***Crynes Interview here**** (Copied it out for those who don't buy Barnsley Monthly)

So I am terribly terribly sorry if anything spelling mistakes, I have tried my best in such a short space of time. Hope you enjoy the read.</p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">LET&rsquo;S GET STRAIGHT TO A KEY QUESTION. ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE THE CHAIRMAN&rsquo;S ROLE AT BFC?
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<font color="#444444" size="2">The straight answer is no, for a number of reasons. The chairman in a football club has to be on-call 24 hours a day for the whole year and I don&rsquo;t want football club management to take precedence over everything in my life. In addition, I don&rsquo;t have the temperament for the job because at heart I am a fan and I have a fan&rsquo;s extremes. It&rsquo;s hard to be calm and rational in adversity for a fan, but that&rsquo;s what a chairman has to do all the time.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">DOES THAT MEAN YOU WOULD LIKE TO PUT DOWN THE MANTLE OF OWNER AND BENEFACTOR TOO?
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<font color="#444444" size="2">Sure, after all, I am owner more by default than choice. I will not hesitate to go when the time is right for the club and for me.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">DO YOU HAVE A TIMEFRAME OR AN OBJECTIVE TO BE ACCOMPLISHED BEFORE YOU GO?
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<font color="#444444" size="2">Nothing specific but it is important that we get stronger financially and as a football team before I pass the baton on.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">THE CLUB HAS COME A LONG WAY SINCE ADMINISTRATION; YOU MUST BE PLEASED WITH THE PROGRESS MADE.
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<font color="#444444" size="2">The club didn&rsquo;t progress under Peter Ridsdale because he didn&rsquo;t have the funding in place to make a go of it. Gordon Shepherd did a fantastic and necessary job in managing the cost structure of the club and we have managed to achieve and maintain Championship status and have some FA Cup memories to savour. That&rsquo;s fantastic, but let&rsquo;s not deludes ourselves by saying everything has been perfect off the field. The most recent Football League benchmark study of all Championship clubs shows that Barnsley FC has the second lowest non-player costs and the third lowest academy costs, which tends to prove the point about the effectiveness of cost control. However, there is another dynamic that affects the fate of a commercial organisation and that is its performance in sales and marketing. There can be little argument that in this area, the club&rsquo;s achievements have been poor. The Football League&rsquo;s study shows that our shirt sponsorship deal for the 2007/2008 season in gross financial terms was the worst in the Championship. It further shows that our ticket revenues as a percentage of turnover is the fifth highest, and if my financial contribution to the turnover of Barnsley FC, was excluded, we would possibly be the highest. What this latter statistic means is that the fans (myself included) are funding too high a proportion of the costs of Barnsley FC and that commercial revenues from other sources need to be increased significantly to ease the burden and at the same time improve the prospect of the team&rsquo;s success. At present, we have no ground sponsor or stand sponsors and yet we have a league standing and a football product better than many clubs who have developed these commercial relationships.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">HOW DO YOU TURN THAT SITUATION ROUND?
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<font color="#444444" size="2">We need to recruit specialist marketing and sales expertise and make a shift within the organisation towards a service culture. We need to be a valuable business partner to our sponsors and a focal point for local pride. Our fans need to receive good service and be properly informed about developments taking place in the club. Realistically, we can&rsquo;t move instantly from where we are now to where we want to be, but we need to have clear plans for sustained improvement.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">YOU HAVE TALKED BEFORE ABOUT BEING A COMMUNITY CLUB. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
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<font color="#444444" size="2">In my experience all Barnsley folk are proud of their heritage. The football club is an expression of our identity which is why 34,000 people came to Wembley for the semi-final. As much as they were supporting the team, they were also showing pride in our town. If our kids succumb to the marketing of the big brands and believe themselves to be Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea shirts cried a tear when we beat those teams in the cup run. I&rsquo;m sure that they cheered like diehards when out winning goals went in. The reality is that Barnsley hearts beat under those &ldquo;top club&rdquo; replica shirts. We need to persuade our kids and adults, who should know better, that they should wear their heart on their sleeves. We can only do that by having programmes for the schools and incentives for the parents to get their kids down to Oakwell. We also need to get the Players to do more focused work directly supporting these programmes.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">THE FA CUP TICKET ALLOCATION WAS CONTROVERSIAL. WHAT&rsquo;S YOUR TAKE ON IT?
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<font color="#444444" size="2">Season Ticket holders are incredibly important in the financial planning of the club. At the start of the season when we decide on budgets, including player recruitment, all we have to go on to predict our fortunes is the level of commitment from the season ticket holders. I know that there are many non-season ticket holders that attend a high proportion of games, but they have no transparency or offer no certainty to the club. Interestingly, we have a much higher level of revenues coming from match day tickets than many other clubs according to the Football League study. This means that we are at a considerable disadvantage to many clubs when it comes to player recruitment at the beginning of the season because our season tickets are proportionately lower. To try and encourage a higher level of season ticket holders is the reason we offer priority in the allocation of FA Cup tickets and I expect that we will progressively offer a more comprehensive benefit package to this group. I know that this policy disadvantages some of the stalwarts who continues to buy match tickets, but we are planning to work with the supporters trust to set up a database that allows us to keep a record of our loyal fans that are at present off the radar.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2">In terms of our administration of the policy, we made fundamental errors in the allocation of tickets for the Liverpool game and I apologise unreservedly to the season ticket holders and other loyal fans that missed going to Anfield through our fault.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2">Our performance in the other games was better, it couldn&rsquo;t have been worse, but there are still major areas for improvement for the future. Again, we will work more closely with the supporters trust to get things right next season.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THE FANS TO GET THEM TO SUPPORT YOU AND GET DOWN TO OAKWELL NEXT SEASON?
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<font color="#444444" size="2">The diehards will come no matter what because they know that the club belongs to them and always will do irrespective of what owners and chairmen might think. The diehards can testify to those who need a reason to come that we improved considerably last year compared to the previous season. Our football was of better quality and the team showed that they were prepared to give everything for the cause. We shocked Liverpool and Chelsea with our skill and resolve and we did that with some of the leading Championship sides.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2">Next year we will be even better in terms of our playing contingent. We will be active in the transfer market and we will be bringing some outstanding young players, not yet seen, through from the academy. Our manager knows that he is expected to improve our performances each year and anything less is unacceptable. He will be given the resources to make the necessary improvements.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">DO YOU THINK THE CLUB CAN EVER GET BACK TO THE PREMIERSHIP?
</font></font>

