I wonder what tonight will bring ? Hopefully fans will air their worries regarding the club (If they have any) And HOPEFULLY the board will be honest with their answers Or will they just treat us like mushrooms ??? Im going, but I seriously doubt I'll come away with a skip in my step .... lets face it if the club are in trouble Mr Fawcett isnt going to start asking the audience for a paddle is he.
Oh well good excuse for a pint and a natter.

I wanted to go but a prior appointment means I can't , even had a lift offered too (Thanks ilkley cougar ) , Hope to catch up about it all on here though !

Big thank you to Gary, JD, directors and players for tonight. Gave a real insight into the club and what good work is being done by all. The planned initiatives for tag rugby, and school promotion good step forward.
All in all beat watching Emmerdale!

Any info from the meeting

Went down to the Q&A and it wasn't a bad turn out, the night started of with gary doing a bit of a presentation on the club moving forward and then gary, JD and a few of the players answered some questions. I think it is fantastic to hear and hats off to our directors that since May 2011 we have been making a profit, gary announced that although the profits aren't huge we are one of only a few clubs in rugby league that are making a profit. No doubt that with his expertise in being trained as a Management accountant this has helped enormously.

It was also great to hear that they are still very serious about putting an application in for super league in 2014 and if that wasn't to go through then he guaranteed that the club would be there in 2017.

In general it was very positive to hear things like we have over 50 businesses involved with the club and they are on with handing out over 2,500 £5.00 entry vouchers to all the schools in the area for the batley game, it was also announced that the batley game will now kick-off at 5:00pm due to the torch coming to town.

With what has happened to the club previoulsy going into administration and the debt they were left it really does put the fans at ease that the debt is obviously now cleared after gary announced us making profit since last year and also stating that the finances now and moving forward are looking very good for the club. To put everyones minds at ease over the rumours of the players not been paid gary stated that yes sometimes things are tough and its not always easy come the end of every month to pay players but they do always get paid eventually it may not be on time but they get paid.

He also announced that we have sold around 30-40 season tickets for 2013 but the expects that figure could be more as they didn't have the exact figure to hand.

Finally I did feel sorry for Your Sporting Chance as they didn't get one mention from the club, YSC does a lot of work that benefits the club including the Progress cafe on a matchday and working with very challenging young people referred to them by the police and social services. I believe that YSC is not funded by the club or gets any sort of money from the as this is funded by Incommuties who pay the wages of the whole team including Brendan and Korki. I felt a lot of the community stuff mentioned was a bit wrong as the club did take credit for a lot of stuff that actually is carried out by YSC and wouldn't have taken long just to acknowledge this.

So what does everyone else think, I know some of the stuff above is a little contradictory but I am reporting what was said.

That covers most of what was spoken about on the evening. Two items ommited were the reserve team and tag rugby.
JD stated that it is a struggle to cover the costs of the reserve team. Would be good if we could come up with some ideas for raising some cash for the team and attend some of the matches.
JD also gave details of a social tag rugby games which will be set up on Friday nights for all abilities. Would be good to send mail chimp e-mail and post details on the website and have an exhibition at a game.
Promotion and relagation was mentioned as a quicker way of getting into SL and Gary commented that the Championship Clubs are liaising with each other clubs to present their case to the RFL which is great news.

From memory a rough outline of what I think was said. Apologies if Ive missed anything out.

Still had existing debt from 2010

Making profit since but not enough to pay off all this debt yet.

Cash flows at an rl club are difficult to calculate but Gary is doing his best with the calculations.

Some months cash flow has been less than anticipated (eg warrington game) and players have been asked to wait for payment (but they have ALWAYS been paid).

Want to apply for SL in 2014 to “explore the process” Target 3 years later

Community work going well and pays wages of Brendan, Sam and Korki.

40 businesses involved with club, more sponsors boards around ground

Kick off for Olympic “run past” has been delayed to make sure we can all see.

