This is the first opportunity for me to welcome our new Manager/coach Paul Tisdale to Bristol Rovers on behalf of the Supporters Club. Paul is very well known here having spent time in the Academy in his early career before becoming a highly successful boss in the area both with Team Bath and then our old rivals Exeter City. Let’s hope he has a winning home start at the Memorial Stadium today!
In the week preceding this article we received the club’s accounts back from our auditor and these will be made available soon after they have been finalised. This signals our readiness to hold the Annual General Meeting having already received applications for both directorships and one to join the committee. The Committee was able to hold a couple of outdoor meetings early on in the pandemic, when the weather and the Government’s rules allowed us to do so. Since the summer we have had to keep in contact with each other either by phone or electronically, not that there has been much to keep us occupied and we have had no income whatsoever. A very strange start to the season indeed as we are usually so busy preparing for the campaign. What has become evident to us is the fact that a surprising amount of our members do not have access to email making contact very difficult, especially with no fans being allowed access to games where posters in the ground, this column in the match programme and just meeting-up face-to-face is normally possible. We have considered holding our AGM by ‘zoom’ but clearly we are only going to be able to contact every member by way of a ‘mail shot’ so this is the road we are almost certain to go down with a ‘proper’ AGM being held when Government restrictions allow us sufficient numbers indoors. The Committee is working on this matter now but the rules regarding meetings seem to be changing every few weeks. Fortunately we now know that vaccines will be with us very soon so hopefully we can put a meeting in place early in the new year but, those of you who are able to, please watch this space as they say and keep safe meantime!
Jim Chappell.