6. Joe Harper - AFC record goalscorer Willie Miller - AFC record appearances
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Editor's Notes
Welcome everyone to the launch of Dons Supporters Together. We have a short explanatory presentation to share with you now and will be making 3 awards aswell. The club is also represented today by……………………..and X will also say a few words on behalf of AFC later. Thereafter, we will be happy to take questions and/or have individual conversations with you as you prefer. So, to begin, can I explain who we are and where we have come from………………..
As some of you may know, especially Chris, the origins of our body came from the work that John Stephen began in the 1990s that evolved into the Shareholders’ Association and then into the Trust in the mid 2000s. It would be fair to describe the original body as a pressure group but that is not necessarily the case now as viewing us “carers” is maybe more representative of the nature of the Trust body i.e. caring about the well being and future of the club with regard to its finances and such like as any officials of the club can only ever be seen as “caretakers” for our beloved club. We tend to be involved with aspects that many supporters do not get overly enthused about e.g. the annual accounts and so on……and we have a healthy working relationship with directors and reps through regular meetings i.e. good access to discuss relevant issues of the day, not necessarily all finance related of course. As the Trust we had an objective to grow our membership as it has steadily dropped from its peak of 1K+ to the current c170 level……..Reasons cited for this include – there isn’t a crisis (pressure group aspect) = less perceived need for the Trust and less appetite to then pay an annual membership fee. Reasons cited for not joining have been a bit of the above but more, a view that you need to be a shareholder to be a member. This is a legacy of the Trust’s previous life but is one of a few misconceptions around the Trust and its purpose and activities. Therefore, over the last few months, the Trust board developed some important changes that were proposed, and approved, in November’s AGM.
The main driver for this is that in our view, AFC – our club – is embarking on its biggest and most significant changes in its soon to be 109 year history. Therefore, it is vital to: ensure that supporters’ voices are heard throughout this change programme; ensure the club is transparent such that supporters understand the journey of change and its progress ie where we are with it/ remove obstacles hindering what we want done; and that everyone unites to work together as stakeholders in AFC, toward the primary goal for us all i.e. success, and the current + future prosperity of AFC. And so, whilst our official name remains “The Aberdeen Football Club Supporters Society Ltd” as we remain registered under the Industrial & Provident Societies Act 1965, our working name that we will be known by has changed to become – “Dons Supporters Together”….Our website and various other details have already been changed ( www.donssupporterstogether.com ). The key point is that we are open to everyone who supports and/or cares about AFC – and we mean everyone as the more the merrier i.e. young or old; local or ex pats; die hard or lapsed; inside or outside the club itself. To support this we have worked to remove barriers to membership and the related admin = the other significant change we have made is to remove the joining/annual membership fee – and so have made membership FREE. So, if you are not already a member- We’d love you to join, and if you are a member, then we’d love you to encourage friends/ family/ colleagues etc who support AFC to do so – via the website or forms with us today. Our firm belief is that bringing as many Dons Supporters Together as a big, united group, is a WIN/WIN/ WIN situation i.e. a win for AFC; for supporters and for our body. This belief is underpinned by – the more members we have, the greater the collective voice – the easier it then is to be heard and the combined weight of opinion is greater = AFC then enjoys the benefits of knowing and acting upon the combined democratic views of supporters as opposed to trying to please many disparate/separate individual voices and views as is currently the case, that are expressed in many different ways, as we have probably seen of late. To achieve this, we (The Trust) have sought to rebrand ourselves to recognise the foregoing and to highlight the inclusivity for everyone aspect as opposed to the previously mentioned misconception of exclusivity (shareholders)
We remain a “not for profit” organisation but do require some funds for a couple of reasons. One is to meet our annual running costs and the 2 nd is to assist with our objective to raise funds to assist AFC’s youth development programme – which we do via a scheme called Reds Direct. Therefore, we are always appreciate of donations (recently received £100) and will be introducing fund raising events, which we hope you will support, and would love any sponsorship to help meet these funding requirements. Our main aims and objectives are:- DST aims to develop a constructive working relationship with the AFC Board and management; DST aims to positively influence AFC’s communications with all fans and stakeholders of the club; DST aims to develop and strengthen AFC’s youth development and community work through introducing and administering fund raising schemes for the benefit of AFC and local communities e.g. Reds Direct; DST aims to act as the democratic and representative voice of all AFC supporters; DST aims to increase its membership as much as possible to have the strongest, collective voice possible; DST aims to strengthen its links with the Scottish Football Supporters Network to enable effective dialogue between AFC fans, AFC and other Scottish clubs, authorities and government.
