Quote: Chris.Taylor "In the late 90's, early 00's we had a fair few financial issues, that thankfully we moved on from, however in 1997 the family stand was built, moving from a terraced (roofed) stand, into a modern all seating stand.
Just before the club got relegated it improved it's learning centre, meaning the club could work more with the local schools etc.
In 2004, the club hit a low point and was relegated in National League 2 (at the time), seeing us in 2005 hit a real low point and really was the start of promising things to come.
The club in 2007 then had a new chairman (Mark Campbell) who was influenced by the friend of Featherstone, with new directors coming in and starting what we have today.
Since then, the club has extended it's offices, coaching area, training facilities, updated the clubhouse and co-operate facilities etc.
In the last 3 weeks we've seen the start of the new state of the art training facilities. Plus also we've seen the railway end demolished and a new stand progressing nicely. Once this has been completed, the clubhouse will be extended allowing more than 120 sponsors in the dining area.
For a club that doesn't get much tv revenue, I personally believe it is huge progress compared to other Super League clubs who have had an awful lot of financial backing.
Final point is, we own our own stadium and 17 acres of land, so everything in the stadium is run by the club.
Hope that answers your question.'"
Unfortunately it doesn’t. The question I asked was why they were still relatively so poor. Not as an absolute. I have no doubt that Fev have done well to get decent facilities for a semi-pro community club. They don’t have poor facilities for a full-time SL club, they just simply don’t have the facilities of a full-time SL club. They simply aren’t there.
Clubs are proving time and time again that they can’t compete with average attendances bigger than the fev stadium holds, how are Fev going to compete when they haven’t been able to afford to get in place the facilities and infrastructure to even hold the amount of people they need? Are we hoping Mr Nahaboo and his friends just throw money at the club in perpetuity?
