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Moat Woe is Easing
Mark Evans
Gresley Rovers' battle against a cash crisis is to come under the spotlight when the club holds its annual meeting next month.
For the first time in several seasons, the event is to be held against a backdrop of an improving financial situation rather than gathering gloom.
Figures issued to club members this week show that in the year ending May 1999 - the season in which Rovers were relegated from the Dr Martens Premier Division two years after winning the championship - the club's debt rose to above £90,000.For the first time in several seasons, the event is to be held against a backdrop of an improving financial situation rather than gathering gloom.
However, a deficit of £90,340 on the club's profit and loss account is tempered by an underlying trend of financial improvement.
Details of how major cutbacks, including reductions to the wage budget and other expenses, affected the club's financial situation indicate Rovers had finally stopped haemorrhaging cash by the time the disastrous reign of former financial director Lance Luckhurst reached its conclusion last autumn.
Despite a reduction in turnover from £189,443 to £151,321, bought about by a fall-off in attendances and the failure to maintain levels of sponsorship income, the clubs operating loss was cut from £12,264 to £4,634 and compares to £34,000 in 1997 and £28,000 in 1996.
Administrative expenses were cut from £177,575 to £138,681, a reduction of 22 per cent. Despite this, the club's overall debt rose from £85,692 to £90,340.
Mark Evans who replaced long-serving chairman Peter Hall at Christmas as part of sweeping board changes, will tell members at next month's meeting that the club is continuing its battle to return to a financial even keel.
Evans has bucked a recent trend by releasing financial figures ahead of the annual meeting and has moved the event from a Sunday morning to a Thursday evening.
"The club is issuing these figures now so that people have time to look at them closely and is moving the AGM to Thursday so as may members as possible can attend. This is all part of the process of communicating to members and supporters." Evans said.
Evans, who pledged to give details of the club's current financial situation at the meeting, said: "Since May 31, 1999, the date that the figures come up to, the club has reconstituted its board and attracted new sponsors and new business. We have further faced up to the economic realities of today and also of our predicament. We've stopped digging and we're beginning to claw our way out of the hole. There is improvement."
