Come and talk to us please.
Invitation To John Chapman
Recently a letter was sent to John Chapman on behalf of the fans on the Motherwell FC mailing list on the internet asking for a meeting with him to discuss the club's future. The fans decided on a £3-£5 entry fee with the profits going to charity. For this meeting only fans on the mailing list were going to go incase some nutters came along and started trouble.
The following letter was sent to the club:
21/8/'97
Dear Mr Chapman,
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Craig McGill and I am a member of the Motherwell Mailing list which meets regularly through the Internet.
Recently, a few clubs, including Celtic, have been holding informal Q&A sessions where the chairman and others meet with the mailing list fans and I was wondering if you and possibly Mr Dick, Mr Swinburne or anyone else you would like to invite would be interested in such a meeting at Fir Park.
Obviously the best venue would be one of the bars at the club as this would allow everyone to relax and make some money for the club!
A ticket price of £5 (£3 for anyone unemployed or children) would be charged and all the money raised would go to a charity of your choice.
The meeting itself would last for approximately one hour (though if anyone from the club wanted to stay longer I am sure the fans would be delighted) with questions being directed to the chair of the meeting and then answered by the relevant person.
Numbers to date indicate around 50 - 60 people would be interested in this and I can guarantee that they have all been informed that it is an informal meeting and, as children may be present, anyone who does not have a sensible question or constructive comments to make is not welcome. The time for the meeting is entirely up to you, though a Friday evening (around 6.30/7pm start?) may be the best time for all involved, but this is up to you.
A few days later it was reported that Alan Dick, when asked about the possibility of a meeting, said that Chapman didn't want to do it because he thought he would be set up as a "sitting duck". When asked if anyone else wanted to do it Alan Dick is said to have replied that it wasn't the sort of thing they got into.
I suppose I could understand Chapman turning us down if there were any serious problems at the club. It's not as if we're starting a Celtic style revolution - yet. The trickiest question anyone would have to answer would probably be "Why does Chapman continually demand £2.5 million when all of the (alleged) bids have been under £2million?" The fact that the team are doing okay would take some of the heat off McLeish and his new contract.
The best thing that we can hope for then is that the club is sold quickly. Hopefully the new owner will be a bit more co-operative with the fans. Even without this latest incident Motherwell's PR has been rubbish for ages and our fans never really know what's going on.
Hopefully with an ambitious new chairman we can make the Great Leap Forward.
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