HornetsGrey

You are not wrong. They will now need to cut budgets by at least £1.5m a season. It costs more than £500,000 to run Spotland as it is. If they halve that budget everybody will suffer. The pitch won't be maintained at the current standard thats for sure. Its sad for the town and the person on here who said he would celebrate if Dale were relegated should hang his head in shame. The town is poorer as a result. If they don't stop their decline Spotland will be no more.

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A bit harsh when they have had to put in half a million pounds of their own cash to keep RAFC independent. I think they do seem to know the value. Will be interesting to see what the joint meeting with Hornets and RAFC and the council results in. Will the council support both clubs in their pursuit of survival or not? I do wonder.

Is he slagging fans off or is he just pleading for more season card sales. With just 100 or so sold it is a real challenge to run the club. I know the argument about the cost of living issues, but in a town of our size, not everybody is struggling. Who'd do his job right now?

All games are live and free on BBC. It takes some effort to spend a fortune to watch in person. They know how many seats they haven't sold for games over the next 7 days. Why not now go on the offensive and come up with last minute deals. £10 for adults and £2 for kids - or £20 for a family of up to 5. If we want to bring the next generation into the game it is a great opportunity to let kids experience live games. Fill the stadiums - just like they've done with womans football

Thank god we didn't host it - a half filled stadium and lots of those attending had free tickets. We'd surely have lost money

Yes agree, and Mazey has the vision to be just that. But it needs investment and commitment to be a successful Championship club. RL is is dying in the old RL towns. We barely get 500 now. Spotland costs half a million quid to maintain each year and no tier two or three RL club can afford that. I don't know what the answer is, but last night, in the M62 corridor, our national team could barely half fill a smallish stadium having given half the tickets away for free. Thank god we weren't left to pay for that.

To be fair it had everything to do with Hornets - we just needed to pay for the full stand. The football club chairman was using twitter to announce the game to encourage more fans earlier in the week. Fair play. Once Mr Mazey paid for the full stand the capacity doubled. Hope we can fill it too. May the best side on the day and all that

Has anybody heard whether the game will be on or off. I see football is off but some other sport is going ahead. RL headquarters is taking its time to announce anything

And the twitter exchange between the two chairmen announces that the full stand will be available on Sunday. Can we fill it - hope so

Doen't mean that will be the case come the weekend. Chairman is probably edging his bets and seeing how sales go. Extra capacity can be arranged if sales go well. Can't blame him really.

Ah yes another negative post. Can't you be happy that we are in the play-offs and will have a 1000+ crowd if you get behind it. I see the Football club chairman is tweeting the game to the Dale fans

Go on Big Doug. Make my day and say something positive. How many friends are you going to bring along on Sunday?

The ticketing system has had a number of faults in recent weeks - a legacy of the so called Gentleman who was dismissed from his role. I know it failed completely for the football club last week. Anyway it needs to be sorted for the weekend - big game. We need the backing of all hornets fans old and new. I am assuming that the Chairman has agreed access to the whole stand and more if necessary. Would be great to fill it and some.

I know and Mr M will no doubt be negotiating for the capacity. Although I am not sure I want them lording it at our meadow

Hope so, not sure how 2300 will fit in the mainstand though. Would be nice to try. Come on lads, finish the season off strongly.

The comment was based on the need to sell to Morrisons. We couldn't afford to keep the stadium going. The "profit" from the sale was welcome at the time of course. We all have a view whether that money was well spent. But we were financially unable to stay at the Athletic Grounds as well you know. The ground sharing deal rescued both clubs

You do realise that the previous Board at Dale were trying to sell the club behind shareholders backs for personal gain that would have eventually closed Spotland don't you? Talk about blinkered. I won't make any judgements on how the relationship has changed because all I have seen is few rants in Twitter when people are drunk and comments on here from you which are probably without foundation. Both Boards need to work together. Looking back I would have preferred that we had accepted Chris Dunphys offer to take over hornets as part of RAFC. That would have created a less divisive culture. Anyhow I am keen to understand how the 99% of fans feel who never post on here. I was talking to my 86 year old aunt yesterday who has attended games since she was 7. Her views are more balanced than yours to be honest. Both clubs have needed each other to get them out of the S**T for over 35 years I agree. And without Dale agreeing to take on the stadium debt from Hornets administration and agreeing a deal with the RFL I doubt a new Hornets would have been born. Remember we were also on our knees when we left the Athletic Grounds too.

