much depth in the playing squad.

Turning to which area of the side the panel felt needed strengthening first, Steve said wide defensive and wide midfield needed more balance whilst Neil thought a ‘natural goal scorer’, stressing that he didn’t mean a target man, and also we could use a creator midfielder in the style of Robbie Van Der Laan.

Answering a question about relegation clauses in players’ contracts given the financially disastrous consequences of leaving the Premiership, Steve stated that the days of the 4 year contract are over and 2 years was becoming more the norm and Neil referred to WBA who are perceived as a ‘model club’ in dealing with the situation and noted that even Managers were getting shorter contracts, citing Steve Coppell’s 18 month contract recently signed.

The next question required the panel to assist in clarifying the position of Rod Thomas as Director of Football. Steve played a straight bat and quoted what he had been told; that Rod was ‘a link between the Chairman and the Training Ground’.
Neil said that the appointment of George Burley had in his understanding been largely driven by Fred Vinton and the Co-op Bank, and that Lionel Pickering had wanted to have his ‘own man’ in there.

Asked if they believed that the Pride Park pitch contributed to injuries, Steve said no, he believed it was so good it simply invited better teams to come and take the game to Derby and Neil agreed saying that pitches are now harder and firmer making injury problems more prevalent and clubs needing larger squads.

A question to Steve asking which printing error was the worst he had been responsible for raised some laughter, and he said it was a missing hyphen which led to a headline of ‘The vultures are on us Cox’.
Neil recalled a DET error of many years ago where on the Women’s Page the headlines and photographs had been interchanged. A photograph of a Mrs Earnshaw who was the new Mayor had been placed alongside an article urging women to be selective with what they put in their handbags. Unfortunately the headline over the first citizen’s photograph had read ‘This bulging bag is so unsightly’ !!

A question to Neil as to whether his column would ever be available for non Derby residents to read on the web yielded a disappointing answer. Mirror Group Newspapers are not prepared to allow his columns (their copyright) to be given out free to people who are not paying for it, although the question is regularly asked of them.
Neil clarified that he was not employed by The Trader and that he was a freelance writer – in fact the only surviving one in the Derby Trader.

The panel was asked if they thought there was any correlation between the financial/ownership position and the on-pitch decline.
Steve felt there was a knock on but said that the decline had started when they failed in their chasing of a dream. Some poor players had been signed and money had been thrown at a few players. He felt the decline had started further back than was generally thought.
Neil concurred that there was a big correlation, stating that in his opinion it started 5 or 6 years ago when Jim Smith was allowed to stay on too long.


Three questions concerning the club ownership were then put together for overall comments.
The questions related to the panel’s opinion as to the ‘reasonableness’ of Lionel Pickering’s preconditions for selling, further updated information on the progress of any sale and how were the Chairman and the Bank reacting to fans’ pressure for ownership change.
Steve said that the change of ownership would only happen when agreement had been reached between Lionel Pickering, the Co-operative Bank and a new investor, nothing else could drive it. Nothing new had happened in the last few weeks, there were not even new rumours about old rumours! Steve didn’t feel that it was unreasonable for someone who had invested their personal wealth to want something back out of it when they handed over the ownership.

Neil of course was on his favourite topic with these questions. He felt that the pre-conditions were not unreasonable but were ‘unrealistic’. He referred to an enquiry from local businessman Mike Horton some years ago when he had been quoted £70m to buy the club. This had gone down to £35m to the next enquirer and in a recent radio interview Lionel Pickering had quoted that as little as £5m could buy it.
It seemed that the personal guarantees were the main stumbling block and that unless that situation could be resolved then we would remain at an impasse. Peter Gadsby & John Kirkland had very strongly advised Lionel against taking on these guarantees but he had gone ahead.
The situation was further compounded by Lionel’s refusal to accept bids for players amounting to around £12m immediately after relegation when the debt to the Bank had been around £15m. That was a very bad decision, and although Lionel felt that the players who took us down could get us back up, that view was not shared by too many supporters.

Neil thought that Lionel had genuinely believed he had a sale agreed with Stuart Webb – although it was not known if that had included Charles Clowes or was Stuart Webb alone.

It was the above poor business decisions that had led to the current situation, and Neil questioned what was meant by ‘having the best interests of DCFC at heart’. He felt that the fans had been kept totally in the dark and been treated very badly and that Lionel had been given ‘crap advice’ by his Media Department.
The club should be turning to the fans and keeping them informed as the fans were the biggest investors in football by buying season tickets, match tickets & merchandise and more widely with their BBC licence fees, purchase of satellite dishes and subscriptions and patronage of advertising.

