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Pic – James Mathie with Viv Williams and Alan Lewis from Swansea City’s Supporters’ Trust.

Trust Board members Tim Hartley and Brian Mertens joined supporters’ trusts representatives from across the region at Newport’s Rodney Parade ground to hear how the County trust is playing a major role in the development of the club.

Newport are in the Blue Square play offs and looking to get back into the Football League as soon as possible. The County trust has a 34% shareholding, two members on the club’s board of directors and a direct input into major decisions which affect fans. Despite having a multi-millionaire owner the trust is keen to ensure a sustainable long term financial model for the County.

James Mathie from Supporters Direct told the south west regional meeting about how they can list football grounds as assets of community value so that they cannot be separated from the club and sold off. He also updated us on the new Supporter Liaison Officer role, the Supporters Summit in June and on how SD is continuing to press the government to reform football governance.

Cardiff and Newport were joined by trusts from Exeter, Newport Rugby, Merthyr and Swansea. The evening offered a great opportunity to trusts to share experience and help each other. We will be looking at holding another pre season social event with Merthyr and we hope to do something before the Swansea game when we will at last meet in the Premiership.

And did you know that you can get into a Merthyr match for half price with your City season ticket?

We discussed all aspects of supporter engagement with SD and the trusts. There’s a lot of good work going on but amazingly most fans don’t even know supporters trusts exist so we all have a lot of work to do. Trusts everywhere face similar issues – driving membership and awareness as well as getting more people to volunteer. But the event was a great opportunity for us to strengthen links with other clubs and it again demonstrated the strength of the trust movement.

Tim Hartley

Trust Chairman

John Franklin of Chasetown Supporters Club sent this message to Tim Hartley, Trust chair. Chasetown are great friends of Cardiff City

Hi Tim,

On behalf of Chasetown FC Supporters Club may I send our congratulations on Cardiff City’s promotion to the Premiership. We, at Chasetown, are absolutely delighted that you will be playing at the top level of football next season. At your next meeting would you pass on our delight to your members.

Cheers

John

Nigel Hamer, Secretary of the Swansea City Supporters’ Trust sent a message of congratulations on Cardiff City’s promotion to the Premier League.

In a message to Trust vice-chairman David Craig, Nigel said: “On behalf of Swansea City Supporters’ Trust please accept our congratulations on your Club gaining promotion to the Premier League. It will be good to have a local derby again in the best league in the world.

“I hope that your owner in conjunction with your manager spends his money wisely to make additions to your current squad.”

Thanks for the kind message Nigel.We, too, look forward to the renewing of rivalries between the two clubs.

The latest edition of the Trust magazine, Moving to a Different Beat, has been printed.

Trust members can pick up a free copy at the Trust office before the Barnsley and Nottingham Forest games. Please bring your membership card with you. We’ll also be selling copies of the magazine at just £1.

We’ve got interviews with David Marshall and Roger Gibbins and Media Wales soccer journalist Steve Tucker gives his take on the highs and lows of following the Bluebirds as a reporter. There is also plenty of Trust news, along with a report on the 1982-83 promotion celebration evening.

We’ll also aim to put the magazine on our website www.ccfctrust.org next week. It will be password protected for viewing by Trust members only and we’ll let members know the password later.

If you are a Trust member who lives outside South Wales, or are unable to get to games, please email fundraising@ccfctrust.org with your details if you would like a hard copy and we’ll arrange to post out a copy during the next week.

The Trust has been speaking to the club for some weeks about the possibility of mounting supporters` flags within the stadium for the remaining five home games , utilising the “void space” at the rear of the Canton and Ninian stands  to provide a colourful display on match-days and for various fan groups to show the diversity of support the club receives.

The discussions have involved both Wayne Nash, the stadium manager and Nic Heslop , the commercial manager. Unfortunately , the use of the space concerned has not proved possible as the club have advised that it may be required for longer term club sponsors.

However, Wayne Nash has confirmed that flags of any colour will be welcomed into the ground for display on a match by match basis for the rest of the season , with the usual caveat that they must not contain anything offensive.

This is a great opportunity for our various fans` groups to proudly display the flags of the area or group they represent and bring some match-day colour to the ground as part of improving the match-day atmosphere. So dig out those flags and bring them along to all the remaining home games (with some gaffer tape to fix them to the walls etc at the back of the stands).