Re: Where to next? : Wed Apr 06, 2022 4:07 pm  

Perhaps the better question is 'Who Next ?'. With Hughes at the helm we are unlikely to prosper anywhere.

Re: Where to next? : Wed Apr 06, 2022 4:59 pm  

orangeman wrote:

BUMP:
If the "rumoured" gate of between 750-900 for Bradford is correct, then this surely must spell the end for this disastrous move south of the River and highlight the need to discuss moving back to Ealing.
Regardless of the expense of the various grounds we know rent, the idea of a few hundred rattling around a 10k stadium, watching a relegation battle unfold is surely seen now as insanity?

The whole move was managed terribly and yet the club are insisting on playing in Dons colours to try and garner favour rather than playing in our proper colours. There is no attempt to market the game other than to existing fans, no game day experience
no feeling that the club know what is happening from day to day.

Surely Hughes, who has alluded to 4 more years after this, can see that anything other than cloth cutting and hard work back at Ealing is key to having any chance of building to even half his 5k figure. 1,350 is the current average after 4 games (if we take 900 as correct). This includes hundreds of free tickets and discounted offers to curious dons fans and we started discounting after just 2 games into this new dawn.....so the club are aware they have f%$&*d up...now they just need to admit it and get the side back to West London ASAP.

There is no where to go next. We will go out of business if wimbledon does not work. If they survive this season they can try to reboot, but if they get relegated then its the end.

I actually think it will be the end if we lose to Dewsbury. I'm planning to try and go to that simply as it and the Newcastle games could be the last ever games as the broncos.

Re: Where to next? : Wed Apr 06, 2022 6:51 pm  

markrammond wrote:

There was a reason for each of the previous moves...

Harlequins RU negotiated a deal with the Broncos which gave the Broncos a free ride on a Matchday, however the Union Club benefitted from their brand being paraded around, and also the Broncos paid for things like an after match party which filled their bars with takings for themselves. They had an option to buy in after a few years for one pound. There appears to have been little thought about what happened if they didn't buy in. Once the initial deal elapsed, the Union Club wanted tens of thousands a game, plus a large share of the takings. This was perceived as not worthwhile by the Broncos.

So to be clear. Hughes and his CEO thought £225k a year and a slice of the bar too much, especially when wearing the hosts kit in 2012 but Hughes and his CEO now think that deal perfectly fine in 2022.....just with 3,000 fewer fans delivering £60k less in gate receipts?
Hughes butchered the relationship with Quins and personally I believe he wasn't keen from the start, but Lenagan drove the bus at the time. Once the business minded folk had left, the egos took over and even when the RFL pleaded with Hughes to sort out the sharp decline in crowds and even helped with marketing the WCC warm ups, he blindly ploughed ahead with disasterous appointment after the next resulting in the ultimate act of a narcissist.......deciding to walk away when your team gets hammered. This from a man who begged fans to return this year after a decade+ of being surplus to his needs.

Re: Where to next? : Wed Apr 06, 2022 7:03 pm  

markrammond wrote:

There was a reason for each of the previous moves...

A similar deal in many ways was agreed with Barnet, in which the Broncos would get the ground free, but basically Barnet would take all money. Parts of the deal, which made it potentially worthwhile for the Broncos were that they were promised a training pitch and provision for club staff. However, Barnet sold their former ground, where Broncos trained, would not install Rugby pitches at the Hive, would not let Broncos train on the match pitch and wanted an additional payment for just about anything. This damaged relations and the Broncos had to go to the expense of setting up again elsewhere for training and for club staff etc. It was not surprising when the deal was terminated.

The RFL paid the owner of Barnet £100,000 to take us in at the 11th hour. If he hadn't, 2014 would have seen a 13 team SL and London may well have ceased to exist as a professional entity.
The bars and associated income, together with everything else was always going to be skewed in favour of a host who didn't want us and didn't have any cause to help us either.
Club staff as far as I can see are now based out of a regus office in Richmond and we pay extra to train on a pitch with rugby posts (not that our place kicking reflects this)
....and I again ask at what stage will Hughes see that he is the problem.

Re: Where to next? : Wed Apr 06, 2022 8:10 pm  

markrammond wrote:

There was a reason for each of the previous moves...

