Henry - Sorry I appreciate you and others may be bound by confidentiality but you now advise the club had been reviewing this action for some months. Why did it not sound the alarm bells before? If it had disquiet regarding the future of the club particularly based on the league structure and costs - did it raise such concerns Womens League AGM because they seem pretty surprised and now face running their first division with 11 teams.
I am sorry from where I sit it looks wrong - knee jerk reaction – relegated May 8 - 40 days later news breaks re the axing of the Ladies Section - dalliance - the club has danced this dance before – per attached go to Charlton Ladies FC Club History - read last 2 paragraphs
I said the revised budgets had been considered for months. You seem to want it both ways. One minute it's a knee jerk reaction and now that I say it has been thought that is wrong as well.
There was no attachment so I have no idea to what you are refering.
Bottom line is the women's team lost the club a considerable amount of money and in a time of cutbacks it was decided not to carry it any more.
I would much rather the club made a good financial decsion which attracted some mostly ill informed bad PR than a good PR decision that was a bad financial decision.
[cite]Posted By: Henry Irving[/cite]I would much rather the club made a good financial decsion which attracted some mostly ill informed bad PR than a good PR decision that was a bad financial decision.
Grapevine, I agree 100% with what you are saying. I believe it is totally wrong to completely axe the women's team. Cut back: yes of course. But to cut the whole thing cannot be right having spent years building it up.
Henry, you cannot equate cutting various support departments in the rest of the club with cutting a whole front line football team. At the end of the day Charlton has promoted itself as a football club, with both men's & women's teams. By axing the women's team completely this is totally changing the nature of the club. You cannot say the same if you axe the marketing department or the promotions department, which are just support departments at the end of the day.
Sorry, but I have got really mad about this and I still believe it is a terrible decision.
Thanks for the follow up - I can indeed have it both ways because the final decision is wrong. As I said I respect you may be bound by confidentiality but there is no external evidence to your statement - if the future of the section was in jeopardy for months why did the club not say so! why not at least advise the womens league in which it played!
To not do so sits outside common business practice and in the case of the latter football league etiquette - it smacks of even more incompetence than the knee jerk reaction which in itself is still wrong.
I am sorry the attachment does not seem to want to work - you can if you want search for Charlton Ladies FC history - it tells the tale of a womens football club up to year 2000 when their sponsor decided to take over Croydon Ladies FC.
Been a tad busy in the last week so not been able to comment on this thread before tonight but I, personally, find this a terrible decision. I have a few ties to women's football (my wife and father-in-law run a successful women's team, from U10s through to the Seniors, and many of the girls/ladies have previously gone on to join the various academies in the area, mainly Charlton but also Arsenal, Millwall and Gillingham)
As of Tuesday evening of this week (26/06/07), none of the girls in the Charlton school of excellence or the academy have been told anything and dont have a clue where they currently stand. No information has been forthcoming from Charlton to any of the girls. Ok, I think your Chairman has gone on record saying that the Ladies team may be saved depending upon whether a sponsor can be found but noone from the club has had the decency to tell the girls themselves.
Bearing in mind that a number of the girls are also in the middle of College and University courses specifically tailored around their training schedules in the Academy, you'll appeciate that the girls are extremely upset given that they may now not be able to complete their courses let alone play football for Charlton again, given the sacrifices and committments they have made to join Charlton. The girls dont even know where they stand for joining another club at present. If you found yourself in the same position, I'm sure you would all feel the same.
I fully understand that costs have to be cut following relegation but to close the entire Ladies section? For the sake of £300k? Ok, scale the operation down but not close it altogether, bearing in mind how much work had gone in to building the set up in the first place. Even so, the girls and ladies deserve a little more respect than Charlton are currently showing them. The whole issue has been handled appallingly.
Oh and for the record, I have been dragged along to 4 of the FA Women's Cup Finals and a few England internationals down at Priestfield in recent years...
If Charlton's finances are so bad that they are trying to save £300k then it goes to show what a state their finances must be in following the relegation. It certainly doesnt send out good signals to the rest of the football world now does it? If they really are that bad then if the Bent saga goes on any longer towards the close of the transfer window, I can see your board getting twitchy.
If Charlton's finances are so bad that they are trying to save £300k then it goes to show what a state their finances must be in following the relegation. It certainly doesnt send out good signals to the rest of the football world now does it? If they really are that bad then if the Bent saga goes on any longer towards the close of the transfer window, I can see your board getting twitchy.
.......................
