Saints Cancelled Fund Raising Meeting

[spyinthesky]

Can anyone remember the details of the so called 'Cancelled Fund Raising Event' that was supposed to happen when we went into admin?

 

This is often mentioned by PFC fans as a lack of interest from us compared to their 'wonderful' support of the club in difficult times.

 

As I recollect the idea was dreamed up (in the best intent) by a young lad who was looking for fans to turn up at the Central Hall, or somewhere similar, to start a campaign to save the club.

 

Am I right to understand that the meeting was cancelled, not due to lack of interest, rather than because the Markus Liebherr interest came along and things turned round for the better very quickly

[BlakeySFC]

Probably the latter, I wouldn't believe any portsmyths.

[The Kraken]

It was actually a fundraising game of football, ex Saints and such like potentially lined up. But it was set up during the season. Sales reached something like 2000 or so when it was decided to pull the plug.

 

The part that Portsmyth fans fail to mention is that the administrator, Mark fry, encouraged as many fans as possible to come to St mary's for actual games. Our average attendance to that point was something like 16K; the following games attracted figures around 23K - 24K.

 

Also, fans were a bit fed up of paying into collection buckets just to see the likes of BWP and his mates still pick up their exhorbitant wages every single week. Unlike Portsmyth, SFC didn't go in for wage deferrals over the following 4 years or any of that nonsense.

 

So, while technically true, the chide is more of a falsity that those lot can desperately cling to as evidence of how wonderful they are, without really getting to the true facts.

[St Chalet]

Fry sold Surman and Leon Crouch helped out by subbing the Pinnacle bid.

 

Unlike the shower of **** down the road we had assets.

[dubai_phil]

Let us not forget that Leon did put down the cash guarantee for the Fundraising game. Which subsequently served a big part in saving us.

[Saint_clark]

The game was actually in the summer and it was cancelled due to lack of tickets sold, and I don't know about anyone else but the thing that p*ssed me off with it was that dopey Mike Osman in the press release saying "now is the time for Saints fans to show their dedication", like we hadn't been doing it all season.

[The Kraken]

The game was actually in the summer and it was cancelled due to lack of tickets sold, and I don't know about anyone else but the thing that p*ssed me off with it was that dopey Mike Osman in the press release saying "now is the time for Saints fans to show their dedication", like we hadn't been doing it all season.

It was in mid-May (17th), and tickets went on sale while the season was still running. It was also during the time when Mark Fry had announced that the takever was going through. Lawrie Mac was one of the organisers but, rather weirdly, it hadn't been set up by the club. Fry had been vocal in the press that fans should turn up to actual league games, which as said before they did to the tune of an extra 8,000 fans per game once the club had gone into administration and rid itself of the Rupert Lowe leech.

[alehouseboys]

When Lowe returned to the club that certainly knocked a lot of fans who voted with their feet. The game after he left the club for the second time saw the crowd jump to over 27,000.

 

The fundraising game was a fook up from the start, poor advertising, no opposition ever announced, not even a definite first team, it was just expected to be made up of ex-Saints, if I remember correctly they were even talking about some of the '76 team turning out!

 

They decided to pull the plug when only around 2k tickets were sold in advance but many more would probably just paid-on-the-day, it was never gonna trouble St Mary's 32k capacity. The fact that it was also looking very likely that we had by then been saved with the takeover took away the need for it.

[The9]

Evidence of the launching of "Save our Saints" http://www.southampton.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=149930 prior to the Charlton match (4th April 2009).

 

Saintsweb's take on it (post cancellation) here: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?13113-Save-Our-Saints . StuRomseySaint was not in favour.

[The9]

Match had been scheduled for April 27th, was cancelled by 15th (which was the date the thread was started).

 

Pinnacle withdrew on June 29th (ish), long after they had ceased to be a viable option. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2009/jun/30/le-tissier-pinnacle-withdraw-southampton-takeover

 

You may note that I wasn't particularly impressed with some of the reasons given, and had my own take on it.

 

Takeover completed on 8th July: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/paulfletcher/2009/09/back_from_the_brink_southampto.html

 

Like it or not, we'd thrown in the towel well before the future of the club was assured.

[trousers]

Like it or not, we'd thrown in the towel well before the future of the club was assured.

 

Or....we always knew that the club was an attractive proposition for an investor and it was only a matter of time before someone came in with a decent bid so why go to all the trouble of tin rattling etc....

[Wes Tender]

There was no way that we would go out of existence, no matter what Fry said. Look at the Skates and how a basket case like them hung on by their fingernails time and time again. Our infrastructure assets meant that we were too good an opportunity for some investor to pass over and it's a shame that Fry wasted so much time with tyre-kickers before he eventually identified a serious player like Markus.