DO:        We’ve had a question submitted from a gentleman who used to coach half of the current Under 14s team. He says that he used to spend a minimum of four hours a week coaching them, increasing this to six hours when light permitted. He would like to know why GTFC only coach the Under 14s (and presumably the other age groups) for two and a half hours a week and asks if you both think this is enough to make a future professional footballer? And if the answer is no, is the number of coaching hours offered based on financial constraints within the youth system?

JF: I don’t think it’s financial constraints. Maybe Mike can say more about this. The key thing is are they getting what they need and to be fair I would need to research that and speak to Neil Woods to find out more and maybe Mike could possibly add a little bit to that.

MN:       Well, first thing I must say is that you don’t make professional footballers. Professional footballers are born and they either have it in their genes, you can help them along the way a lot and you can guide them in the right direction, but you can coach kids for twenty hours a week, thirteen and fourteen year olds. If they’re not going to be professional footballers they will not be professional footballers and anyone who believes otherwise has obviously either got a big ego or belief in themselves. Lads of thirteen or fourteen need to concentrate as much on their schoolwork and other activities as they do on their football. I’ve already been down to Cheapside on a Sunday morning and seen the enthusiasm of the coaches of the sixteens and fourteens. Obviously I’ve seen the youth team so far and there will be enough hours in the week to guide those lads and whether they come into the building at sixteen or not won’t be down to whether a coach spends four or six hours with them during the week. It’ll be down to the lad and how much he wants to be a professional footballer.

DO:        John, some questions now regarding financial matters. Has the tax bill now been paid off?

JF:           No it hasn’t and naturally this season we have seen a little bit of a downturn in income streams. One thing that we can control is costs. Another thing that we can’t control is income streams and when we’ve, for want of a better description, done as badly on the field as we have in terms of amassing points, it hasn’t enthused the fans to come through to meet budget, so we’re slightly down there and I think at the beginning of the season I stated that we were in our final year of paying the tax debt off.  Now we might ask the tax office if they will allow a slight deviation on that and roll some of it into next season, which would then make things a little easier for us in terms of our financial arrangements.  But no, it’s not paid off and already at the beginning of the season we made it clear that we’ve prepared within this season’s budget for it to be paid off. It’s just now that we may ask for it to be rolled over, a portion of it.

DO:        Which brings us onto the next question of what is the club’s current financial position overall?

JF:           We’re heavily indebted to myself. We owe a bit of money to the tax office, probably about £180,000. And we have a bank overdraft, but there’s no crisis at the football club. It’s being managed. It’s all being underpinned by myself. I wish there were others supporting me and helping me in that. Once again, there’s a plea. If people want to join the board, please pick the phone up and speak to myself or Ian Fleming. There’s a whole raft of information that you can have available to you before joining the board so that you can make your own mind up in good time and if people are serious and they would like to join, you know please as I say, pick the phone up.

DO:        Which leads very handily onto the next question, which is how much would a new investor need to put into the club to be considered for a place on the Board?

JF:           Well, the articles of association require that you basically take all of the indebtedness of the club and divide it by the number of directors and that would be deemed to be the amount that a newcomer ought to be putting in. The reason for that is because, in a perfect world, you’d like all of the directors to invest the same amount of money. That’s clearly not the case now and it’s highly unlikely it would be the case going forward. There are the capabilities for latitude, but at the end of the day if there are people seriously out there that want to help this football club, however that might be, pick the phone up. Let’s have a chat about it. If they’ve got skills they can bring to the football club, together with not so much finance, great.

DO:        This is from a season ticket holder who says he purchased his season ticket this year with a great deal of trepidation, as last season the number of reduced price matches meant that the financial incentives offered to season ticket holders were virtually negated by all the cheap tickets.

Several people he knows have not renewed their season tickets because of this and so far it is paying off. He appreciates that the club needs support, but feels that cutting ticket prices is not the only solution and that better PR could be just as effective. Could you please comment on this.