The Club finances are in good shape, season ticket sales have been strong, several first teamers from last season are already off the pay-roll, with perhaps one or two more to follow, Matty Holland has a new contract supposedly on a fraction of his old one etc and Charlton only have structered debt which our present circumstances can withstand, plus there is the £11m parachute payments, money is and will be tight if we don't sell Dazza but the club will survive.
The more I look at it the more I get the impression that the acquisition of the womens team was one of those loked good at the time type of decisions. It isn't the money so much as that womens football hasn't taken off in the way that the Club thought it would several years ago and offers the club and its sponsors very little. Coverage in the national media is poor, only the FA Cup final gets on TV, few other Premiership teams have a womens team etc. Looking at the reaction most people here seem diappointed but no-one is up in arms about it and on the verge of cancelling their season ticket. The matches themselves are poorly attended and I reckon the club have used relegation as an excuse to get shot of a division that takes up valuable resouces and money and adds little to the club, the sum of money involved is minor, relegation or no relegation.
In a bizarre way Charlton may have done the womens game a big favour. By doing this they have exposed all the frailties of womens football and its inabilities to self-finance.
Whilst everyone is having a go at Charlton, why aren't they also having a go at the FA who's job it is to develop the womens game. Maybe this will give the guys at the FA responsible for womens football, the kick-up-the-arse they need to try and put some decent funding and infrastructure into it.
Womens football cannot carry on and develop if it is being constantly funded by mens football. No matter how successful the womens team becomes they're existence is always going to be dependent on the state of their mens team.
I seriously doubt that Charlton are going to be the last team to close it womens side down.
Thanks for the follow up - I can indeed have it both ways [/quote]
And there's the rub. Whatever arguement is made you will find yet another way to dismiss it because you don't don't like the final decision. You have constantly changed tack and move from knee jerk to dalliance to why didn't we inform everyone way ahead of a final decision regardless of definative decisions being made or the legal requirements of the redundency process.
You then throw around glib pharses such as "common business practice" and "football league etiquette" without even attempting to explain what these are supposed to mean.
I will repeat. Better a sound financial decision which attracts some mostly misinformed bad PR than a good PR decision which is poor financially. You seem to prefer that we did it the other way round. I don't.
[cite]Posted By: Henry Irving[/cite][cite]Posted By: Grapevine49[/cite]Henry I will repeat. Better a sound financial decision which attracts some mostly misinformed bad PR than a good PR decision which is poor financially. You seem to prefer that we did it the other way round. I don't.
Agreed..... we have a flippin championship to try and win!!! and once and if we do that we can set up a drunk bears 11 if we want , but the priority is getting back up if we can and 300k pays for that young french guy so there you go...PRIORITIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our priority is not to look like the nicest safest family run club in the world... weve made some mistakes and were paying for them and one of the things to go is the womans team, it probably could have been handled better we could have all gone round door to door and offered our commissorations, i dont know.The reality is the money can be better spend elsewhere END OF!
I will repeat. Better a sound financial decision which attracts some mostly misinformed bad PR than a good PR decision which is poor financially. You seem to prefer that we did it the other way round. I don't.[/quote]
Agreed, Henry. There are a lot of frustrated people out there who seem to want to use the womens team issue to bash Varney and Murray as punishment for their supposed role in the Premiership relegation debacle.
300,000 is an awful lot of money when you consider that once the parachute payments run out our TV income will come down to around just 1 million per season so cutting that outlay now is probably the best thing to do in the interests of the whole club.
I am sorry to say, but all those people claiming we should keep the womens side - how often have you been to their games? Once, twice, the FA Cup Final? We are not in the business of running a charity here, we are a financial concern operating in an increasingly tough market and don't have the means to do so even if we wanted to.
Charlton Athletic Football Club will live or die by the strength of the mens first team and that's that. Yes, we may currently have several wankers on the books but their contracts will come to an end and the club will go on. Those on the board have the responsibility of making decisions for the good of the future of the whole club, not those that will look good from a PR angle in the short term.
I am sorry you find my comments glib they are not meant to be. I must assure you it is not merely a matter of dislike.
I position my criticism of the club on the basis it was the wrong decision in terms of its profile as a community club and because of the historic decision to step into a channel which it has now closed down. That is a disserice to the game it purports to support. Your defense of the position is to happily repeat the decision was based on the cost of the Ladies Section. But
1. Based on the apparent surprise to most of the ladies section 2. Based on the apparent surprise to the league in which the club was operating
the decision has the aroma of a knee jerk reaction. You argue it is not a knee jerk reaction but a long considered option explored by the club, but again based on 1 & 2 no such possibility appears to have been advised to any pertinent party, namely the ladies section itself and the league in which the team particpated.