Hand out tickets to families and youngsters

30 plus have taken up early season ticket offer, but ultimate aim to have a membership scheme as this is VAT exempt.

Squadbuilder has made it possible to buy players and is an essential asset.

Gavin has left the club.

Normington is taking a break from Rugby but the door is open for his return.

Paratta has had to return to Aus because he his splitting up with his wife (girlfriend?) and has had to sort out custody of his child. Uncertain whether he will return. Hs left a good legacy of work ethic with the younger players.

Henderson deal fell through due to better offer from Leigh. Probably best for us as we now have players returning from injury/loan (didn’t catch who was coming back from loan).

Ben Sagar and Killer both recovering well, be like having two new signings.

Have to charge for entrance to U23’s because of the high cost of running them. Only 6 sides actually run them.

Lot of injuries at the moment, only 18 players fit but they are 18 of our best. Shickel undergoing fitness test before Halifax.

After lots of effort playing surface improving.

Dressing rooms been improved by a volunteer (didn’t catch name) and sign and designs have done some work.
Diamond sweet improved and extended.

Players views were asked:
Club has improved allround, lots of little things that are not generally noticed.
JD professionalism has rubbed off on players.

All Championship clubs have recently had a meeting to disscuss the franchise system and are making efforts to change the mind of the RFL and bring back promotion/relegation.

said on his twitter earlier this week he is no longer a rugby league player and is now concentrating on other things

Other personal issues were mentioned but I didn't think it appropriate to post on a public forum.

Great to hear that the squadbuilder money is helping to sign and keep some players at the club. I get naff all out of my membership but not bothered if it is helping the club. I feel Squadbuilder could be pushed again though to get more signed up. Well done Margaret Procter though and she is doing a fantastic job.

Think i left before this was mentioned? I take it you mean Duffy?

Without wishing to be pedantic folks not strictly true . At the mo Korki and Bren ,along with Mary Calvert , Ash Choudry and Myself are all employed by Your Sporting Chance , which operates separately from the Community Foundation , has a separate board of Trustees and budget and is very kindly backed by local social housing group Incommunites.

The ethos of YSC is to use the profile of professional sportsmen to engage, support and mentor young people to help them achieve their full potential and is not involved in the Schools work that is expertly delivered by the Foundation team of Sam and Jeremy. At odd times the two projects do work collaboratively, Sam's school tournaments (as opposed to coaching sessions ) plus community involvement with projects such as the Woodville Activity Centre and Project Six are good examples of this but in the main they work separately.

YSC is a fairly unique project in Rugby League and is gaining a great reputation for the work it does with some 'hard to reach' young people and any succes we have reflects back on the Keighley club



Couldn't agree more Mrs P is one of the great unsung hero's of Rugby League in this town -not just the hours she puts into the administration of the squad builder scheme but the years of supporting the Cougar Cubs Junior RL set behind the scenes . An absolute star !!!

Isn't that where Northern messed it up? Didn't HMR&C decide that their Season Ticket scheme was not true 'Membership' and then imposed VAT on the full amount, hence Northern's VAT debt?

I could be wrong but I wouldn't go down that route without taking good advice and possibly from HMRC.

Did the Championship clubs get any feedback, positive or negative from The RFL as to their stance on re installing promotion and relegation?

After checking HMRC's VAT pages, I believe that we would be on a hiding to nothing if we attempted to avoid VAT on a 'Membership Scheme' as the information appears to be quite clear on the VAT website5.1 How should I treat subscriptions for VAT purposes?

If your members pay a subscription to obtain or gain entitlement to any substantive benefits of membership, you must calculate the VAT due on the total amount of the subscription as set out in section 4 above.

The VAT liability of subscriptions depends on the liability of the membership benefits you supply in return. In most cases clubs supply a package of benefits so that your supply will have more than one element under the terms of paragraph 4.2 above.

If you make multiple supplies and the separate elements have different VAT liabilities, you must apportion the subscription charge (see paragraph 5.5 below).

Substantive benefits also include