PVFC Meet delegation of fans regarding current concerns

[Wozza4England]

3 minutes ago, Jacko51 said:

Read Granville’s post on the first page of the thread as an example. 

Perhaps that was a joke?

[Jacko51]

2 minutes ago, Wozza4England said:

Perhaps that was a joke?

I don’t think bad mouthing Mark Porter was funny. 

Edited March 7 by Jacko51

[Dr Delgado]

4 hours ago, Mellor! said:

I've not really said anything so far but keep seeing the recurrence of people "having their belly tickled" "smoke blown up their arse" "not asking the hard questions that fans want asking".

Bede, Dicko, Tony and myself were there as part of B&G. If you think we are the type of people that would have our bellies tickled and not ask the hard questions, then I'm not sure how to change your mind, epecially people like Spunkers who have seen us on multiple protests, meetings, etc... Collectively we have got rid of two lots of disgraceful owners, yet went into the meeting to offer an olive branch to the club to try and resolve current tensions. This is because the Shanahan's, in my opinion, truly have the best wishes of the club at heart and it is not them that is the problem. We want to work with them to try and sort this current discontent and anger out. Of course the main topic was the director of football. But do you think you can really go in and tell Carol to get rid and walk out? The meeting would be over in an instant. The club now realise how deep rooted this is and they have to try and alleviate the tension. How they do that is up to them. We know what we want to happen, but Carol owns the club and we can't hold her by gun point, but we can try and make her realise the massive feeling of discontent.

What the club do now is their decision. We have started the conversation. They know how the fans feel, trust us.  Now while the club decide the next steps, the only thing we can do is get behind the team wholeheartedly on Saturday, like we have all season and try and retain our League 1 status.

From my point of view my reaction was to the statement issued by the club, it was a good while before we established on this forum who had actually attended from the fan’s side. The statement from the club didn’t actually state what questions were asked and how they were answered whilst it did acknowledge frank dialogue. 
Up until it was confirmed by certain regular and respected contributors to this site I suspected a bit of a sham, a charm offensive by the club, if you will. 
Surely you can appreciate that there is a certain amount of sugar coating and ambiguity emanating from that club statement? 
Whilst I now know real dedicated, honest and forthright fan’s were in attendance I can calm down and can only hope some good will come of it, especially as folks gave up their valuable time to be there.

Whilst I have on rare occasions questioned the judgement of our chairwoman, she has my total support and gratitude with regards to her ownership of our sacred club.

[Jacko51]

4 minutes ago, Dr Delgado said:

From my point of view my reaction was to the statement issued by the club, it was a good while before we established on this forum who had actually attended from the fan’s side. The statement from the club didn’t actually state what questions were asked and how they were answered whilst it did acknowledge frank dialogue. 
Up until it was confirmed by certain regular and respected contributors to this site I suspected a bit of a sham, a charm offensive by the club, if you will. 
Surely you can appreciate that there is a certain amount of sugar coating and ambiguity emanating from that club statement? 
Whilst I now know real dedicated, honest and forthright fan’s were in attendance I can calm down and can only hope some good will come of it, especially as folks gave up their valuable time to be there.

Whilst I have on rare occasions questioned the judgement of our chairwoman, she has my total support and gratitude with regards to her ownership of our sacred club.

That last question is key. You can question whilst still supporting. 

[Sandyford_Lion]

1 hour ago, Wez said:

This is basically all that those not privy to these behind the scenes conversations were after. The announcement that a meeting had taken place and a broadbrush statement with little or no meaningful content did little to appease many fans. If this was the background & content of the meeting then why could this not just have been communicated avoiding lots of negative social media posts ? Another instance of poor communication ! Why was the detail about the meeting not communicated in advance allowing those with no affiliation with the 3 representative groups an opportunity to provide them with input which as have been additional to what you already had ? Could this be taken on board for such future meetings please.

Thank you for your clarity 

Spot on. Comments from Bede and Mellor earlier would have stopped " all the assumptions about various aspects of the meeting " Not only that several people who were also not in attendance at the meeting certainly know plenty of what was discussed.

The groups were there on behalf of the supporters. Just give us some info after the meeting and all is good. For what i know of and have heard about, Bede, Mellor, Dicko and co. the fans views and thoughts are safe in their hands.

Lets hope the discussions continue. Very soon i hope

[Sandyford_Lion]

12 minutes ago, Jacko51 said:

I don’t think bad mouthing Mark Porter was funny. 

Some people have a strange sense of humour !

[Jacko51]

Just now, Sandyford_Lion said:

Some people have a strange sense of humour !