Common business practice - When managing results & projections it is common to note caveats, warnings, and the potential impact of any external events on such projections, to the market in which you trade and to ones workforce. Had such action been taken you do not know what possible support or rescue plan could have been launched. To effectively present it as a fait a' compli, as has happened, serves noone.
That is not the action of a football club which favours its place in the community. It is the action of corporation which has little respect for either its personnel or the channel in which they operated. It is a fundamental breach of trust.
You answer - tough but business is business. If Charlton is just a business then it needs to stop presenting itself as something more. You know the ties to the brand are to a club not a business. If 100k is more important to you and the club than honoring or managing an exit from commitments made 7yrs ago have at it, but it looks cheap.
My reference to Charlton Ladies FC positions their effective demise in 2000 after their sponsor Charlton Athletic FC chose to switch its allegiance to Croydon Ladies. Not very good at this are we.
League etiquette - Having attended many minor league AGMs I can only recall 2 cases where clubs chose not to notify their intention to withdraw from a league. Normally such withdrawal was on the basis of moving from/ to Metropolitan, Spartan, Athenian, County Leagues. Not only was it a matter of league etiquette and respect to the other participants in the league but you ended up with a great big FA fine if you tried withdraw later.
If no fine is being paid I can only the imagine the FA mirrors most business in that the higher you get in the game the less diligence or compliance to rules and regulations is sought or applied. Now that reminds me of another club I know.
You keep saying the club never told people in advance so that equates to a knee jerk decision.
I tell you that I was at the board meetings many months ago when it was discussed. You will have to believe me or not but I know that to be the case.
There maybe a long gap between a decision being made and it being communicated and this may be for many reasons some of them legal requirements as has been said.
This is a post from Rick Everitt/Airman Brown on the CAFC Addicks mailing list. Apologies to Rick for using without his permission.
"I think it's a bit of a leap from recognising that cuts mean making difficult choices and accepting that some of them are going to be damaging to suggesting that the club thinks this media coverage is "a good outcome".
People are usually very quick to accuse the club of "spin", but does anyone really believe that how these things play out publicly is the only - or even the major - consideration.
Quite a number of staff have lost their jobs. Whether we like it or not, the money to run the women's set-up was not going to come from the male playing side because that is where the power is in the club. It would only have come from more non-football staff being made redundant and a consequent reduced service for fans.
I'm afraid I can't equate people losing their opportunity to play football for a particular club with people losing their livelihoods and immediate ability to provide for their families. Neither do I think immediate PR considerations outweigh the need to have sufficient staff to meet the legitimate expectations of supporters.
I do have sympathy with the young girls who are part of the development structure, although I don't know enough about how that is financed to say whether it was feasible to carry on with it in isolation. I also have sympathy with the full-time staff involved.
The rest is just self-interested whining and while these female players may think the directors should have told them face to face, I'd like to see them in turn make their argument directly to the people who would be put out of their jobs so they can carry on being subsidised to play football in near-empty stadia.
As has been said further up, it's the FA's job to develop the women's game - not ours. We're not a registered charity, we're a football club.
I keep reading this thread through some kind of masochistic desire but I've got to admit I'm shocked at how put out people are by this. If the proportion of people on here are representative of those who actually cared then maybe they should have got along to watch the women's team play, then they probably wouldn't have had to waste their time now sat behind their keyboards tapping out blue murder. Or are people just looking for an excuse to get at the board?
Despite a couple of dubious employment decisions I still have great faith in this board, 15 years outstanding work is not overshadowed by a couple of decisions gone wrong in my book.
Last season Charlton Athletic received £16,000 from The FA towards the running of its Centre of Excellence, and for the new season, pending all qualifying criteria being met, that figure would rise to £34,000.
Due to successes on the field last season, Charlton Athletic WFC earned £3,500 for finishing runners-up in The FA Women's Cup Final [£2,500 for winning their semi-final, and £1,000 for finishing as runner-up: winners Arsenal received £5,000 for winning the Final]; £1,500 for finishing third in The FA Women's Premier League [winners Arsenal received £5,000, runners-up Everton £3,000]; £1,000 for being a beaten semi-finalist in The FA Women's Premier League Cup and another £1,000 for the club winning The FA Women's Premier League Reserve Cup Final.
