Eastside Urchin Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 Taken from a Dulwich poster on the isthmian forum . I would be petrified if this was my club!!! Indeed, Dulwich are in a bit of bother as the gentrified might say!! But perhaps not quite as much bother as I and many others feared. There's a good article about how the situation arose at http://twohundredper...#comment-131194. In summary, here's the situation: The ground has been bought by Hadley Properties for £5.75 million and our fear was/is that they will build on the ground and leave the club without a home. Furthermore, it seems that the owner of DHFC, Nick McCormack had not been paying the bills and had been employing loads of staff that according to one report apparently cost the club £2,000,000 last year!!!!!!! Proper bonkers that!!!! It seemed that there was a possibility of us moving to the Greendales site that is adjacent to our current ground and building a new ground there: this would save us money in the long run as our current utility bills are over £100,000 a year mainly due to our very large and under-utilised clubhouse. However, there's no guarantee that we would be allowed to move to Greendales and even if we did we might have a much smaller ground. That was the situation up until last week. After Saturday's game against East Thurrock we had public meeting with 200-300 fans attending. Peter Bennison of Hadley Properties spoke to us of their desire to make the club a success and to keep football being played at Champion Hill. He stated that: 1/ He is buying the club from Nick McCormack this week, so Hadley's will own both the ground and the club. 2/ He's paid off over £100,000 of debt, that he wants to see Dulwich run as a fans-owned club and is setting up workshops to enable us to make this happen! And you thought altruism was dead!! 3/ We'll playing at our current ground for a long time to come. Some supporters are naturally suspicious about Hadley's motives, after all a property company isn't a charity! However, I had a private chat with Peter after the meeting asking him how Hadley's were going to make money from this project and he said that they'd like to build on the car park and that should give them a small profit, so they don't have to build on the ground itself. If that's the case then I for one am very happy to support him. He's already shown kindness to us in giving over £100,000 when he could have let the club fold and then apply to build on all the land. Far better to lose a car park than an entire club! Peter also stared that utility bills for the club were £100,000 a year or more. Something clearly needs to be done about that. A good chunk of the main building seems to be completely unused, so one of the first things ought to be looking at how we can generate revenue from it and save on the utility bills. This could be really exciting for our future; or at least, I hope so!!! I'm amazed at how well we're doing on the pitch with the financial mess we're in. I've never known such camaraderie between players and fans or such great supporters for a small club. Fans have financed several signings and pay several players wages. We have an incredible manager, who's also developed a brilliant academy system where we get young league club rejects and other local youth, get them educated and loving football again, then get them into our first team or off to league clubs. I doubt anyone in non-league has had more players moving to league clubs in recent years than Dulwich, certainly at our level. I honestly feel really, really, proud to be a Dulwich supporter at the moment, there's such a great vibe at the club and it would be absolutely heartbreaking if it all went down the pan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEVEN TEARS BOY Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 The only important thing Arburjis is that we finish ahead of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cup of tea Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 It goes to show the state of non-league football and the difficulties that a lot of clubs face at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paokman Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 Not that I want it to happen but when they are deducted points let it be this season and not next Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss.A.F.C.Hornchurch Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 Good luck to them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.