The unofficial AFC Rushden & Diamonds messageboard

Mr Chairman, if it had been Rishi Sunak at the club yesterday, would you have posted on your FB page that whilst standing next to Mickey Mouse at aldi, you had 'just met Keir Starmer'?? Asking for a friend

My FB page and anything I post or comment there is my personal life, and on that I'll post amongst my friends. If you're going to try and "expose" it on a public forum then maybe I misread our relationship "Ricky"

While I find the sort of electioneering on display here somewhat nauseating, I am certainly in the 'good for the club' camp here. Perhaps if we were talking about the BNP leader or someone with contentious views I could understand the negativity, but regardless of what you think of him and the Labour party, this is someone who has a very good chance of becoming the country's next PM visiting and tweeting to his 1.4 million followers on twitter/X about our little club and the potential next local MP visiting for a second time to HR, I really cannot see how this could be a bad thing for the club.

Well done Rob and those who were involved in this, I don't think anyone is deluded enough to think that Sir Keir is truly interested in a non league football club like ourselves, but as already said, the club will go nowhere to achieve its long term aims if we don't have conversations with people with influence.

StaceyH wrote: ↑Wed Feb 14, 2024 7:16 am More importantly, I see no mention anywhere of the Moulton scholars being unbeaten so far this season and making it through to the Dave Joyce Cup Final. News from around the club on the website/socials/1st team programme will also give the club good exposure to the powers that be that will be helpful in the long run.

I post info here once I see it on a channel (not fb/insta). The embedded twitter is easiest as it saves uploading graphics etc... I didn't see this info til the afcrd scholars tweet updated yesterday. Thread created. But anyone with the info can post.

https://afcdiamondsforum.uk/viewtopic.p ... 10#p120510

https://www.afcdiamonds.com/13th-february-visit/

February 13th Visit

After Tuesday’s visit of Sir Keir Starmer and Gen Kitchen I thought I would update you on how we approached the Wellingborough and Rushden By-Election.

Our objective from the start was very simple, to allow all candidates to understand what we as a Club do from the First Team to the Scholarship Partnership with Moulton, an extensive Elite Academy and successful community section in male and female football. Most importantly, it allows us to demonstrate what we need in the future with a new home that can accommodate every aspect of the Club and show how we can work in partnership with others to benefit our community. It also gives each candidate the chance to meet our supporters and part owners to gather their perspectives on what is needed in the local area on a wider scale.

As part of the process, every candidate who wished to attend had the same opportunities to meet with Club representatives such the Directors, Management Team, Academy, Scholarship, Part Owners, and supporters. Furthermore, each candidate will have the opportunity to select the player of the match and be interviewed by our media team.

Candidates confirmed as of Tuesday:

Will Morris – Green Party – Quorn AFC postponed
Ana Savage Gunn – Liberal Democrat – Coventry Sphinx FC
Gen Kitchen – Labour – Gresley Rovers FC
All these invitations were put out in good faith and we were awaiting responses from the remaining parties, due to the nature of this by-election these visits were subject to change, and we did our best to keep people informed. Any candidate was welcome to come to more than one game and bring others to see what we do and what we can build for the future, the only criteria being having one candidate per game.

More locally, we have continued to develop our relationship with North Northants Council, again by demonstrating what we do and could do in the future working in partnership to help rebuild communities in our area. We’ve had representation from NNC at several events, including the Deputy Leader of NNC to ‘Legends’ and from this we can help develop policies and infrastructure at a local level that not only help us as a club but hopefully increase our impact in the local area which will hopefully bring an increase in fanbase.

If you would like to know more, feel free to email me at matt.taylor@afc-diamonds.com and I’d be delighted to take the time and discuss how partnership working can help drive our Club forward.

Matt Taylor
Commercial Director
matt.taylor@afc-diamonds.com

Non league paper article…

As mentioned in the article, the number of clubs experiencing hardship is alarming. The amount of money some clubs go under for, amounts to absolute pennies for teams higher up the English footballing ladder. We shouldn’t encourage mismanagement by bailing out clubs who have spent money irresponsibly, but we also shouldn’t punish the fans. We need better and more rigorous regulation of which kind of actors can get involved with our clubs in the first place, ASAP.

I have had my questions about our fan ownership model this season, thanks to financial woes in the summer and the seemingly never ending quest to fund the move into our own ground. But with that said, seeing the amount of clubs experiencing trouble recently has made me stop and think again to some extent. You can never really guarantee that an owner is going to have the clubs best interests at heart. There are of course many examples of owners that do care, and run their club responsibly too. It’s definitely a dilemma, at least for me. K*ttering for example, have the opportunity at the moment to take up the fan ownership model, but instead are opting to find a buyer to take the club off of Jeune.

Ultimately, I think I would be way more optimistic about the fan ownership model if we had our own ground. If we had the facilities to hire out, as well as a kitchen and bar to make matchday funds, it would make our job as part owners much easier financially.

Back to the topic of this thread though, it’s great to see the club in the NL paper, regardless of what you make of Keir or the Labour Party. Hopefully the new MP will remember, and value the work that the club does in the community. The sheer amount of development going on in and around Rushden, I have to say surely it’s quite unfortunate the club have not yet been awarded some S106/CIL funding to facilitate a move into our own home (I understand that education and healthcare provision are super important and pressing, community sports facilities are important though too).

Thought I'd just add to this thread to mention that the constituency's new MP included us in her maiden speech in parliament. All right, she named us as 'Rushden & Diamonds football' and there wasn't exactly many in the commons to hear it, but still good to hear her mention us in a national setting, and she probably wouldn't have had done we not reached out to her like we did.