I make that about £23,000 coming in plus the £20 from gate receipts equalling a loss of over £250,000 every year. Not very good is it?
[cite]Posted By: oohaahmortimer[/cite]what's the p+l on the first team is that running at a profit???
Exactly.
I was at an event last night and met a plastic Man U fan, who knows I follow Charlton. His first comment was 'What's this about Charlton getting rid of its women's team? Doesn't sound like them.' He'd read it on the BBC website. So much for it not generating much bad PR. But it is more than that - our long term brand image as a respected family/ community club has just been severely tarnished. And anyone who knows anything about branding knows that's worth a lot more than £300K. A very short-sighted decision. It's creating so much interest/ debate because this is not about women's football. This is about the very values and reputation of our club.
You can shut down the first team though if they're not running at profit, surely everyone realises that?!
The one good thing that this may have highlighted to our club, other women's clubs and the FA is that there is not enough exposure of the game to attract sponsors and this is something that needs to be addressed and it can work.
Look how popular the sport is in the US and the Scandanavian countries.
[cite]Posted By: oohaahmortimer[/cite]what's the p+l on the first team is that running at a profit???
Exactly.
I was at an event last night and met a plastic Man U fan, who knows I follow Charlton. His first comment was 'What's this about Charlton getting rid of its women's team? Doesn't sound like them.' He'd read it on the BBC website. So much for it not generating much bad PR. But it is more than that - our long term brand image as a respected family/ community club has just been severely tarnished. And anyone who knows anything about branding knows that's worth a lot more than £300K. A very short-sighted decision. It's creating so much interest/ debate because this is not about women's football. This is about the very values and reputation of our club.
So what is important Weegie ? What other people who only know half facts at most think about our club ? Is that what's really important ? Or is it what we and the club can do to help it rebuild, thrive in the best scenario, survive in the worst ? Sometimes we worry too much about what other people think.
As a result of this, do you think it will have any adverse effect on our attendances, or income received from the club ?
The answer is no.
Do you think if the only real Charlton team that matter continues to slide down the divisions, but the unsupported Charlton womens team continued doing ok, people would be content with that ?
You're still missing my point, AFKA. (I said I wasn't going to comment anymore about this, but I'm still so angry I can't help it.) Charlton is the club it is with all the supporters it has because it has invested over many years in building a family and community based reputation. It's this reputation that attracts decent people of all ages, sexes and races to our club rather than others where they are patently less welcome. So much work and effort has gone into this since the return to The Valley - all towards securing the long-term future of the club. This decision is completely at odds with many of those pronciples and values. I'll say again, for me this is not about women's football. It is about the heart and soul of our club. I was already a bit anxious with Pardew's 'This Club needs toughening up' stance. Now we're seeing evidence that the Board agrees. Well I don't. There's enough moral corruption in football as it is, without Charlton adding to it.
"As a result of this, do you think it will have any adverse effect on our attendances, or income received from the club ?
The answer is no."
Well I'm sorry, but for me, if we carry on making decisons like this, the answer in the medium to long term is actually a very big yes.
Weegie, we simply have very different views on what a football club should be about. And i don't mean that in a chasing glory sense, i have no interest in that at all.
Charlton thrived as a club since the return on a number of factors:
1. Stable management of football and non-football units
2. Sustained investment at board level
3. Loyal hard core of support with realistic ambitions
4. Attractive, competitive pricing levels
5. Providing a safe environment for families to attend
6. Fantastic community work, giving football opportunities to boys and girls throughout the South East and associating them with Charlton, providing education opportunities to local kids
7. Aggressive marketing campaigns
Away from what the team do on the pitch (which to a larger proportion than we all realise is the be-all and end-all), those are the main factors that went into making us a successful and well respected football club. Our community scheme is the one most major thing to be proud of, it is lauded throughout the country, and that won't be changing in any way. Nor will any of the other factors listed.
Charlton is, and always will be at the heart of the community, and that will not be changing just because it can't afford to subsidise a loss-making women's team. And i'm convinced people are looking at this with blinkers on if they see any different.
As an aside,
A number of people off here played for over ten years for a representative Charlton Supporters Team, run at different times by Oakster and Charlton Charlie.
We drove, railed and flew the length of the UK for a number of years playing hundreds of games, proudly representing our club against other teams supporters clubs. As well as all the UK clubs, we played representative teams from Russia, France, Italy, even a team of London Irani's when we signed Bagheri. All this was done to try and build good relationships between supporters groups, and to show and represent Charlton in a positive light.
