Last week saw Bristol Rovers conduct their first, of what they hope will be at least a couple fan’s forum, of the season as the club’s bid to improve their communication with supporters continues.
On the panel were first-team manager Matt Taylor, Director of Football George Friend, left-back Bryant Bilongo and new Commerical and Revenue Director Ritchie Bates with the quartet answering questions specific to their areas of expertise.
Those queries covered a wide array of topics with the latest on stadium plans, how the club were able to complete 16 signings over the summer transfer window and the start to the season major points while there was also important discussion on the likes of plans to continue and improve support for female fans at matches, the decision to swap matchday programmes with a monthly magazine, extra charges for physical season tickets, players’ families seeing comments on social media and more.
With the meeting lasting over an hour and a pretty sizeable list of areas discussed, covering every single point would make for an extremely extensive read. The full fan’s forum can be viewed on BRFC TV here but we have summarised the major talking points discussed in last week’s session that related to queries that many have asked over recent months which haven’t previously had a clear or recent answer.
Rovers don’t want to ‘rush’ over Mem redevelopment and are ‘keen’ on new big screen
In an ideal world, Executive Vice President Abdullatif AlSaeed would have been able to join the panel like he did in the previous fan’s forum in March but evidently that wasn’t possible. This is mainly because the most frequently asked question was expected to regard what the latest is in terms of the plans to redevelop The Mem.
We’re approaching a year since Chairman Hussain AlSaeed announced that the club planned to redevelop their current stadium as opposed to build a new ground on the Fruit Market site which will increase The Mem’s capacity to around 16-18,000.
The Rovers co-owner met with local media in April towards the end of last season and explained that, at that point, the club were “close to two weeks or maybe a bit more away from completing the plans” but were unable to share said plans until completed and shared with council members.
Since, it was reported by Bristol Live in July that the Gas were consulting local residents over plans to build student flats next to The Mem with those details not yet publicly revealed, although a press conference is expected to be arranged when plans are ready to be shared with the public.
Bates was the obvious figure to take questions on plans to improve infrastructure at the football club, which also includes expanding The Quarters, although it isn’t known exactly how involved he is in the project in his current role.
The new Commercial and Revenue Director came across as friendly and approachable, insisting that he’ll always try to be as honest as possible and on the stadium latest, he said: “Obviously I’ve only been here for a few weeks so I can only tell you in terms of what I’ve discussed with the ownership. Obviously it’s a really, really positive one. We’re going through different stages and the stage we’re at at the moment is discussing and consulting with the local residents that’s been on the agenda over the last few weeks and since I’ve been here they’ve had a number of meetings with local residents. Again, making sure that everybody is involved, everybody is consulted.
“Pre-applications are in the process at the moment and again, what I can tell you about the ownership is that they’re really positive about the club, redeveloping The Memorial Stadium and the community aspect of this as well. Redevelopment brings jobs to the area. Local businesses thrive from a redeveloped Memorial Stadium.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t loads more that I can tell you at the minute. One thing that I do know is that the ownership want to take the time, they don’t want to rush and they don’t want to jump the gun and give fans ideas and they want the expectations to be the true reflections of what they want to do with The Memorial Stadium.
“We won’t rush, they won’t rush and they will consult and give messages to the fans when they’ve crossed t’s and dotted i’s. What they don’t want to do is shout out ideas. They want to go through processes in the first instance and then when it comes to consultation, they’re really going through the proposal stage with the council, with building control, with the safety advisory group and, really importantly, with the local residents it could impact.”
The ideas proposed last year suggested that the East Stand and Thatcher’s End would be redeveloped following the completion of the new South Stand which has been in use since the second half of last season and has offered a taste of what The Mem could look like post-full redevelopment.
However, with no timescales set, it’s tough to accurately predict when there will next be a major breakthrough relating to when plans are shared publicly or even when the process can begin.
Sticking to the topic of stadium plans, Bates also confirmed that the club are very keen to add a brand new big screen to The Mem. Bristol Live reported in July that planning permission had seemingly been granted by Bristol City Council but it sounds as though this is another process that has various boxes that need to be ticked before the final product comes to fruition.
“We’re quite keen to get a big screen into The Memorial Stadium,” the Commercial and Revenue Director added. “Again, very much similar to the redevelopment of the stadium, it’s again picking the right area and making sure it’s the best that it can be for our home fans.
“We’ll go through that process with, again, the safety advisory group, the council, not so much the local residents because hopefully it shouldn’t have a massive effect on them but we will consult where we need to. The plan is very much so to bring in a big screen.”
