Supporters' Trust announce election drive

The Bolton Wanderers Supporters’ Trust has announced it will hold its elections during March and April – with interested parties encouraged to stand for election.

Registration is now open for anyone who wishes to become a candidate – but they must register as a trust member by February 14.

Open registration then runs from February 17 to March 16 for members who wish to stand for election.

Those who wish to vote in the elections must register by March 9. Ballot packs will be issued from March 23 with voting closing on April 6. Results will be announced on April 15.

Current board members Terrence Rigby and Maggie Tetlow will stand down but could seek re-election. As a result, four places on the board are now up for grabs.

A statement read: “If they decide to leave the board, they leave with the massive thanks of the members for the time, effort and passion for BWFC displayed over recent years, especially through the troubled period leading up to and including the administration process.”

It added: “An independent and responsible Trust can only help in securing the stability and sustainability of our beloved club and it is hoped that the new board members will be able to bring new ideas as to how such an aim can be achieved.

“It is therefore hoped that as many members as possible will seriously consider standing for election to the board.”

Source

Good to see that they will meet the end of January deadline they set for themselves.

Oh wait a minute - they haven't!

Quelle surprise.

Put yourself forward sluffy, I'll vote for you.

The thread heading could equally be, "Supporters' Trust announce election drivel."
 Just what has said Supporters' Trust ever done for us? Honest question.  I was a member on launch but soon became disillusioned by their actions, or lack of them.
 I wonder what they are offering to make me change my mind.

Natasha Whittam wrote:Put yourself forward sluffy, I'll vote for you.

You'd be the only one!

But thank you anyway.

Joking aside the long and protracted sale of the club from Anderson's ownership - and the subsequent palaver of Administration and the comic and bizarre intervention by the likes of Bassini should by now have underlined my point I made right from the very beginning that the ST simply isn't fit for purpose - and has never been - in being able to save the club when it needs to be - they simple do not have the resources to do so - nor never will.

Their real role is when there is nothing left for other people to fight over to bring everybody together and help to start to get the club going again - maybe even as a phoenix club rising from the ashes.

The ST as it stands now is irrelevant and I think is now widely seen as such by most people and accordingly it wouldn't surprise me in the least if once again insufficient interest is shown in people wanting to stand in their elections and be willing to help them causing the current board members to perpetually get returned without the need for a vote to take place.

Only Iles perpetually attempts to keep them in the public spotlight and even he's now resorted to reproduce their article word for word, without attempting to embellish it as he's been prone to do so in the past either in his article or twitter comments or both.

A half decent journalist would have written an article long before now as to what went wrong with the ST from its initial overwhelming support of it from its birth (I'm fairly certain I stood alone at the time saying that the ST was being set up for the wrong reasons seemingly by a group of people wanting to gain ownership of the club for themselves) to almost total apathy towards it and universal lack of trust and judgement in those who have run it more or less from day one.

To be fair, Sluffy, you had prior knowledge of one of the ST's 'leading lights' but, for those of us who hadn't, there were plenty of reasons to be mistrustful of the 'Sports Shield consortium' whilst the ST initially appeared to have one or two on board with some commercial accumen. They soon disappeared and when KA took control of the club and got rid of the useless Holdsworth (at a cost) the club was moving in the right direction whilst the ST, in cahoots with Holdsworth, wasn't.

The informal alliance between the ST and the BN proved to be a perpetually poisonous menace and eventually resulted in a lynch mob mentality amongst supporters and others who ought to have known better, but didn't.

The governance failures of the ST are several but pale into insignificance when compared with their other failings.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:To be fair, Sluffy, you had prior knowledge of one of the ST's 'leading lights' but, for those of us who hadn't, there were plenty of reasons to be mistrustful of the 'Sports Shield consortium' whilst the ST initially appeared to have one or two on board with some commercial accumen. They soon disappeared and when KA took control of the club and got rid of the useless Holdsworth (at a cost) the club was moving in the right direction whilst the ST, in cahoots with Holdsworth, wasn't.

The informal alliance between the ST and the BN proved to be a perpetually poisonous menace and eventually resulted in a lynch mob mentality amongst supporters and others who ought to have known better, but didn't.

The governance failures of the ST are several but pale into insignificance when compared with their other failings.