The deal at Ealing Trailfinders also seemed to be baked in warmth, with the initial talk being about treating the club as your own and one big happy family etc. But the reality was that once a supporter had passed through the gate, pretty much all money went to the Trailfinders. The Trailfinders were also highly restrictive around what Broncos could do, and fixed prices in e.g. the corporate facilities. The problem with this was for instance, the Broncos may have got e.g. 100 people who would pay 15 pounds for a meal, but perhaps only 30 people who would pay 25 pounds for a meal, meaning the club had no flexibility. Some of the other decisions stripped out revenue opportunities in the last season or two, because if you are merely a salesman you might remove unprofitable product lines, but if you are with a big business, you cannot necessarily apply that thinking or you might close everything down, which is not exactly commercial acumen, as the downturn becomes then closure in real terms. In my opinion the club should have insisted that any merchandise provider ran a stall for say 5 hours on a matchday, guaranteeing a range of products etc. As things went, it became improbable the Broncos would make any money once in the ground, due to short term decisions which had a highly corrosive impact.

I reckon it would have only taken a modest double digit percentage of the bar takings and food stall takings to secure new terms, perhaps 50p out of a Pint, and a pound out of a burger sale and we could still be at Trailfinders. But obviously the octogenerian travel multi-millionaire at Trailfinders wanted all the cream for himself.

Firstly, I was aghast at the move to "The Wedding Venue". I saw this as further evidence that the lunatics had taken over the asylum and was proof that Hughes was now doing the bare minimum to ease his guilt from the 2013 dummy spit.
As time went by, the ground seemed to suit us and when I first visited it, I could actuallu see the potential. I still believed that there'd be little chance of the locals allowing a stand to be built, but was proven wrong, so when I returned to watch SL Rugby there in 2018, the ground was perfect for what we had at the time, which was 2k fans. When we returned to the Championship, we would return to a 1k average and Trailfinders was perfect for this. Couple all of this with the fact that our hosts had their eye on the prize of the Gallagher and further development would have been in the pipeline. I believe Hughes had also mentioned he would help with upgrade costs when we moved in (or did I dream that), so the venue seemed perfect.
The Knighted Billionaire you refer to didn't become either a "Sir" or a "Billionaire" by doing daft things. That said, how many times over the seasons at Trailfinders did we "sell out" the corporate lounge? The straw man argument over corp-hospo income is a red herring and given they've dropped their drawers (and the gimp in commercial) 2 games into AFC fiasco, it wasn't the venue nor the revenue split that was the issue. Short term issues can be ironed out by open and frank discussion, but Hughes doesn't do that and Loubser is an accountant.....as a Salesperson I'd eat him for breakfast in such negotiations.
I can only assume that Hughes has asked where the crowds are and "why am i sat alone in corporate hospo" and has been told it's the venue, location, pricing, revenue split and that the dog ate someones homework.....so it's off we go AGAIN.

REMEMBER...225K A YEAR WAS TOO MUCH AT HARLEQUINS.......so it's blatantly obvious why we'd move a few more miles down the road from there for a pretty similar set up with 3k fewer fans, in a lower division and as a part time team for the same money.

Re: Where to next? : Wed Apr 06, 2022 8:17 pm  

markrammond wrote:

The problem the club has had over the past 15 years or so is <snip>.

...valid arguments, but the real answer to your poser is DAVID HUGHES!

Who employed Gus McKay? Who employed Powell and Grima as first team coaches? Who promoted accountant Loubser to CEO? Who employed Milner and then allowed him to farm off contracts to his own company?

I have no doubt Hughes is lovely genuine bloke, but personally, I've watched him disassemble and destroy the club I supported with an abandonment of common sense that both beggars belief and betrays his narcissism. He won't be told, so guess what the outcome is.......the one I predicted 15 years ago....which makes me a narcissist too, for saying I told you so, but I did.

Re: Where to next? : Fri Apr 15, 2022 5:26 pm  

Hampton and Richmond Borough are applying for permission to install an artifical surface. Perhaps another option for L1.

Re: Where to next? : Sat Apr 16, 2022 6:03 pm  

Perhaps best to just lower the Flag! for the last time, rather than playing on any field we can find, that's not any future.

Re: Where to next? : Mon Apr 25, 2022 2:08 pm  

Ealing decide not to continue with their appeal. They'll not be a Premier RU team next season.

Re: Where to next? : Mon Apr 25, 2022 7:28 pm  

Anthony Jones wrote:

Ealing decide not to continue with their appeal. They'll not be a Premier RU team next season.

But they'll continue with development plans for their ground......which at present is probably twice the size that we need.