Piracy

Raith Rovers, what a gang eh? Shower of ******s.

Might be something that. 🤔

Morton have a video up on YouTube from Tuesday 19/03 explaining the accounts for 2022/2023. Worth a watch. Income against expenditure.

It's value for money and if it brings in revenue all fair and well. Is it an indicator of cash flow issues, maybe, maybe not.

I asked last Thursday why the club hadn't supplied profit & loss detail in the accounts. David Cook said the club never has. I said Im sure they had previously, I was told no, that was wrong. I took David Cook at his word, and in my summary of the meeting I said I stood corrected. But I had read up on stuff before the meeting and was aware there's no legal obligation to publish P&L detail. As I have also said previously, that's the clubs perogative.

Just dinnae even think it.

You can email SLO Drew Main and ask the question. andrew@dafc.co.uk

According to David Cook none of our previous accounts gave profit & loss detail.

No room for complacency now, no room for any slackers, we can't be intimidated now, its got to be full on from now on in. I believe McPake and the players can do themselves justice by producing a nail biting run in by winning games. They do that they'll take the fans with them. Anyway, Pars to produce a 3-2 away from home win.

"Ach, trying not to be a grumpy ******* again but I'd love to see the Maths behind this" I did ask at the meeting about provision of actual figures, but I don't think we'll ever see them, unfortunately.

Feel free to interpret the information for yourselves. I'll hold my own thoughts

Club SLO, Drew Main has pointed out the club are looking at the present format of the meeting type held last Thursday to improve things on the communication front. What ever develops or transpires on that front we'd like to reiterate the offer always stands for any forum member to represent the EEB website at these meetings or indeed the larger supporters council meetings. After these meetings first started I started with taking notes and providing feedback on the EEB. After admin discussions Digs then got involved representing EEB. We've also had both Superally and Grant providing excellent interpretations of the larger meetings from within the Purvis Suite that they attended. Further involvement from forum members to provide feedback from these meetings while representing the EEB or representing themselves is 100% encouraged from our (EEB) perspective. Just for clarity, often there's feedback from both Digs and myself on here. That is because I help run a regular bus to the games and I represent that bus and Digs the EEB. There is 1 person representing each fan group. The fan groups represented are EEB, Dafc.net, DADSC, supporters buses, NW Section, Former Players Association etc (apologies to those I've missed).

I've copy & pasted the answers to my questions from the email reply I recieved last Friday morning from Drew Main. As I said in my summary post of the meeting I missed the first hour of the meeting and most of what I had asked was answered in that first hour. All listed below. 1. Exactly how has the club managed to make a trading loss of £1m + last season? The trading loss of around £1M can be broken down in a number of ways; relegation was expensive particularly in relation to prize money – approx. £120k for winning the league as opposed to around 3 times that amount for finishing mid table in the Championship. The club budgeted to finish 2nd (probably as much not to tempt fate by assuming we’d win the league!) so although we got slightly more prize money we lost out on about £100k from play-off matches and had to pay out more in way of success bonuses to the playing and coaching staff. As everyone knows we now pay for the services of a CEO and Commercial Manager, roles previously carried out on a voluntary basis but deemed an important step by GmbH to further professionalise the club. We now have our own fully funded academy rather than contributing to FEFA – this equates to a cost of around 6 times more than we’d previously have spent in this area but another decision by GmbH as they see this as past of the long term strategy which I fully support. Finally, the cost of deciding to progress with the Rosyth project even following relegation, which meant a £96k bill to improve drainage even before we could start to install the artificial pitch. 2. It is now known that the club is only funding the current development at Rosyth because of £700k grant funding and an additional loan from Fussball for £300k, I’m assuming that is because the existing cash reserves of DAFC cannot adequately cover this? Your figures on the Rosyth funding aren’t quite right. The cost of installing the artificial pitch came in at £825k (up from the initial quote of £600k due to delays in obtaining planning permission primarily due to Scottish Water concerns and subsequent post Covid price hikes and inflation). £525k was received by way of grant funding with £300k coming from additional GmbH investment meaning that DAFC cash reserves are spent on DAFC. 3. Why Fussball are not converting their loans to shares to demonstrate they are fully committed to DAFC? As you rightly point out, GmbH have yet to convert their loan note to shares. This is because they are still keen for the supporters to feel a part of the project. They could easily convert the loan notes tomorrow and not be answerable to anyone as the majority shareholder but that’s not the way they want to run the club. To me that demonstrates remarkable commitment to DAFC – they’ve given us all of the money for the shares whilst choosing to continue to operate with the status quo and with only 2 Directors on the Board. 4. It is now known that another hefty loss will be made this season (three large losses in consecutive seasons). How can the supporters have faith in the club’s current business model, with the cash reserves being depleted year after year? I think your point about consecutive hefty losses was addressed and I can see you covered that off on your online post as well so nothing for me to add there. 5. It’d be good for the supporters to understand, what is Fussball’s detailed and coherent business plan for the future? It was pointed out last night that football must be the most difficult of businesses to produce a coherent business plan for as it can be extremely difficult to predict outcomes on the pitch which ultimately affect all parts of the business. All I can add is that the club are well aware of the need to be sustainable in the long term. The longer it takes to get back to the Premiership the more difficult that becomes. This also means not necessarily being reliant on lucrative cup draws, player sales and Covid grants as has been the case in multiple recent seasons. Numerous initiatives are being explored to increase revenue/reduce costs. Importantly, GmbH are fully aware and committed to the long term sustainability plan and are also aware of their funding obligations to achieve that. I can assure you that, under no circumstances would I continue to be involved and emotionally invested in the way that I am if I thought for one second that this was not the case.

