Present:
Robin Sainty, Gary Field, Kathy Blake, Andy Polley, Chris Newby, Laurie Egan, Alistair Steward, Glenn Bate (Canaries Trust)
Zoe Ward, Sam Hall, Lynette Hannant, Beth Jex (NCFC)
Shirts for Syria:
AS said the campaign had exceeded everyone’s expectations. The original idea had bee to collect 10-20 shirts and send them to Syria. At the last count we had over 300 and numerous other items. The CSF alone had sent 15 bin bags. This of course left us with a logistical problem of getting them to Syria. AS was working on this at present. He thanked the club for their assistance, particularly the use of the lock up container near the food area.
Season ticket renewals:
ZW thanked the Trust for their assistance and input into the Season Ticket process for next season. The supporters appreciated the need for a rise and it was felt that the increment was fair. So far there had been 15,000 renewals.
Memorandum of Understanding:
AP said that he felt that the current version should be updated to reflect the growing relationship between the Club and the Trust. The intention is also to make the document less “legalistic” in tone, to which SH agreed. AP and RS also raised the issue of how long before a significant announcement the Trust should be advised as short notice could make it hard to produce a unified response to media questions. Generally, it was accepted that this works well but there have been odd occasions when the notice has been as little as 10 minutes. A revised version is with ZW and SH for their review.
Fan Led Review:
ZW said that the Premier League had set up an advisory group on this consisting of seven clubs. She was on it representing Norwich. A lot of work had already been done but much was still in progress. There are many positive elements to the review that the Premier League is looking to implement.
Scallop:
GF said we weren’t looking to scrutinise NCFC’s decision to get involved in cryptocurrency, but rather to express our concerns about what is increasingly an unregulated football wide problem. SH said that Scallop should be considered more as a ‘wallet’ than a ‘currency’.
GF said that although the current arrangement was in its early stages, the Scallop logo can be seen next to the club logo on The City View videos as well as being run on the perimeter advertising.
RS expressed a concern that this could potentially develop into another BK8 situation. However, it was clear from the response from SH and ZW that the Club was well aware of the potential issues and would always review every aspect of an offering when considering a partner. In fact, it was made clear that some deals had been offered to the Club and had not been taken up for a variety of reasons.
Mental Health Addiction Forum:
RS said that after the success of last year’s mental health forum, the Trust were keen to do another this time focussing on addiction. The idea was to hold it in online to maximise attendance.
Anonymity was available this way too. BJ said she was happy to support this but not advise as she has no expertise in this area. RS explained that the intention was to discuss the issues but not to offer advice and on that basis, BJ said she would reconsider being involved herself. RS emphasised how important Club representation is and ZW said that she had people in mind who might want to contribute and will report back on this.
Marketing and Comms issues:
AP said he was having problems getting responses to queries from the magazine editors. Also, despite assurances to the contrary, the Trust details on the club website were still hard to find. ZW explained that website presence is difficult as lots of areas wish for more exposure and it’s difficult to put everything to the front.
Everton game report:
GB had attended as a secret shopper in the away section. The atmosphere had been very toxic and there had been some safety issues at the game, including some which included police actions following the game, and suggested a separate meeting to discuss the detail.
He hoped to repeat the exercise as a disabled supporter in a wheelchair because he felt that some actions at the Everton game had affected disabled supporters' match day experience in a negative manner.
Premier League secret shoppers had rated NCFC average or slightly above average in their reports, the reports we are completing would highlight areas of positive engagement and where improvement could be made which should help the club improve scoring and supporters match day experiences
GB thought retraining of the stewards might help in some areas of their duties, a discussion then followed about training including areas where extra training might be beneficial. ZW said that the Club had undertaken a review of steward training and was currently rolling out a better programme.
Women in Football:
The Trust were delighted that NCFC had taken the women’s team under their wing. RS expressed concern that the new sponsorship opportunities might price some of the previous smaller, local sponsors out of the market, but ZW felt that this would not be the case. It was noted that the Trust would like to continue its relationship and sponsorship of the women’s team.
As far as HerGameToo goes, the Club is involved in positive discussions with them,
but they would not rush into a partnership because they want to back up any announcement with initiatives that would show that they were fully committed rather than simply signing up. With this in mind RS noted that Ipswich had recently partnered with HGT but a week later had allowed a comedian to take to the pitch at half time and make openly misogynistic comments about Delia to rapturous applause from the fans.
RS announced that as the Trust was itself intending to sign up to HGT to coincide with its sponsorship of the NCWFC game on March 6th, a move which the Club are supportive of.
Any Other Business:
KB said she had become aware that Lil Kemp’s family and friends were disappointed no one from the football club had gone to the funeral, and the club had charged £1000 for the hire of the room. ZW said she had become aware after the funeral but nobody had told the club about the funeral at the time of booking otherwise the club would have attended.
LE asked if the Trust could negotiate non-commercial use of Yellows for fundraising functions.
RS informed the club that three international Canary Supporters groups were now affiliated to the Trust. USA Canaries, South American Canaries and Italian Canaries. CN said the latter were having trouble getting their membership packs. LH said it wasn’t uncommon for untracked packages to go missing in Brazil. The club would use tracked mail from now on.
CN asked if we could have use of the container for future projects.
RS wished LH, who is leaving the Club at the end of March, all the best on behalf of the Trust and said she would be sorely missed.
Date of next meeting:
Wednesday 25th May 4pm (TBC)