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Meeting with wee Ron

GORDONSMITH7

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Well we met Wee Ron!

As mentioned in our last update 3 St Pats committee members along with the HSA and other Branch officials were invited to attend a ‘get to know you’ session at ER hosted by Ron Gordon and Leann Dempster, 10th July. We were also pleased to be accompanied by Branch Member and Board Member Kieran Power

As a lot of members have rightly shown interest in this item and we thought it best to update the full Branch as quickly as possible.

Remembering the man has only been in the club a week or so, I guess this session was more about pressing the flesh and ticking the box in meeting the fan representation; sorry that sounds a bit negative and it was far from it, See Brian Duffy’s bullet points from the session below.

  1. RG is looking to grow the club organisationally / infrastructure wise as much as he is looking to build on pitch growth
  2. He believes we should be consistently challenging at top end of league , similar to Aberdeen
  3. He feels that we already have a competitive and healthy transfer budget and need to operate creatively.
  4. RG appears to want to focus on development from grassroots / academy up and is committed to building an indoor training facility alongside existing EM facilities. He suggested this might cost 3 - 4 million
  5. RG is looking to the fans to "pony up" and contribute financially to this project
  6. The original HSL objective of achieving 51% club ownership is dead and buried, RG owns 67% of shares , HSL and others 33%. There are no additional shares available for sale. RG doesn't view majority fan ownership as a desirable thing for various reasons.
  7. RG talked a lot about community and giving back to the community which was good to hear and very much in tune with our branch ethos
  8. Dougie asked what RG wants from us and he said our continued support.
  9. Theres been internet speculation about stadium naming rights. I asked RG and he said there are no plans for this, it would take "big money " for us to go down that route he would want Easter Road to remain in any new stadium name.
  10. We invited RG to a branch meeting and he responded very positively asking us to arrange it via Leeann Dempster. When we introduced ourselves it was good to know that he was already aware of the roots of the club.
  11. We also caught up with LD, she too was very positive and as always took interest in our Branches view. She agreed to speak at a further full branch meeting in the future
Our observation is he sees himself as a servant to the club and wider community and he does not see his involvement as a means to make money.

Overall impression was that he is both enthusiastic and excited.

Dougie McLeod
St Patrick's Branch Chair
 
So we've went from an indoor pitch at 1.5M to a 3 or 4M facility. Sorry but I won't be putting any money towards that. I was happy to pay that wee bit extra for the fitba team but no way for anything else.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk
 
Must admit I'm struggling to see why we need a £4 million facility?
 
Putting money towards what appears on the pitch is a completely different kettle o' fish fae ' ponying up ' tae fund infrastructure that improves the package for any future change of ownership. I really hope I'm being unnecessarily pessimistic here. GGTTH
 
I think we need to know Ron's definition of ponying up before we all get our knickers in a twist.
 
As he's a Yank I'm pretty sure he means what it means. Stump up.

Unless he's learned some Cockney doon at the tennis last week....but I'm probably talking pony innit [emoji237]

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I could be wrong and completely misunderstanding things here but it looks tae me like STF and RP have selt HSL and everybody who thought they were contributing tae fan ownership doon the river
 
I just hope they huvnae selt us a' doon the river
 
And while I'm on one look at Big Gs para 3. Looks like he's no' gonnae be putting money intae the playing budget any time soon and ' operating creatively ' is usually business speak for cutting back, or at least not putting any more in. As I said I sincerely hope I'm misreading all this
 
If "ponying up" means that he'll issue £3m (say) of new shares and he'll buy £2m of them in line with his two thirds holding with the remainder available for HSL and the other small shareholders to buy then I'll be all for it. If it involves chucking donations in to enhance the value of a business in which he's the majority owner then I'll take a fair bit of convincing.

Not going to jump to conclusions until we have full details though.

Edited to add, thanks for posting the update, appreciated
 

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