You mean they aren’t funny?

[grand prix pants]

1 minute ago, Sandyford_Lion said:

Spot on. Comments from Bede and Mellor earlier would have stopped " all the assumptions about various aspects of the meeting " Not only that several people who were also not in attendance at the meeting certainly know plenty of what was discussed.

The groups were there on behalf of the supporters. Just give us some info after the meeting and all is good. For what i know of and have heard about, Bede, Mellor, Dicko and co. the fans views and thoughts are safe in their hands.

Lets hope the discussions continue. Very soon i hope

Yeah, Mellor, Bede… pull your finger out and get your skates on next time! 🙄

[Sandyford_Lion]

Just now, Jacko51 said:

You mean they aren’t funny?

I dont find some people funny thats for sure, but they do have a sense of humour. So they say.

[MelbourneValiant]

7 hours ago, Bede said:

I wrote the following account yesterday but decided to sleep on it before posting.  I feel I must now clarify, given the responses since the release of the official statement.

OK, so to first explain how this has come about.  I am the co-founder of the Black & Gold Group, but also current sitting Secretary of the Supporters' Club.  The SC, B&G and NLV have all been interwoven for many years, simply because we are all Vale fans with the same ultimate aims.  We all offer differing viewpoints on things but remain active together to provide a widespread view on situations. B&G have remained active, albeit in the background, for many years, mainly as observers and researchers.  With my SC hat on, we have been increasingly frustrated with everything at the club, same as everyone else.  We therefore requested a committee meeting a couple of months or so ago with the inclusion of Matt Hancock, who has offered himself up to the SC as the conduit between us and the club.  The relationship between SC and club has drifted apart as we feel that the club have not wanted to engage with us, and it seems that they have hijacked events that the SC have traditionally held, on behalf of the fans.  We all feel that the club are trying to control everything.  This meeting was intense.  I'm not slow at coming forward with my views, and neither is Paul Dixon, and Matt got absolute pelters.  To his credit, he took it all very well.  Never argued, never complained, never flounced off or made excuses.  He took it all in.

Following that meeting, Mark Porter, Paul Dixon, and I have remained in constant contact with Matt, intensely pointing out the level of unrest amongst the fanbase.  He could quite easily cease communications with me because I have hardly been complimentary at times, but I have tried to reflect the level of anger, frustration, disappointment, and downright disengagement from the club.  Matt has actively sought to understand all of that.  We then held another meeting with Matt to delve a little deeper into the supporter discontent.  This then led to Matt setting up a meeting with Carol for him relay the mounting concerns to her, with her full attention.  It was then mutually agreed that a meeting should be held between us to face this head on.  During this period, other fans have also been voicing their concerns in their own ways to the club, so we therefore asked them to join in a collaborative effort.

Matt then gave us a list of dates that Carol would be available, and the meeting was set.  At no point were we given a time limit, a limit on numbers of members that could attend, or any actual pre-requisites at all.  All that was asked towards the date looming was a list of names of those attending.  The meeting was initially going to be between us and just Matt Hancock and Carol.  A couple of us then debated the merits of also requesting the attendance of Paddy.  We decided against it, but then as the meeting approached, we were told that Carol would like him to attend.  We ran it by our groups, and it was agreed that he should attend.

So, on Monday evening, we held a meeting between 7pm until just gone 10pm.  The burning topic, of course, was David Flitcroft.  My view remains that I cannot see his position anything other than untenable.  A sentiment held by all of us on our side of the table.  Let's not dress that up any other way. The overwhelming evidence of fans in the ground, fans in the pubs, fans on social media, forums such as this and radio phone-ins, is that very few have remaining faith in our Director of Football.  You must understand that, had we sat down and screamed that Flitcroft is a w***** and he needs to f*** off, a 3-hour meeting would not have lasted 3 minutes.  And we would also be doing a dis-service to the other points that needed addressing.

We went into the meeting well researched, with a formal agenda from which to raise our points.  After lots and lots of debate around the obvious, we then discussed the other topics; those being the communications coming out of the club, the problems with ticketing, the matchday supporter facilities and overall 'experience' and the potential for better fan engagement with the club going forward.  The club seemed surprised at some of the issues raised.  They did admit failings in communication, they also saw a different viewpoint on the other topics that they had not considered.  Above all else, they appeared genuinely shocked and saddened at what we were telling them, in terms of the overall disconnect between fans and club.

Now, we all know that admitting failure, and expressing shock and sadness at things is all well and good, but they need to let their actions do the talking.  We hope that they now understand that loud and clear.  It's over to them to deliver results.