To help achieve this, mechanisms will be introduced to enhance the current ones, to seek member views to provide to the club, on numerous topics that are relevant at the time e.g. stadium matters are very relevant now (moved on from debate on location) and so is safe standing which is something we have been championing per the feedback we have been getting. The more responses we get the better for all to fairly represent supporter views as we are the “democratic and responsible voice of Dons supporters” = our main purpose in providing members with the most direct link we can to AFC albeit DST’s focus will continue to be on more general matters than pure football ones, such as why is so and so playing every week etc etWe are also seeking to grow our own board numbers to 12 to then have 4 sub groups of mirroring the AFC board structure ie Football/Operations/Stadium and Funding – and we then hope that we’ll get offers of seconding reps in to help the main AFC board’s respective sub groups. On that note – and we have shared this with some directors – we are keen to progress our “Friends of the club” initiative, whereby we want to set up brainstorming (through working party) group sessions to include all stakeholders and associated interested parties to cover 10-12 areas of AFC’s being that we consider are vital to its future existence and prosperity – akin to a vision/strategy type piece but at a lower level and more day to day/operational related matters that can make a difference – quickly – as opposed to examples of when things like this can be more fanciful ie never going to happen. The ethos is that the AFC board and management have very difficult jobs and a great deal on their plates. They can’t know it all or if they do, they can’t do it all by themselves. Therefore they need help and we believe there are loads of people out there keen to offer, and want to, help either through ideas and/or implementing them. Therefore, the idea is to get everyone together in specific groups to discuss and generate ideas around these key aspects – agree ones to be implemented – prioritise them – agree communications regarding progress – and then work together to implement them, as we do not expect the club to do it all themselves. c.
D.O.N.S. = Distinction of Notable Service to AFC. This means that the recognition is open to anyone who has provided notable service to AFC, in any capacity and its not just players. We envisage many more inductees on a regular basis in the future but the inductees will be selected by DST members and so we are creating a Supporters Hall of Fame if you like. We are delighted that the first 3 inductees are here today and that they have agreed to accept the recognition from DST. The inductees evidence that whilst we have 2 of the club’s greatest ever players here, they cover a variety of roles performed for the club and not just as employees of the club. Brief CV/history for each to be provided on the day.
Summary – We fully appreciate that we won’t please everyone and won’t be able to do everything/ have everything we want implemented but we believe it is right to look to be proactive and to seek to do things that benefit as many parties as possible. And whilst we want all supporters club/groups members to join us we are not looking to trod on each clubs’ toes but we see the activities as being fairly distinct eg these clubs will continue to do all the things they currently do but we will offer the additional contact with the club as the greater opportunity to be heard ie. > input than now. A couple of quotes that sum it up for us are:- “Thousands of supporters speaking as individuals or small groups will never have the same power as held by the same thousands of supporters speaking in unison”, and “ DST can harness the power of our support into a vibrant and powerful, collective voice; a voice with conviction, influence and weight; a voice that cannot be ignored” (or ignored at the listener’s peril)
So if you care about AFC – then come and join us …As “Divided we will fail”……”Together we will achieve (more)”
![[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],The future prosperity of AFC is at the heart of our thinking!](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)