We arranged and hosted tournaments that raised thousands of pounds for the British Heart Foundation, We won and appeared in finals of National Cups, won a London tournament and most prestigous of all won the biggest competition in supporters clubs tournaments, a 2-day 64 team tournament from teams accross Europe.
In all that time, all we got off the club was a couple of lines in one programme, a mention on the website once, and an old kit to borrow for a tournament. I'm not complaing, we didn't want any more than that. Though other teams were getting pitches, kits, food etc provided, we didn't seek that and was happy funding it all out of our our pockets to play in the Charlton name.
So would you say that the women's team is any more representative of the Charlton name, than the Supporters Team were ? A team made up of fans that travel the length of the country to see Charlton play ? That done wonders in bringing lots of Charlton fans together ? I wouldn't, plus we were more successful :-)
If the club had been giving us expenses to pay for our pitches etc and stopped that now, would there be a mass public outcry from people that never watched us play ?
Of course they wouldn't, people would say we were lucky to get that support in the first place but there are other priorities now.
I like to think of Charlton as all fluffy and lovely, but I don't think this image has any effect on the support the club recieves. Being the second favourite club of a million plastic scousers and manu fans has no financial impact on the club at all. If they decide to look for Crewe's results rather than ours, so what? I would rather we were popular, but if not, so be it.
The only time the press has anything to say about us is when it's negative, as has been pointed out before, at least we tried.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. It is doing us no good at all - and reputations matter.
I've just received an email from a friend exiled in Germany - a Villa supporter:
"Just wanted to commiserate on Charlton’s appallingly short-sighted decision to shut their women’s team."
Comments
I am sorry from where I sit it looks wrong - knee jerk reaction – relegated May 8 - 40 days later news breaks re the axing of the Ladies Section - dalliance - the club has danced this dance before – per attached go to Charlton Ladies FC Club History - read last 2 paragraphs
Grapevine 49
I said the revised budgets had been considered for months. You seem to want it both ways. One minute it's a knee jerk reaction and now that I say it has been thought that is wrong as well.
There was no attachment so I have no idea to what you are refering.
Bottom line is the women's team lost the club a considerable amount of money and in a time of cutbacks it was decided not to carry it any more.
I would much rather the club made a good financial decsion which attracted some mostly ill informed bad PR than a good PR decision that was a bad financial decision.
Oi Henry - I'm with you on that one
Henry, you cannot equate cutting various support departments in the rest of the club with cutting a whole front line football team. At the end of the day Charlton has promoted itself as a football club, with both men's & women's teams. By axing the women's team completely this is totally changing the nature of the club. You cannot say the same if you axe the marketing department or the promotions department, which are just support departments at the end of the day.
Sorry, but I have got really mad about this and I still believe it is a terrible decision.
Thanks for the follow up - I can indeed have it both ways because the final decision is wrong. As I said I respect you may be bound by confidentiality but there is no external evidence to your statement - if the future of the section was in jeopardy for months why did the club not say so! why not at least advise the womens league in which it played!
To not do so sits outside common business practice and in the case of the latter football league etiquette - it smacks of even more incompetence than the knee jerk reaction which in itself is still wrong.
I am sorry the attachment does not seem to want to work - you can if you want search for Charlton Ladies FC history - it tells the tale of a womens football club up to year 2000 when their sponsor decided to take over Croydon Ladies FC.
Grapevine 49
As of Tuesday evening of this week (26/06/07), none of the girls in the Charlton school of excellence or the academy have been told anything and dont have a clue where they currently stand. No information has been forthcoming from Charlton to any of the girls. Ok, I think your Chairman has gone on record saying that the Ladies team may be saved depending upon whether a sponsor can be found but noone from the club has had the decency to tell the girls themselves.
Bearing in mind that a number of the girls are also in the middle of College and University courses specifically tailored around their training schedules in the Academy, you'll appeciate that the girls are extremely upset given that they may now not be able to complete their courses let alone play football for Charlton again, given the sacrifices and committments they have made to join Charlton. The girls dont even know where they stand for joining another club at present. If you found yourself in the same position, I'm sure you would all feel the same.
I fully understand that costs have to be cut following relegation but to close the entire Ladies section? For the sake of £300k? Ok, scale the operation down but not close it altogether, bearing in mind how much work had gone in to building the set up in the first place. Even so, the girls and ladies deserve a little more respect than Charlton are currently showing them. The whole issue has been handled appallingly.