You are just wrong on the first point. Applicants for shares were rejected for not meeting the test that you say didn't exist. Dale is as fan owned as any other club now - only time will tell if it works. But the stadium is now protected, their Board has paid off the previous stadium company debts, and there is nobody able to take control of the club unless the fans vote for it. Hornets future is now in the hands of one man. The fans have no say. Time will tell whether that is a good thing or not. What is clear to me is that we can't carry on without more cash (whether that be more support or more of Mazeys cash). I want us to stay at Spotland.....but something has to be done to repair the relationship. Public rants are unhelpful and do not reflect the spirit of cooperation achieved in modern times. Both clubs would have been extinct 30 years ago had they not started to share one stadium. The RFL agreed the deal with RAFC after old hornets folded. They created the current arrangements that we now need to follow unless we renegotiate the terms. Our focus now is to focus on finishing the season strongly.

You haven't understood it Anita. The recent share issue was controlled so that only season ticket holders or fans on the ticket data base could buy shares. And as it is a private company and the company secretary controls whether to accept a share transfer its pretty much protected. And the largest shareholder is the Dale Trust and those shares are also owned by 1500 Dale fans. I look back at 2009 and wish we had done this. In fact we could so easily have prevented the old Hornets going under had we been savvy enough to ask fans to buy shares. Dale fans have done it for the love of the club and over 800 (I think) now own shares. They won't get dividends or a return on the investment. They won't be popping off to Old Trafford either. Surely we could have done the same. The trouble with the co-operative scheme is that it didn't engage enough people. We couldn't even get 200 people to join. And it didn't raise any capital. Thank goodness for Paul's money. Anyway that is in the past and we are now owned by an individual until he decides he doesn't want it. I don't have any issues with the fella at all - but one day he will move on and we will regret that we didn't invest in the club in 2009. At least Spotland is safe from property speculators

But the new Board has been appointed to run the football club as a fan owned entity. One of the Board members is an elected fan representative. The football club have enormous battles to retain their football league status and their relegation to League One has already cost them £1m per year in lost income. Given they say it costs £0.5m a year to run the stadium they are focussed on managing that cost as best they can. Their brief is to ensure financial sustainability so we can all enjoy Spotland for years to come. But the new directors have put hundreds of thousands of their own money in and for posters on here to post what they do shocks me. Why can't Hornets show the hand of friendship? Why don't we benefit from a well run football club who can afford to run the stadium?

Deary me. The 8 or so people that post on here do the club no favours. You are certainly not representative of the silent majority. I stopped posting on here years ago and see that the hate and vitriol continue. Why can't we see the positives. The directors and fans of the football club have just put £800k into the club to pay for the pitch and pay off the mortgage that was needed to cover the denehurst park stadium company debts. And they have ensured that the stadium is preserved for sport in the town into perpetuity. No owner can walk in, and then sell the stadium for development. That has to be good for both Hornets and Dale. As a follower of sport across our town I can see only positives. But then I don't have an agenda.

I see that Championship club Newcastle have announced they will go back to part time next season. They claim to have made substantial investment in the squad and financially it isn't viable. With average attendances of 900 I can see why. Pity they haven't been able to grab additional support from the Falcons - although they only manage 3500 or so at home too. But it shows that clubs outside of the Superleague will struggle to survive. Not a great place to be ahead of an expected economic downturn