So please let me make it abundantly clear.  We recognise that fans are not happy.  This season, we have seen fans fighting amongst themselves in the stands.  We have seen much anger directed at Flitcroft, at our players for abject performances.  We have seen growing complaints against the disparity of ground improvements.  We have an utterly unworkable relationship between the Supporters' Club and the club.  We have seen an alarming lack of respect shown to us fans by the club, not least by way of Carol's letter, David Flitcroft's Podcast, and the ignorance displayed towards our concerns at the last fans' forum.

We are taking those issues to the club because they all need to be fixed.  Do not think for one moment that we are easily pacified.  But we must be logical.  We cannot just rock up with a list of demands.  There will have to be compromise and understanding from both sides.  The first step in that healing process is to meet and hit the problems head on.  Monday's meeting was exactly that.  We don't have any answers, or results to report back on, from one solitary, intense meeting.  But it is the start of some much needed honest and frank dialogue.  How this pans out is yet to be decided. 

We've been in much worse states.  We have battled to remove two rogue owners in the last 13 or so years.  These owners are not rogue.  But it's fair to say they have misaligned their focus.  Please support us in regaining that.  And please understand our respect for the Shanahan family, despite all our current differences.

We've hopefully now opened doors and we look forward to the club holding much more open dialogue with the wider fanbase.

Many sensible fans thank you for your efforts mate. Great stuff.

[Houston Valiant]

8 hours ago, Bede said:

I wrote the following account yesterday but decided to sleep on it before posting.  I feel I must now clarify, given the responses since the release of the official statement.

OK, so to first explain how this has come about.  I am the co-founder of the Black & Gold Group, but also current sitting Secretary of the Supporters' Club.  The SC, B&G and NLV have all been interwoven for many years, simply because we are all Vale fans with the same ultimate aims.  We all offer differing viewpoints on things but remain active together to provide a widespread view on situations. B&G have remained active, albeit in the background, for many years, mainly as observers and researchers.  With my SC hat on, we have been increasingly frustrated with everything at the club, same as everyone else.  We therefore requested a committee meeting a couple of months or so ago with the inclusion of Matt Hancock, who has offered himself up to the SC as the conduit between us and the club.  The relationship between SC and club has drifted apart as we feel that the club have not wanted to engage with us, and it seems that they have hijacked events that the SC have traditionally held, on behalf of the fans.  We all feel that the club are trying to control everything.  This meeting was intense.  I'm not slow at coming forward with my views, and neither is Paul Dixon, and Matt got absolute pelters.  To his credit, he took it all very well.  Never argued, never complained, never flounced off or made excuses.  He took it all in.

Following that meeting, Mark Porter, Paul Dixon, and I have remained in constant contact with Matt, intensely pointing out the level of unrest amongst the fanbase.  He could quite easily cease communications with me because I have hardly been complimentary at times, but I have tried to reflect the level of anger, frustration, disappointment, and downright disengagement from the club.  Matt has actively sought to understand all of that.  We then held another meeting with Matt to delve a little deeper into the supporter discontent.  This then led to Matt setting up a meeting with Carol for him relay the mounting concerns to her, with her full attention.  It was then mutually agreed that a meeting should be held between us to face this head on.  During this period, other fans have also been voicing their concerns in their own ways to the club, so we therefore asked them to join in a collaborative effort.

Matt then gave us a list of dates that Carol would be available, and the meeting was set.  At no point were we given a time limit, a limit on numbers of members that could attend, or any actual pre-requisites at all.  All that was asked towards the date looming was a list of names of those attending.  The meeting was initially going to be between us and just Matt Hancock and Carol.  A couple of us then debated the merits of also requesting the attendance of Paddy.  We decided against it, but then as the meeting approached, we were told that Carol would like him to attend.  We ran it by our groups, and it was agreed that he should attend.

So, on Monday evening, we held a meeting between 7pm until just gone 10pm.  The burning topic, of course, was David Flitcroft.  My view remains that I cannot see his position anything other than untenable.  A sentiment held by all of us on our side of the table.  Let's not dress that up any other way. The overwhelming evidence of fans in the ground, fans in the pubs, fans on social media, forums such as this and radio phone-ins, is that very few have remaining faith in our Director of Football.  You must understand that, had we sat down and screamed that Flitcroft is a w***** and he needs to f*** off, a 3-hour meeting would not have lasted 3 minutes.  And we would also be doing a dis-service to the other points that needed addressing.