JF:           It’s a difficult one, isn’t it? Upsetting the season ticket holders is the last thing we want to do but in special circumstances when your gates are falling away, you’re always hoping for a turn of fortune and incentivising people to get down to the ground, you’re hoping that each and every time you do that, that can be a catalyst for the team to do better and for of course people to come back in droves. That’s often not worked of late and all I can do is really ask people if they can grin and bear it with us. We don’t do it intentionally. We do what we think we need to do at the time. In terms of promoting the football club and PR, naturally we have our banners up around the town and you know we promote the initiatives and try and get people to the games. We go round all of the schools on a regular basis, giving vouchers out to try and get parents to bring their children and so on and so on. We do a whole range of things that probably don’t hit the news and aren’t necessarily known to everybody, but they are in the newspaper on a regular basis, but I don’t think everybody absorbs what’s happening and connects it all up. It’s a little bit like Football in the Community. A lot of people don’t realise how powerful that particular product is in the  community and how well it’s going and I think sometimes they don’t absorb the articles or the repetition of things that we put out. But there’s absolutely no intention to upset season ticket holders and what we will do later on in the season is do something specifically for them. I think back end of last season, we made special concessions for season ticket holders to bring a friend at a discounted rate and so on. So I would say we’re doing our best under difficult circumstances and if you could please appreciate that and bear with us, we’d be very grateful.

DO:        Another question about tickets. Can we have a return to proper student matchday and season tickets, as £18 is a lot of money to watch League Two football for somebody living on a shoestring?

JF:           I guess it’s a question of trying to balance the books and making sure that we don’t devalue the product. To some extent, you could sometimes open the gates for free and you wouldn’t fill the ground, so it’s a question of setting the prices at a level that hopefully unlocks the potential of income out there. It’s a difficult balance. There can be many views about this one and really we’ve stuck with what we’ve got and I don’t necessarily see that changing overnight.

DO: I remember you talking a year or so ago about Bradford City and I mean they really slashed their ticket prices, didn’t they? I think you’d heard that they weren’t actually making a great deal of money out of it and they’re probably losing money. Curiously they continue to do that, I understand. What are your thoughts on that idea?

JF:           Well we don’t know. They need to do it for two or three years to see if it’s working. If things are going well on the field, then clearly they’re going to bring the numbers in. If they have a downturn and we see those numbers drop, associated with the lower income relating to the discounts they’ve given, they could end up in awful financial trouble. It’s early days and I’m not sure we’re right and I’m not sure they’re right. In speaking to one of their directors last year when we went to play them, he said it’s been working up until last week. So what does that mean? In other words, have you run out of budget? It’s early days and I don’t think anybody ought to paint a glowing picture about the way they’re doing it until it’s had a sustainable period of working. It’s a difficult balance.

DO:          Ok, a question for both of you. What, in your opinion, can clubs like Grimsby Town do to engage more with the local community?

JF:           I think we do a massive amount that somehow passes over people’s heads. It’s often in the newspaper, it’s in the programme, it’s on the airwaves. You know we’ve got the study support centre, we’ve got Football in the Community. We’ve got all of our youth programmes going on. We’re massive in the community sense. For instance, last year we delivered, I think, 34,000 sessions to young people in terms of Football in the Community and the study support centre at the football club and its two outreach centres in Grant Thorold and Nunsthorpe and this year it will probably be in the order of around 60,000. So we’re going great guns in the community and I’m not sure people put it all altogether and remember what’s been in the newspapers. Maybe some people focus on the back page and don’t realise a lot of content about the football club is actually between the front and back sheets. There’s so much goes on at the football club. We’re absolutely knee deep in community. I can’t stress that enough.

DO:        Ok, once again a question for both of you if either of you wants to chip in, do you feel that Mike’s comments regarding agents and corruption in the game could affect the club’s ability to attract players to the club, either positively or negatively?

And as a rider on that, how prominent do you feel corruption is in football and what can be done about it?

MN:       Well, for your first question, is it going to have an effect on whether we bring players to the football club, then not in any way at all, no. I think there’s a misconception that agents bring you football players. That’s our job. That’s our scouts’ job and one of the most important parts of my job is to identify players and I can assure you that if I go after a player, an agent’s not going to stop the player coming to the football club. What agents do is they arrive with the player or they bring the player to the football club. They don’t ring me up and identify players. All agents do is ring you up with a player they can’t get off their books or can’t get a club for. That’s what happens. I’ve never had yet a player brought to me by an agent. So there’s some idea that people have got out there that agents bring you players. That’s just a complete fallacy. We identify the players. We drive all over the country looking for players and if we have the ability to bring them here, in terms of wages, they’ll come to Grimsby. I can assure you of that. So to answer your first question, it will have no bearing whatsoever. The second part of your question was?