Matt Taylor relays hopes for The Quarters having seen ‘fantastic’ plans
On the topic of improving infrastructure at the football club, The Quarters and Rovers’ plans to expand the training facility was also discussed in depth with Taylor asked what he would like to see improved on at their Almondsbury site.
The hope in the long-term is that the Gas will be able to accomodate academy teams, a development squad and the women’s team as well as the first-team all at the same facility while at the last fan’s forum, plans to build a single stand for fans to be able to watch development squad games, when said squad actually exists, were relayed.
Rovers’ training ground is still relatively new having opened four years ago but the site itself is expansive, allowing the possibility of adding to the facility’s current state.
In response to the question, the Gas manager said: “I’m not sure how many people have seen the layout at The Quarters. It’s a fantastic space, a huge space, it runs alongside the motorway but at the moment we’re kind of split into two buildings. There’s the main building with the changing rooms, the offices and the canteen and then there’s a secondary building which is the physio room and the gym. More than adequate for our level but it’s probably about 400 metres away.
“To have the perfect training environment, it would be great if that was connected to the main building and then the only other aspect from the building point of view is the canteen doubles up as the video room. The canteen is the centre of the building, the main hub of the building, the social hub of it but it does double up as our meeting room and our analyst room as well so getting the balance right of when the food’s out, when we’re doing meetings, the professionalism aspect of that. But that will hopefully get taken care of when the new training ground comes to fruition.
“We’ve seen the plans. They look absolutely fantastic and an all sing and dancing training ground which we hope and expect to come to the fore at some stage. We will be more than adequate in terms of facilities, especially for this level if not the level above.
“That’s what we’re aspiring towards and it’s important to say, I’m not moaning in any way, but I mentioned about the building being slightly separate and the video room being in the canteen, the pitches are the most important thing at the training ground and they’re absolutely fantastic. Better than our first-team playing surface at the stadium. Two fantastic pitches so testament to the ground staff and all the staff involved in relation to those two surfaces and the goalkeeper’s area as well.
“But we’re looking forward to seeing how that complex develops really and goes on to a facility that can not only host the first team but potentially the academy, potentially a development squad, potentially a women’s team as well so you can imagine how it will have to grow to a certain extent to host all those teams but that’s an exciting thing to think about as a Bristol Rovers supporter.”
George Friend offers insight into transfer process and Rovers’ personality-based ethos
On the back of a summer transfer window that saw 16 players signed, it was some start to life for Friend in his new role as Director of Football having retired from playing to take the job in February.
The former Middlesbrough, Birmingham City and Wolves left-back was on the panel of the last fan’s forum just weeks after taking on his current role and now has a full transfer window under his belt. How successful it was will be measured over time.
However, listening to the 36-year-old discuss the extensive process of how a transfer works emphasised the detail at which he operates as well as his dedication to the job. Many players could have easily headed straight for the beach once retired but Friend has been working tirelessly for the cause and is already looking ahead to windows to come.
Given the detail the Director of Football went into in regards to the process of completing a transfer, that can be watched online but the extremely summarised version essentially explains that Rovers would tend to present to a player, which is a pretty new trend in recruitment, once identified and the board were in agreement before then setting up medicals and putting pen to paper. Again, an extremely brief summary doesn’t do the significance of the length at which Friend went justice.
However, one stand-out point that the former defender made was the fact that players’ personalities are a major factor in who they recruit while also there being a requirement for prospective new players to move to Bristol so that they’re embedded into the area.
On this, Friend explained: “We do a lot of references on the person themself. We want people to be local which I think is important. What I mean by that is they don’t have to come from Bristol but we want them to live in the area. That’s really important and we even turned down signing players for that reason. They weren’t prepared to move to the area. Sometimes, if they were outstanding we might make an exception but really we wanted people to be in and around it for what we’re trying to build.
“The character is a huge thing. It’s massive and I think when you haven’t got the biggest budget in the league, you need that sort of siege mentality, that togetherness. You need someone to feed off the atmosphere because in our presentations we did say, ‘Look the fans here, there’s expectation. We might not have the biggest stadium in the league but it feels like it and when things aren’t going so well on the pitch they’ll demand from you but if you always give that effort, they’ll forgive you.’
“If you don’t get the right characters, they won’t adhere to that, they won’t build on that but we’d like to think this year we’ve got more of them than we haven’t. That’s what we’re trying to build and hopefully that shows throughout the season.”