I did have prior knowledge of one of the 'leading lights' as you say but my judgement of them wasn't based on that but rather what an ST (any ST) was intended to do.

The ST's were born out of one of those 'feel good' (but short lived) government initiatives of engaging more public involvement and say in things - in this case local football clubs.

The ST's umbrella governing body that has since lost its government funding and merged with another body (which to had its government funding cut also) stated that ST's intention should ultimately be community ownership of clubs.

Until they accomplished that their aim was to secure power and influence over those who did own the clubs.

Clearly no owner pumping millions into his business is going to give some random johnny a say in it, neither are ST's capable of funding clubs with multi-million pound turnovers, so in the case of BWFC and most/all of the clubs in the league the ST's reason for being is clearly unattainable and thus they are not fit for the purpose intended.  The model is clearly aimed at owning the little community village football team clubs and not clubs with any financial requirements such as Premier League clubs.

The only time a ST could help out BWFC is when there is no money or assets for anyone to fight over and they become the focus for people to begin again rising from the ashes so to speak.

It all seemed pretty obvious to me from the start but others decided that it was always about a personal issue of mine.

It never was, I'm not that type of person in real life anyway.

I do agree though that the ST had clear links to Holdsworth and got involved in the clubs internal politics to get Anderson out and fed Iles misleading gossip and financial input for him to tweet, thus stirring up all the shit and causing everything to ultimately turn toxic.

All water under the bridge now but the bottom line is that the ST that the people who formed and ran it (for their own personal aims and ambitions of ownership) was never feasible as such, as now has been proved and demonstrated to be the case with everything that happened in recent months.

Sluffy wrote:

Ten Bobsworth wrote:To be fair, Sluffy, you had prior knowledge of one of the ST's 'leading lights' but, for those of us who hadn't, there were plenty of reasons to be mistrustful of the 'Sports Shield consortium' whilst the ST initially appeared to have one or two on board with some commercial accumen. They soon disappeared and when KA took control of the club and got rid of the useless Holdsworth (at a cost) the club was moving in the right direction whilst the ST, in cahoots with Holdsworth, wasn't.

The informal alliance between the ST and the BN proved to be a perpetually poisonous menace and eventually resulted in a lynch mob mentality amongst supporters and others who ought to have known better, but didn't.

The governance failures of the ST are several but pale into insignificance when compared with their other failings.

I did have prior knowledge of one of the 'leading lights' as you say but my judgement of them wasn't based on that but rather what an ST (any ST) was intended to do.

The ST's were born out of one of those 'feel good' (but short lived) government initiatives of engaging more public involvement and say in things - in this case local football clubs.

The ST's umbrella governing body that has since lost its government funding and merged with another body (which to had its government funding cut also) stated that ST's intention should ultimately be community ownership of clubs.

Until they accomplished that their aim was to secure power and influence over those who did own the clubs.

Clearly no owner pumping millions into his business is going to give some random johnny a say in it, neither are ST's capable of funding clubs with multi-million pound turnovers, so in the case of BWFC and most/all of the clubs in the league the ST's reason for being is clearly unattainable and thus they are not fit for the purpose intended.  The model is clearly aimed at owning the little community village football team clubs and not clubs with any financial requirements such as Premier League clubs.

The only time a ST could help out BWFC is when there is no money or assets for anyone to fight over and they become the focus for people to begin again rising from the ashes so to speak.

It all seemed pretty obvious to me from the start but others decided that it was always about a personal issue of mine.

It never was, I'm not that type of person in real life anyway.

I do agree though that the ST had clear links to Holdsworth and got involved in the clubs internal politics to get Anderson out and fed Iles misleading gossip and financial input for him to tweet, thus stirring up all the shit and causing everything to ultimately turn toxic.

All water under the bridge now but the bottom line is that the ST that the people who formed and ran it (for their own personal aims and ambitions of ownership) was never feasible as such, as now has been proved and demonstrated to be the case with everything that happened in recent months.