Oh and for the record, I have been dragged along to 4 of the FA Women's Cup Finals and a few England internationals down at Priestfield in recent years...
If Charlton's finances are so bad that they are trying to save £300k then it goes to show what a state their finances must be in following the relegation. It certainly doesnt send out good signals to the rest of the football world now does it? If they really are that bad then if the Bent saga goes on any longer towards the close of the transfer window, I can see your board getting twitchy.
.......................
The Club finances are in good shape, season ticket sales have been strong, several first teamers from last season are already off the pay-roll, with perhaps one or two more to follow, Matty Holland has a new contract supposedly on a fraction of his old one etc and Charlton only have structered debt which our present circumstances can withstand, plus there is the £11m parachute payments, money is and will be tight if we don't sell Dazza but the club will survive.
The more I look at it the more I get the impression that the acquisition of the womens team was one of those loked good at the time type of decisions. It isn't the money so much as that womens football hasn't taken off in the way that the Club thought it would several years ago and offers the club and its sponsors very little. Coverage in the national media is poor, only the FA Cup final gets on TV, few other Premiership teams have a womens team etc. Looking at the reaction most people here seem diappointed but no-one is up in arms about it and on the verge of cancelling their season ticket. The matches themselves are poorly attended and I reckon the club have used relegation as an excuse to get shot of a division that takes up valuable resouces and money and adds little to the club, the sum of money involved is minor, relegation or no relegation.
Whilst everyone is having a go at Charlton, why aren't they also having a go at the FA who's job it is to develop the womens game. Maybe this will give the guys at the FA responsible for womens football, the kick-up-the-arse they need to try and put some decent funding and infrastructure into it.
Womens football cannot carry on and develop if it is being constantly funded by mens football. No matter how successful the womens team becomes they're existence is always going to be dependent on the state of their mens team.
I seriously doubt that Charlton are going to be the last team to close it womens side down.
Thanks for the follow up - I can indeed have it both ways [/quote]
And there's the rub. Whatever arguement is made you will find yet another way to dismiss it because you don't don't like the final decision. You have constantly changed tack and move from knee jerk to dalliance to why didn't we inform everyone way ahead of a final decision regardless of definative decisions being made or the legal requirements of the redundency process.
You then throw around glib pharses such as "common business practice" and "football league etiquette" without even attempting to explain what these are supposed to mean.
I will repeat. Better a sound financial decision which attracts some mostly misinformed bad PR than a good PR decision which is poor financially. You seem to prefer that we did it the other way round. I don't.
Agreed..... we have a flippin championship to try and win!!! and once and if we do that we can set up a drunk bears 11 if we want , but the priority is getting back up if we can and 300k pays for that young french guy so there you go...PRIORITIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our priority is not to look like the nicest safest family run club in the world... weve made some mistakes and were paying for them and one of the things to go is the womans team, it probably could have been handled better we could have all gone round door to door and offered our commissorations, i dont know.The reality is the money can be better spend elsewhere END OF!
Agreed, Henry. There are a lot of frustrated people out there who seem to want to use the womens team issue to bash Varney and Murray as punishment for their supposed role in the Premiership relegation debacle.
300,000 is an awful lot of money when you consider that once the parachute payments run out our TV income will come down to around just 1 million per season so cutting that outlay now is probably the best thing to do in the interests of the whole club.
I am sorry to say, but all those people claiming we should keep the womens side - how often have you been to their games? Once, twice, the FA Cup Final? We are not in the business of running a charity here, we are a financial concern operating in an increasingly tough market and don't have the means to do so even if we wanted to.
Charlton Athletic Football Club will live or die by the strength of the mens first team and that's that. Yes, we may currently have several wankers on the books but their contracts will come to an end and the club will go on. Those on the board have the responsibility of making decisions for the good of the future of the whole club, not those that will look good from a PR angle in the short term.
FA's position on Charlton
I am sorry you find my comments glib they are not meant to be. I must assure you it is not merely a matter of dislike.
I position my criticism of the club on the basis it was the wrong decision in terms of its profile as a community club and because of the historic decision to step into a channel which it has now closed down. That is a disserice to the game it purports to support. Your defense of the position is to happily repeat the decision was based on the cost of the Ladies Section. But
1. Based on the apparent surprise to most of the ladies section
2. Based on the apparent surprise to the league in which the club was operating
the decision has the aroma of a knee jerk reaction. You argue it is not a knee jerk reaction but a long considered option explored by the club, but again based on 1 & 2 no such possibility appears to have been advised to any pertinent party, namely the ladies section itself and the league in which the team particpated.