DO:        How prominent do you feel corruption is in football?

MN:       That’s something that I’m not going to get involved in at all. I’ve said what I’ve had to say. I stand by everything I’ve said in the past and it’s time to move on now. I’ve started afresh at Grimsby Town. I’m grateful for the opportunity. It obviously hasn’t affected the people who’ve employed me and I’ve always maintained that in the long run I will be stronger for what I’ve said. I will be stronger for the experiences I’ve been through and it won’t affect me in the future. It certainly affected me in the short term, but you have to ask the reasons for that and that might just answer your question.

DO:        A great deal of time and money is spent on ensuring that players are physically fit to play. But given that one in four of us will have mental health problems during our life...and John’s laughing...

MN: There’s two in four here!

DO:        ...and that this includes conditions such as anxiety, depression and stress, all of which can easily be associated with football, is enough attention paid to making sure that players are also mentally fit to play? Would you consider bringing in a sports psychologist or even sending players to counselling in order to get the best out of them?

MN:       If I can answer that first, another part of my job is being a sports psychologist and getting into their head. We answered it before in terms of managing people and if anyone’s got any serious problems that we don’t think we can handle, then we will seek medical help. But in terms of sports psychologists, I’m not a big fan. I’ll listen to everything and I’ll listen to anything and you will pick up good things and bad things and ideas from everybody, but we see that as a major part of our job on the coaching staff, the psychology part of it and getting the best out of people. At the end of the day, if they’re not mentally strong enough, you will find that you have to get people who are mentally strong enough. It’s part of being a good footballer and being a good athlete and a good sportsman. You have to be mentally strong and up to the demands that the job brings. By the demands, I mean dips in form and confidence, low self-esteem. It’s all something that we have to keep an eye on and assess, but if they get to such a state that it’s just not going to happen, I don’t think that a sports psychologist to be honest is going to make a difference.

DO:        Have you ever come across sports psychologists as a player?

MN:       Yes. As a player I’ve had them introduced to me. As a manager I’ve had them pushed my way. What you will find is that a lot of the sports psychologists are ringing you up when you’re successful because a lot of people want to be associated with success. Very few of them ring you up when you’re having a real bad time because the last thing people want to be associated with is failure. So as I said, I’m prepared to listen to anything and anybody when they want to talk about football or how you can improve as a team, as a person, as individuals, but there are other things that I would rather spend the budget on or ask the chairman for first before we get to sports psychologists.

JF:           Nutritionists and somebody that can plan...

MN:       Well, sports scientists. And nutritionists are an important part of it and they are educated people who are going to educate me in terms of passing on information or things to the players or in terms of giving us programmes and I’m open to all of that. But when you go down the road of sports psychologists, then that’s like saying an agent is going to find me a player. The psychologist is not going to do anything I can’t do for the players.

DO:        Mike, what are your realistic aims for the rest of this season? Do you feel that getting a couple of wins under our belt could be enough to turn things around?

MN:       Well that’s the first aim, to get a couple of wins under the belt. You know it’s a dismal run that the lads have had in terms of going back to Easter where they haven’t won a league game and that’s the first thing we must address. But as I’ve said, I’m not in a rush. I’d love to turn it round in a matter of weeks but being realistic it’s going to be a gradual thing. Winning is very important right now. Winning the first game is very important and it will take a big weight off the lads’ shoulders and just add an extra yard in terms of confidence. But in terms of realistic aims, I’m not setting any targets and I never set any targets. You always try to achieve the maximum you can and to set targets, if you fall below those targets, people will think you’ve failed. If you achieve those targets or rise above those targets, then people soon forget where you started, so I never put any targets or time limits. It’s an awful long season and forty-six games is a long slog and we’ve only just gone through the first quarter, not quite through the first quarter, so there’s a long time and a lot of months and games for us to get it going and get it moving in the right direction. If we could do it immediately and wave a magic wand, believe me I would, but it might just take a little bit of time.

DO:        John, will the dispute with BBC Radio Humberside ever be properly resolved? The person who submitted this question said he was writing as he sat listening to the commentary on Compass FM, which was being ‘broadcast’ over the phone.

