Quote: Jeremy77 "I am very sad to learn of cougars current plight.
I worked at the Cougars from 1998 to 2004 as the Accounts controller - a few of you may know me.
I did the best I could to inform the directors at all times of the current and future cashflow predictions and what may happen if sponsorship didn't come in as promised.
The problem that always cropped up was how much can the coach have to promise winpay or contracts to the players, then the rest of the expenses were sorted and then income was 'made up' to show a small profit on a cashflow prediction.Everyone agreed to it and then the income didn't materialize but the players were still paid. If the coach was only given say £100 win pay and no lose pay he would hold his hands up and say ' why bother-you'll just have academy players'.
The only way a club can survive in any of the two lower divisions is directors to spend and lose say £50,000 - £100,000 a year to afford a team to survive in mid table or be fortunate enough to hae a crowd of say 2,000 a match but only pay say £100-£150 a win. Also too many admin staff cripples the wages bill - I saw this first hand - the only season where most of the criteria above has worked is in 2001-2002 season(1st year after Colin and Neil took over)
The salary cap is there for a reason and I tried to adhere to it while I was there - it is a safety net to keep your house in order until other income streams start to come in.
I wish I could help now but I rather suspect one of the new Directors too be - Gary Fawcett would have other ideas about that. I feel so sorry for Colin Farrar.'"
It would probably be a tough thing to introduce flexible wages based on actual income but maybe that is the thing that needs to happen?
I don't necesserily agree with the players receiving no money for a loss as they are still 'working' (and hard at that!) but perhaps wages (including personal drawings and fixed salaries) should flex with income? A self imposed % cap on pay would perhaps permit a small amount of investment in marketting & hopefully growth?