Common business practice - When managing results & projections it is common to note caveats, warnings, and the potential impact of any external events on such projections, to the market in which you trade and to ones workforce. Had such action been taken you do not know what possible support or rescue plan could have been launched. To effectively present it as a fait a' compli, as has happened, serves noone.
That is not the action of a football club which favours its place in the community. It is the action of corporation which has little respect for either its personnel or the channel in which they operated. It is a fundamental breach of trust.
You answer - tough but business is business. If Charlton is just a business then it needs to stop presenting itself as something more. You know the ties to the brand are to a club not a business. If 100k is more important to you and the club than honoring or managing an exit from commitments made 7yrs ago have at it, but it looks cheap.
My reference to Charlton Ladies FC positions their effective demise in 2000 after their sponsor Charlton Athletic FC chose to switch its allegiance to Croydon Ladies. Not very good at this are we.
League etiquette - Having attended many minor league AGMs I can only recall 2 cases where clubs chose not to notify their intention to withdraw from a league. Normally such withdrawal was on the basis of moving from/ to Metropolitan, Spartan, Athenian, County Leagues. Not only was it a matter of league etiquette and respect to the other participants in the league but you ended up with a great big FA fine if you tried withdraw later.
If no fine is being paid I can only the imagine the FA mirrors most business in that the higher you get in the game the less diligence or compliance to rules and regulations is sought or applied. Now that reminds me of another club I know.
Grapevine49
We are downsizing, weve just lost 50 million quid!
.... as for not handling it better well boo flippin hoo!!!
This argument is quite frankly doing my head in!
I now hate the womens team!
You keep saying the club never told people in advance so that equates to a knee jerk decision.
I tell you that I was at the board meetings many months ago when it was discussed. You will have to believe me or not but I know that to be the case.
There maybe a long gap between a decision being made and it being communicated and this may be for many reasons some of them legal requirements as has been said.
This is a post from Rick Everitt/Airman Brown on the CAFC Addicks mailing list.
Apologies to Rick for using without his permission.
"I think it's a bit of a leap from recognising that cuts mean making
difficult choices and accepting that some of them are going to be damaging
to suggesting that the club thinks this media coverage is "a good outcome".
People are usually very quick to accuse the club of "spin", but does anyone
really believe that how these things play out publicly is the only - or even
the major - consideration.
Quite a number of staff have lost their jobs. Whether we like it or not, the
money to run the women's set-up was not going to come from the male playing
side because that is where the power is in the club. It would only have come
from more non-football staff being made redundant and a consequent reduced
service for fans.
I'm afraid I can't equate people losing their opportunity to play football
for a particular club with people losing their livelihoods and immediate
ability to provide for their families. Neither do I think immediate PR
considerations outweigh the need to have sufficient staff to meet the
legitimate expectations of supporters.
I do have sympathy with the young girls who are part of the development
structure, although I don't know enough about how that is financed to say
whether it was feasible to carry on with it in isolation. I also have
sympathy with the full-time staff involved.
The rest is just self-interested whining and while these female players may
think the directors should have told them face to face, I'd like to see them
in turn make their argument directly to the people who would be put out of
their jobs so they can carry on being subsidised to play football in
near-empty stadia.
Rick"
SAVE THE HOSPITALITY 7
I keep reading this thread through some kind of masochistic desire but I've got to admit I'm shocked at how put out people are by this. If the proportion of people on here are representative of those who actually cared then maybe they should have got along to watch the women's team play, then they probably wouldn't have had to waste their time now sat behind their keyboards tapping out blue murder. Or are people just looking for an excuse to get at the board?
Despite a couple of dubious employment decisions I still have great faith in this board, 15 years outstanding work is not overshadowed by a couple of decisions gone wrong in my book.
I don't know why I keep reading this thread either as it's full of crud. I'll be sticking white hot knitting needles in my eyes next!
Due to successes on the field last season, Charlton Athletic WFC earned £3,500 for finishing runners-up in The FA Women's Cup Final [£2,500 for winning their semi-final, and £1,000 for finishing as runner-up: winners Arsenal received £5,000 for winning the Final]; £1,500 for finishing third in The FA Women's Premier League [winners Arsenal received £5,000, runners-up Everton £3,000]; £1,000 for being a beaten semi-finalist in The FA Women's Premier League Cup and another £1,000 for the club winning The FA Women's Premier League Reserve Cup Final.
