Monthly Archive: December 2024

Cardiff City’s Fan Advisory Board yesterday issued a call for an urgent meeting with the club’s directors on behalf of all supporter groups. The Trust fully supports this initiative and you can read the letter issued below.

Trust chair Keith Morgan

Trust chair Keith Morgan sent the following message to members following a consultation over plans for Welsh clubs playing in EFL to take part in a proposed FAW League Cup. It would offer a route to UEFA club competitions.

As a Trust board, we thought it was a bad idea for a number of reasons but wanted to ask members for their views before taking a final position. That consultation has been completed and a majority of members responded in opposition to the proposal, which was also discussed at a recent club Fans’ Parliament meeting.

As a result, we will be opposing the proposal for the following key reasons.

• The primary reason for opposition is the serious risk of it impacting our participation in the EFL. This has been reinforced by a decision of the EFL – reported in the media recently –  to oppose the proposal in a letter to the Football Association.

• Cardiff City FC has also never fully explained – despite requests to them –  the structure of the proposed tournament. Would it just be for Under-21 teams, which the FAW would be likely to oppose, or would it be for the first team squad?

•       If it was the latter, as expected, we believe another competition would put further pressure on first team players and impact on the club’s already very stretched resources.

The Trust board strongly believes that nothing should be done that potentially threatens our status in the EFL.

Dear Members

Some Bluebirds fans on social media have questioned about the time it has taken to publish minutes of the Fan Advisory Board (FAB), complaining about what they see as a lack of action from the Trust.

We thought it would be useful to highlight to members how the FAB operates. Our two members who sit on the FAB, Keith Morgan (vice-chair) and Jeremy Williams are bound by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the FAB and the club.

This lays down how all parties should work together and crucially includes a confidentiality agreement that governs what can be discussed outside of the agreed minutes from each meeting.

Following each FAB meeting, the club is required to present a set of minutes to the FAB board for verification and, following their approval, the minutes should be published and made available to supporters within a target 10-day window post-meeting.

The recent FAB meeting was held shortly after the publication of the open letter from the FAB to the Club. It raised three key questions relating to the managerial situation, the club’s current and future plans, and a request for improved communication and transparency. The FAB viewed it as imperative that the published minutes from this meeting were as accurate as possible and reflected everything that was discussed in relation to the three key points raised in the open letter.

To achieve this, additional time was required by the club and the FAB board to review and agree a set of minutes that accurately reflected the meeting. We are pleased to report that they have now been agreed, published and made available for our members and supporters alike to review.

The Trust would like to make it crystal clear that it fully supports the open letter drawn up by FAB and backed by all fan groups. We remain disappointed with the club’s response and have been pursuing members’ concerns with the board.

We are pleased to confirm that Chief Executive, Ken Choo, has agreed to a proposed meeting with Trust representatives prior to the Coventry City game on New Year’s Day. We support the issues the FAB is pursuing but are looking for additional clarifications and also to raise specific issues raised by members, including the participation of the club in the proposed FAW cup competition.

Link – FAB Meeting Minutes (09-12-24).pdf

Cardiff City Supporters’ Trust Board

Trust board member Phillip Nifield handed over donations to Amanda Haydon-Hall, manager of the Pontypridd Foodbank

Despite the postponement of the Watford game on Saturday, the Trust was able today to hand over 15 bags and boxes of food to staff at Pontypridd Foodbank. The total weight of the donations was a whopping 96.02 kilograms.

Trust board member Phillip Nifield took the donations to Pontypridd and handed them to foodbank manager Amanda Haydon-Hall.

We’d like to thank those fans who dropped in bags of food ahead of the postponed game and also to staff at Cardiff City FC for their support and generous donations.

We will be happy to accept any other items at the Trust office (near Gate 5) before the Preston NE game on Wednesday. However, as mentioned previously if the items you are donating are not date sensitive, we’d ask you to keep them for later donation at the rearranged foodbank collection in 2025.

We wanted to clarify a matter concerning foodbank donations already bought by fans.

We will be happy to accept any items at the Trust office (near Gate 5) before the Preston NE game on Wednesday.

But ideally if the items you are donating are not date sensitive, we ask you to keep them for later donation at the rearranged collection in 2025.

Keeping the items for a later date will ensure we can give the Pontypridd Foodbank a large donation of food in one-go.

Thanks again for the support of all fans.