JF:           In terms of dispute, I don’t believe there is a dispute. As far as the club is concerned, we’re open and available to work with all of our media partners and we do that wholeheartedly. What you have to bear in mind is that we have a range of media partners that frankly sponsor the football club in different ways. In other words, give us money, vital income and Humberside radio don’t give us a bean. To that extent, we have to limit what Radio Humberside does with the football club, so in other words we’re not allowing it to do the home and away commentaries for obvious reasons. We don’t enjoy an income from it, where the rest of our media partners add something back to the football club in value. But in terms of dispute, there isn’t a dispute. We’d like things to be very different. You know, what I can tell you is that all of the football club is open and accessible to all of our media partners all of the time. I receive calls at ten or eleven o’clock at night from the likes of Dave Pye and we’re giving him the information and getting the things out to you the fans as much as possible on an ongoing basis. We do the same with Dale and of course we do the same with all of the other radio stations. As far as Radio Humberside is concerned, they have to go through Dale in order to access us. Now if it’s in the interests of the football club, of course we’ll go through Radio Humberside and we work with them as closely as we can. But unfortunately, there’s this perception that there continues to be a dispute and frankly that couldn’t be further from the truth. If Radio Humberside want to work with us more closely, then like all the rest of the media partners we work with, they will have to cross the club’s palm with silver. That’s normal. It’s always been the case in the past, so that’s what’s limiting what goes over the airwaves on Humberside. They get access to the manager, they get access to the players, they get access to me, they get access to our statements. But what they don’t do is the commentary because they’re not paying for the privilege. There is a set down tariff, which has been agreed in negotiation with the Football League and if they don’t want to pay that and that’s frankly where it arrived at, then we’re finding it difficult to consummate an ongoing arrangement to enable the commentary to be delivered. I don’t believe that’s the football club’s fault and nor do I believe that it constitutes a dispute.

DO:        Finally John, given the length of Mike’s contract, does the club have a three and a half year plan?  Where do the board and management expect the club to be at the end of that time, in terms of both league position and geographically, which I take it refers to the new stadium?

JF:           Well, I must just tell you one thing. Of course it’s the brunt of the quiz question, the fact that we’re located in Cleethorpes right now, being called Grimsby and located in Cleethorpes is a rather strange one. But if we go to Great Coates and hopefully when we go to Great Coates, I must tell you that remains also in Cleethorpes [laughs]. So the quiz question remains, which is rather useful. In terms of where we’re going to be in three and a half years time, of course we believe we’ve hit on a very talented manager and we wanted to tie him in sufficiently that he has an opportunity to really start to develop everything that’s already going on that’s good at this football club within the youth programme and so on. We hold a lot of store by the great work that Neil Woods is doing and his team around him in terms of youth development. We’ve seen obviously youngsters come through. What we’ve wanted to do is really look at all of that and see how we can connect the youth and the first team more closely and ensure that the youngsters are getting, not just training, not just football games, but actually more coaching, more education, and in that process hopefully they will thrive more and do better for us in the long run. So we’re looking at all of that as an exercise in how we can improve on that and of course that was one of the key things we spoke to Mike Newell about at the time and he’s very very keen on that so with a bit of luck we’ll see what I would call less of a disconnect between the youth set-up and the first team in terms of when they go through into the first team, they won’t just be left to sink or swim. There will be some additionality to their programme of work and that’s what we’ve been working on for the last five or six weeks, to be quite honest, with the coaching staff here and everybody’s bought into it and I think the kids, when I say kids I mean the youth that’s in and around the first team, are absolutely buzzing about it, so hopefully that will bear fruit in no time at all. In terms of where we’re going to be in three and a half year’s time, I’d like to say that we’re still in business and we’re doing the best we can do and that’s all we’ll ever try and achieve.

DO:        On that note, can I say thank you to both you and Mike for taking the time to answer the supporters’ questions.

 JF:          And Dave, can I thank you for all of your good words of wisdom in the public domain. You speak very well on behalf of the Supporters Trust and I think we’ve got a tremendous relationship. Obviously you ask, to say the least, some very difficult questions from time to time and we do our best to answer all of those in the open and honest way that we’ve always done, bearing in mind that we have to be careful. The football club is a fragile thing that can so easily be damaged in public if certain information is used the wrong way or at the wrong time. So can I just put on record our thanks to you and the supporters trust and all the people around you, everybody that’s helping this football club really to stay in business. Thanks everybody.

Many thanks to Mike and John for their time. Dale Ladson for filming and editing the interview. Dave Otter for playing the interviewer and massive thanks to Rachel Branson for transcribing all 8,800 words!