An efficient and focused supporters trust devoid of political ambition can be an incredibly positive asset for a football club as proven elsewhere.
At one extreme regarding ownership, the 50+1 system in the Bundesliga has given German clubs stability that English clubs can only dream of but being British, it will never happen here as our right-leaning tendencies would view responsible ownership by the fans as borderline Communist, despite it being an amazing success in a capitalist country.
Unfortunately this ST launched badly and has made little progress due to several reasons, not least their apparent complete absence of creative strategic thinking which has filtered down to their lack of (relevant) ambition, community engagement and resourcefulness.
But the principle is a sound one - if done correctly.

wanderlust wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

Ten Bobsworth wrote:To be fair, Sluffy, you had prior knowledge of one of the ST's 'leading lights' but, for those of us who hadn't, there were plenty of reasons to be mistrustful of the 'Sports Shield consortium' whilst the ST initially appeared to have one or two on board with some commercial accumen. They soon disappeared and when KA took control of the club and got rid of the useless Holdsworth (at a cost) the club was moving in the right direction whilst the ST, in cahoots with Holdsworth, wasn't.

The informal alliance between the ST and the BN proved to be a perpetually poisonous menace and eventually resulted in a lynch mob mentality amongst supporters and others who ought to have known better, but didn't.

The governance failures of the ST are several but pale into insignificance when compared with their other failings.

I did have prior knowledge of one of the 'leading lights' as you say but my judgement of them wasn't based on that but rather what an ST (any ST) was intended to do.

The ST's were born out of one of those 'feel good' (but short lived) government initiatives of engaging more public involvement and say in things - in this case local football clubs.

The ST's umbrella governing body that has since lost its government funding and merged with another body (which to had its government funding cut also) stated that ST's intention should ultimately be community ownership of clubs.

Until they accomplished that their aim was to secure power and influence over those who did own the clubs.

Clearly no owner pumping millions into his business is going to give some random johnny a say in it, neither are ST's capable of funding clubs with multi-million pound turnovers, so in the case of BWFC and most/all of the clubs in the league the ST's reason for being is clearly unattainable and thus they are not fit for the purpose intended.  The model is clearly aimed at owning the little community village football team clubs and not clubs with any financial requirements such as Premier League clubs.

The only time a ST could help out BWFC is when there is no money or assets for anyone to fight over and they become the focus for people to begin again rising from the ashes so to speak.

It all seemed pretty obvious to me from the start but others decided that it was always about a personal issue of mine.

It never was, I'm not that type of person in real life anyway.

I do agree though that the ST had clear links to Holdsworth and got involved in the clubs internal politics to get Anderson out and fed Iles misleading gossip and financial input for him to tweet, thus stirring up all the shit and causing everything to ultimately turn toxic.

All water under the bridge now but the bottom line is that the ST that the people who formed and ran it (for their own personal aims and ambitions of ownership) was never feasible as such, as now has been proved and demonstrated to be the case with everything that happened in recent months.

An efficient and focused supporters trust devoid of political ambition can be an incredibly positive asset for a football club as proven elsewhere.
At one extreme regarding ownership, the 50+1 system in the Bundesliga has given German clubs stability that English clubs can only dream of but being British, it will never happen here as our right-leaning tendencies would view responsible ownership by the fans as borderline Communist, despite it being an amazing success in a capitalist country.
Unfortunately this ST launched badly and has made little progress due to several reasons, not least their apparent complete absence of creative strategic thinking which has filtered down to their lack of (relevant) ambition, community engagement and resourcefulness.
But the principle is a sound one - if done correctly.

I was aware of the German model when first joining the ST, if not in any great detail. I'm also sympathetic to the importance of community involvement in matters of community interest or concern.

But I'm still no better informed how the German model might work in the UK and, in the four years since the inception of the ST, the annual cost of simply maintaining a Championship club has gone through the roof.

I first became aware, for sure, of Dean Holdsworth's relationship with the ST from a board member of the ST itself and concluded that Ken Anderson would have rightly been infuriated by Holdsworth's breach of obligations as a director of BWFC and at the ST for encouraging it. Later Dean Holdsworth's declarations under the obligations of the Companies Act simply did not hold water, whilst most of Ken Anderson's did.

We hear quite a lot about the ST but very little about the BWFC Development Association which quietly, year after year, has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for the club. Its income dropped by 2% in the last financial year. Anyone who doesn't presently contribute to Lifeline might just give it a thought.

P.S. Although a contributor myself, I know none of the volunteers that run it