I make that about £23,000 coming in plus the £20 from gate receipts equalling a loss of over £250,000 every year. Not very good is it?
Thats my final comment (i hope)
Exactly.
I was at an event last night and met a plastic Man U fan, who knows I follow Charlton. His first comment was 'What's this about Charlton getting rid of its women's team? Doesn't sound like them.' He'd read it on the BBC website. So much for it not generating much bad PR. But it is more than that - our long term brand image as a respected family/ community club has just been severely tarnished. And anyone who knows anything about branding knows that's worth a lot more than £300K. A very short-sighted decision. It's creating so much interest/ debate because this is not about women's football. This is about the very values and reputation of our club.
You can shut down the first team though if they're not running at profit, surely everyone realises that?!
The one good thing that this may have highlighted to our club, other women's clubs and the FA is that there is not enough exposure of the game to attract sponsors and this is something that needs to be addressed and it can work.
Look how popular the sport is in the US and the Scandanavian countries.
Without the women's team there's a couple less pages in the programme.
1. The FA clearly need to up the prize money to make women's football more viable.
2. Perhaps they could play immediately before the men, assuming they play at the main stadium, thus generating some prematch interest?
So what is important Weegie ? What other people who only know half facts at most think about our club ? Is that what's really important ? Or is it what we and the club can do to help it rebuild, thrive in the best scenario, survive in the worst ? Sometimes we worry too much about what other people think.
As a result of this, do you think it will have any adverse effect on our attendances, or income received from the club ?
The answer is no.
Do you think if the only real Charlton team that matter continues to slide down the divisions, but the unsupported Charlton womens team continued doing ok, people would be content with that ?
The answer is no.
"As a result of this, do you think it will have any adverse effect on our attendances, or income received from the club ?
The answer is no."
Well I'm sorry, but for me, if we carry on making decisons like this, the answer in the medium to long term is actually a very big yes.
Charlton thrived as a club since the return on a number of factors:
1. Stable management of football and non-football units
2. Sustained investment at board level
3. Loyal hard core of support with realistic ambitions
4. Attractive, competitive pricing levels
5. Providing a safe environment for families to attend
6. Fantastic community work, giving football opportunities to boys and girls throughout the South East and associating them with Charlton, providing education opportunities to local kids
7. Aggressive marketing campaigns
Away from what the team do on the pitch (which to a larger proportion than we all realise is the be-all and end-all), those are the main factors that went into making us a successful and well respected football club. Our community scheme is the one most major thing to be proud of, it is lauded throughout the country, and that won't be changing in any way. Nor will any of the other factors listed.
Charlton is, and always will be at the heart of the community, and that will not be changing just because it can't afford to subsidise a loss-making women's team. And i'm convinced people are looking at this with blinkers on if they see any different.
As an aside,
A number of people off here played for over ten years for a representative Charlton Supporters Team, run at different times by Oakster and Charlton Charlie.
We drove, railed and flew the length of the UK for a number of years playing hundreds of games, proudly representing our club against other teams supporters clubs. As well as all the UK clubs, we played representative teams from Russia, France, Italy, even a team of London Irani's when we signed Bagheri. All this was done to try and build good relationships between supporters groups, and to show and represent Charlton in a positive light.
We arranged and hosted tournaments that raised thousands of pounds for the British Heart Foundation, We won and appeared in finals of National Cups, won a London tournament and most prestigous of all won the biggest competition in supporters clubs tournaments, a 2-day 64 team tournament from teams accross Europe.
In all that time, all we got off the club was a couple of lines in one programme, a mention on the website once, and an old kit to borrow for a tournament. I'm not complaing, we didn't want any more than that. Though other teams were getting pitches, kits, food etc provided, we didn't seek that and was happy funding it all out of our our pockets to play in the Charlton name.
So would you say that the women's team is any more representative of the Charlton name, than the Supporters Team were ? A team made up of fans that travel the length of the country to see Charlton play ? That done wonders in bringing lots of Charlton fans together ? I wouldn't, plus we were more successful :-)
If the club had been giving us expenses to pay for our pitches etc and stopped that now, would there be a mass public outcry from people that never watched us play ?
Of course they wouldn't, people would say we were lucky to get that support in the first place but there are other priorities now.
The only time the press has anything to say about us is when it's negative, as has been pointed out before, at least we tried.
I've just received an email from a friend exiled in Germany - a Villa supporter:
"Just wanted to commiserate on Charlton’s appallingly short-sighted decision to shut their women’s team."