Andrew James drew the first half of the evening to a close at this point and there was a break for guests to complete their heritage quizzes and make some purchases from the RamsTrust merchandise stall.


The second half of the evening continued with pre-submitted questions as they hadn’t been completed by the interval.

The first questions were to Neil Hallam about his banishment from DCFC press facilities and also asking his opinion of the fact that a RamsTrust programme column had been pulled because it advertised this forum in which he was participating.
His immediate response to the programme incident was ‘Predictable, but petty and tiresome’. Referring to the ban on media facilities, Neil commented that this had cost him a lot of money and that he could in fact have served a prison sentence for three burglaries during the time of his ban. He had no idea of the reason except that half way through the last season at the Baseball Ground he had received a letter from Keith Loring informing him of the decision and stating his ‘journalism was injurious to the feelings of supporters’. This raised laughter from the evening’s audience.

Asked what he had done to upset Radio Derby, he commented that he didn’t like Graham Richards and never had. Graham Richards was a barrister and there were laws preventing him (Neil Hallam) from standing up to represent people in court but Graham Richards could pass himself off as a journalist. He said he had upset him and he didn’t care.
He would care if he had upset Ian Hall because the man genuinely cared and wanted what was best despite being blessed with a voice that worked better than Horlicks.
Neil had at some point called radio ‘social & intellectual pollution’ and that had upset them.
Neil stressed that his columns were personal views on general situations as match reports and news stories were well covered elsewhere and so he tried very much to put across the views of the average fans.
He didn’t always get it right, he said, and reminded the audience that he had been the man who had confidently predicted that Derek Hales would be Derby’s Gerd Muller!

Responding to a question as to what role RamsTrust should take with the club – should they be acting as a protest group or should they get ‘closer’ to the club, the responses from the panel were almost identical.
Steve advised us to stay completely independent and not to compromise our position. He felt that we did some excellent things and although he didn’t always agree with everything we said, overall he felt we were doing a really good job.

Neil felt we had the balance absolutely right and agreed that we must stay independent. He surprisingly said that in his opinion we shouldn’t aim for a seat on the DCFC Board but should stay outside of it and be completely independent.

Steve added that he agreed about not seeking a Board seat as we were now a body that the DCFC Board and Press Office have to take notice of. He told us to defend the traditions and heritage of DCFC, and in particular things like the players wearing blue shirts in the away game at Forest. It might have been a good marketing ploy but it flew in the face of our proud tradition when we could and should play our local rivals in our own proper colours.

Neil believed that RamsTrust was largely responsible for the departure of Bryan Richardson from Pride Park last year. He said our “great outraged squeal” had caused a rapid rethink on Richardson’s role at DCFC and hastened his exit.

The final pre-submitted question concerned newspaper reports this week that Keith Loring had moved back onto Pride Park with his new consultancy business and the panel was asked if they thought he would ever have any future involvement with DCFC.
Both panelists believed that after eight years of working at the club that Keith Loring had a loyalty and affinity to us and Steve’s response of ‘who knows?’ left the door wide open.
Neil reported on widely known rumours that Keith was said to be involved with a consortium trying to buy the club which showed that his return could never be completely ruled out.

There were then a lot of questions asked from the floor about opinions on players, and the overall situation at the club.

Responding to a question about the overdue accounts, Neil Hallam said that there must be some concern that as the accounts have not been filed there must be a feeling that the auditors will not sign them off to show that DCFC is operating as a going concern.
He referred to the ‘ticking clock’ on the RamsTrust website showing how long overdue the accounts were and said what a good idea this was. In his view the club should be issuing the supporters with full details of how the club is operating NOW, not 18 months ago which is all we would know if the overdue accounts were filed right now.

Another question referred to the position of the Co-operative Bank – they were sitting pretty collecting all this interest at 15%, if the club goes into administration then Peter Gadsby or Stuart Webb would be able to buy it for peanuts. A lot had been said about how much Lionel Pickering had put in, but how much exactly had he taken out?

Neil said he didn’t know and nor did anyone else who hadn’t seen the figures with which Steve concurred. Neil said he knew that Lionel had a large entourage of friends who received free hospitality and the club could no longer afford that. Over years that alone must have amounted to a large sum of money going out of the club.

Neil concluded the evening’s questions by stating that when banks lose money they usually screw someone else to pay for it!

It was now getting very late and the thoroughly enjoyable event had over-run quite considerably. Andrew James wound the evening up by thanking RamsTrust for the opportunity they had given to fans and wishing us well for the future. Steve and Neil both said how delighted they had been to participate and that they had done so to show support for the excellent work that RamsTrust was doing.

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