Still concerned about Bristol Rovers’ new owners? No, I didn’t think you were and nor should anyone be following the latest good news from the club. I will not linger for long on Bristol Rovers rancorous recent history with Wycombe Wanderers which was not exactly helped by former chairman Nick Higgs’ bull-in-a-china-shop attitude towards diplomacy. Suffice to say that new president Wael al Qadi has put all the recent past to bed by meeting up with Wycombe supremo Ivan Beeks at the Football League junket in Portugal and talking about “building bridges” and then tweeting a photo of himself with Mr Beeks. Bravo, Wael.
Mr al Qadi and his new chairman Steve Hamer have certainly hit the ground running since their welcome takeover of the club and they’ve done it in a number of different ways. Firstly, they have established a far more open regime than the autocratic I-know-best era of the previous owner. No more cliches about how “things are going on behind the scenes”, no pointless holding statements. Secondly, by having some easy wins by lifting a disgraceful and vindictive banning order on a former director, by not bumping up ticket prices at the earliest possible opportunity and at all times projecting a positive, forward-thinking attitude, despite the efforts of the old Supporters Club to retain Ragbag Rovers, they have maintained momentum. It is so refreshing.
I sense that the vast majority of Gasheads are fully behind Mr al Qadi and his plans for the future. I know that, in an ideal world, we would have a higher degree of supporter governorship in the running of the club but we have to concede that despite the efforts by a number of well-meaning supporters over the years, the majority of supporters did not want to travel down the road of fan ownership. For the foreseeable, and indeed unforeseen, future, that avenue is firmly closed. Under the failed ownership of the dictatorial Nick Higgs, this might have been a problem. Under the new ownership, the signs are that it won’t be.
There are still remnants of the past at Bristol Rovers, some good, some not so good. The owners have rightly retained the brilliant Keith Brookman, who is much more than the editor of an award-winnig programme and always has been and few would be critical of the staff who work day to day at the club. That side of the club was always highly professional and, under a far more dynamic and professional ownership this can only get better still. The Supporters Club, thanks to a withering attack on the new owners by its chairman Jim Chappell, regarded by new chairman Steve Hamer as “disappointing”, does not appear to have embraced the new era just yet. I am not close enough to Supporters Club members to know whether Mr Chappell’s views are representative but I would certainly hope not.
So, should supporters be represented at some way at Bristol Rovers and if so by whom? The answer to the first part, I would say, yes. The second part is far trickier. For some years, the Supporters Club has had two full directors on the board by virtue of a Shareholding Scheme. It is their entitlement. Sadly, with the decline of the Supporters Club’s influence – it really has very few functions these days, other than arranging buses to away travel and selling programmes – it now has two directors who appear to represent no one bar themselves, which was not the original idea of there being ‘fan directors’. In recognising the agreement with the football club, I am not proposing that the principle of there being two so called fans directors be immediately jettisoned, but given the ineffectiveness of the roles, some of which is obviously down to the directors themselves, there needs to be a review of whether the fans still need representation (I think they do) and whether that should come from a Supporters Club that appears out of step with the club and its fans. Let’s have a debate.
Wael al Qadi and Steve Hamer have already shown levels of diplomacy far beyond anything we have seen, certainly in my 40-odd years of supporting the club. As they continue to bring Bristol Rovers Football Club into the 21st century, I have faith that they can consider the modernisation process they have started.
Evolution, not revolution, is the new watchword at Bristol Rovers, but there are surely no sacred cows. In Wael we trust.