Full steam ahead

Easy Tiger, small steps 😃

Got it Drew. I'll have a read. Thanks.

I'll have a look Drew. May have went into my spam. Will go find it and reply. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Donation made. Put the link below. https://dadsc.fife.net/

I won't be near the wee Asda today but willing to donate something. Do we have a link somewhere?

It's our job to get the Rovers in the play offs and beat them. As Digs has pointed out for some time.

I meant to post up the questions I had sent in the email to the club. I obviously didn't get a reply but instead Drew Main said I'd get answers on the night, that way more people get to hear the replies. On hindsight I should have not sent the questions, but they just have might have had an influence of hastening the supporters meeting last Thursday. Anyway, here are those questions, which I kinda got round to asking toward the meeting end. Exactly how has the club managed to make a trading loss of £1m + last season? It is now known that the club is only funding the current development at Rosyth because of £700k grant funding and an additional loan from Fussball for £300k, I’m assuming that is because the existing cash reserves of DAFC cannot adequately cover this? Why Fussball are not converting their loans to shares to demonstrate they are fully committed to DAFC? It is now known that another hefty loss will be made this season (three large losses in consecutive seasons). How can the supporters have faith in the club’s current business model, with the cash reserves being depleted year after year? It’d be good for the supporters to understand, what is Fussball’s detailed and coherent business plan for the future?

No real weakness in our overall play. Yes, United were dung but let's all acknowledge how well we took those 3 goals. The incisive play, the positional awareness, positional sense of the players and the execution was miles in front of what we've produced so far this season. You can see how a full squad would have really benefitted us in this league, but that's irrelevant, it's sleeves rolled up for the remaining games.

I share the sustainability concerns, that won't change anytime soon for me. I kept my powder dry till around the time we were thumped 5-0. I've been hearing all sorts, and although I'm disregarding a lot of it, some of it comes from what I'd consider trustworthy people. If we keep winning I'll be happy with our fundamental reason for being, a competent team team on the park.

This is exactly the kind of thing I want to both see and hear from the club. Embedding ourselves firmly in the community is an absolute must and was always a strong intent by the previous Board post Masterton. Long may it continue and we'll done to those who continue to volunteer for these initiatives.

I sensed a bit of nervousness from him on Thursday. A man desperate to turn things around and to stress the frustration around poor results and also an absolute willingness for his team to do well. I'd also say, maybe a man slightly worried about his position as manager, I'm so glad he pulled this off last night, the relief was obvious and you could see what it meant to him and thr players. I've said this numerous times, he's the most competent manager we've had in an age.