We went into the meeting well researched, with a formal agenda from which to raise our points.  After lots and lots of debate around the obvious, we then discussed the other topics; those being the communications coming out of the club, the problems with ticketing, the matchday supporter facilities and overall 'experience' and the potential for better fan engagement with the club going forward.  The club seemed surprised at some of the issues raised.  They did admit failings in communication, they also saw a different viewpoint on the other topics that they had not considered.  Above all else, they appeared genuinely shocked and saddened at what we were telling them, in terms of the overall disconnect between fans and club.

Now, we all know that admitting failure, and expressing shock and sadness at things is all well and good, but they need to let their actions do the talking.  We hope that they now understand that loud and clear.  It's over to them to deliver results.

So please let me make it abundantly clear.  We recognise that fans are not happy.  This season, we have seen fans fighting amongst themselves in the stands.  We have seen much anger directed at Flitcroft, at our players for abject performances.  We have seen growing complaints against the disparity of ground improvements.  We have an utterly unworkable relationship between the Supporters' Club and the club.  We have seen an alarming lack of respect shown to us fans by the club, not least by way of Carol's letter, David Flitcroft's Podcast, and the ignorance displayed towards our concerns at the last fans' forum.

We are taking those issues to the club because they all need to be fixed.  Do not think for one moment that we are easily pacified.  But we must be logical.  We cannot just rock up with a list of demands.  There will have to be compromise and understanding from both sides.  The first step in that healing process is to meet and hit the problems head on.  Monday's meeting was exactly that.  We don't have any answers, or results to report back on, from one solitary, intense meeting.  But it is the start of some much needed honest and frank dialogue.  How this pans out is yet to be decided. 

We've been in much worse states.  We have battled to remove two rogue owners in the last 13 or so years.  These owners are not rogue.  But it's fair to say they have misaligned their focus.  Please support us in regaining that.  And please understand our respect for the Shanahan family, despite all our current differences.

We've hopefully now opened doors and we look forward to the club holding much more open dialogue with the wider fanbase.

Excellent post. I think you’ve all represented the fans very well at that meeting , and got all your points across in no uncertain manner. I think that a lot of good will come from this. 
Thanks from across the ( big) pond. UTV 

[Packmoor_vale]

10 hours ago, Packmoor_vale said:

I just think the reaction of the normal blokes on here a bit ridiculous 

Ive not really met any of the groups who were there but I reckon I can trust them enough that there doing the right thing 

We are going down and once we do I’m going protest and hopefully it’s enough to remove DF 

I also think as good as this site is there is some rate cockheads posting daily 

See u Saturday 

 

I still believe what I said but there is also some good blokes and ladies posting on here daily

Thanks

See u Saturday 

 

[Old School]

Thanks to Bede for his extensive update on the meeting. I fully accept what he says about asking the hard questions, but his missive was very light on any answers to those questions. I am not in the least surprised that the club was gobsmacked at some of the thoughts and feelings being expressed by the fans, it is a classic symptom of a siege mentality. As always the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Now that Carol fully understands the depth of feeling from the vast majority of supporters towards flitcroft, she has a massive decision to make and if she sticks with him and nothing improves then she becomes part of the problem, not the solution. 

I wait with something less than bated breath.

[Granville]

I've thought about my initial post, and I apologise to Mark - my experiences from afar are not positive but that is my own impression and he is far more actively involved in the club than I am and deserves credit for that, so Mark, I apologise. 

That said, my indignation came from the perception that the club had again tried to mount another PR exercise to enhance Flitcroft's reputation, I acknowledge that was wrong, but we've seen so many of these attempts to get across the idea that he is the best thing since sliced bread.

Bede, thank you for the update, which was more comprehensive than the one the club provided. 

[Doha]

Beden’s probably going to be on a disciplinary on Monday morning for an undeclared second job with how much he’s put into this, he’s shattered. He was the same during NS, the same during Deakin/Miller and the same during V2001. I bumped into him at Wembley after full time and hugged the <ovf censored>, from administration and liquidation threats and nil paid share gate and late night meetings in pubs co-ordinating protest actions and paying for solicitor advice, to the tricky whites hitting the back of the net 5* times in a Wembley final.  He’s just a bloke who sits in the Hamil like so many reading this are. He’s not particularly a fan of the disparity in funding between the executive areas and the regular seating plebs to say the least, so please believe me when I say the claims being made of Carol selecting agitators to manipulate into a fleet of obedient flying monkeys could not be further from the truth. She’d be more successful in trying to get Neil Baldwin to run the team out tomorrow. 
 

* sort of

Edited March 8 by Doha