<font color="#444444" size="2">Yes I do. If we take a look at our home form this season it was play-off standard, but our away form was the worst in the division. We know what we need to do to improve and our manager has the skills and ambition to do it.</font></p>

<font color="#444444" size="2"></font></p><font size="2"><font color="#444444">WHENEVER I MEET YOU, YOU ARE ALWAYS SERIOUS, INTENSE AND VERY DIRECT, IS THIS A BARNSLEY TRAIT?
</font></font><font size="2"><font color="#444444">The directness is a Barnsley characteristic. We are all straight talkers, which is what makes us the best kind of people. My father was from Manchester and he always talked around things, whereas my mother is from Barnsley. In our house she won every argument. Enough said.
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</p>

 

given all the hard work that goes into the mag did you get their permission to quote the article in full?</p>

&quot;If you participate in a discussion, you are responsible for ensuring that any material you post to www.barnsleyfc.org.uk (text, images, or other multimedia content) does not violate or infringe upon the copyright, patent, trademark or any other personal or proprietary rights of any third party, and is posted with the permission of the owner of such rights.&quot;</p>

 

Ooops, terribly sorry, did not know

Sorry :'(

 

my guess is they'd be more than happy to let you quote for the publicity-the mag is good quality -just hope there's enough news to make it a going concern

 

thanks for this

Cryne comes across well for a Barnsley Boy done good, respect to him for that.

I found this question and answer the most revealing, as its what most of us on here have been saying.



HOW DO YOU TURN THAT SITUATION ROUND?

We need to recruit specialist marketing and sales expertise and make a shift within the organisation towards a service culture. We need to be a valuable business partner to our sponsors and a focal point for local pride. Our fans need to receive good service and be properly informed about developments taking place in the club. Realistically, we can’t move instantly from where we are now to where we want to be, but we need to have clear plans for sustained improvement.

 

RE: Well he says all the right things

Hope you did not mind me posting it Farnham, hope it don;t break any rules, sorry if it does. Thought it would be a good read for those who aint seen.

 

Good read. Thanks for taking the time to copy it out. nt

 

RE: Well Paul.D is right

Ah, so sorry about that, totally forgot about copyright etc, in future i will ask

 

Well I for one

am gonna buy the mag on the strength of what I've seen on here (specifically PCs interview) - so that's one-nil to the free publicity camp!

 

Top notch interview

Of a top notch man in a top notch magazine.

 

DO YOU THINK THE CLUB CAN EVER GET BACK TO THE PREMIERSHIP?

Yes I do. If we take a look at our home form this season it was play-off standard, but our away form was the worst in the division. We know what we need to do to improve and our manager has the skills and ambition to do it.

Sounds like alls in hand, which is excellent news....

Well done for posting it by the way....

 

Brilliant, reminds me of Moratti's interviews on Inter site nt

 

given all the hard work that goes into the mag did you get their permission to quote the article in full?

"If you participate in a discussion, you are responsible for ensuring that any material you post to www.barnsleyfc.org.uk (text, images, or other multimedia content) does not violate or infringe upon the copyright, patent, trademark or any other personal or proprietary rights of any third party, and is posted with the permission of the owner of such rights." - shut up ****** (zzz) (zzz) (zzz)

 

He is right because it was in my magazine that it was copied from.

 

well pal - i have bought every issue so far but not this one so i am glad he did copy it - just because he copied it doesnt mean i wont buy this months does it

 

wasn't complaining, just was happy to see that people appreciate what goes into it.

 

sorry got the wrong end of the stick - just that some people on here just like to moan and complain at other people just to make themselves look all high and mighty

 

no problem. next issue will have have a large fixture list poster if you are interested.