I’ll do what’s best to save the club
Tuesday 16th January 2007

Adam Summers talks to beleaguered Terras chairman Martyn Harrison and gains an insight into the financial crises that currently faces the club.

So first of all, what is the up-to ­date situation?

WELL, we have had a lot of interest and there have been lots of people coming forward with offers of help. Some good and some a bit difficult to agree but we are just working hard towards getting a team for Saturday and doing everything we can to keep the club alive.

How difficult has it been over the past few days since you made the announcement?

IT has been very difficult indeed but we have just had to get on with what needs to be done. I have got to get on and work, and just keep the thing moving.

Obviously the decisions concern­ing Garry HilI and Kevin HaIes, and putting all the players on the transfer list must have been something you had been think­ing about for a while or was there a catalyst for that?

NO, as I have already said the deci­sion came about because of the amount of money that has gone in and the lack of funds to carry on really. I spoke to Garry Hill at some length before agreeing what we would do and I also asked at times for some help and assistance but Garry would never settle for second best that is for sure.

Looking at a club that is going to have a playing budget way below what it was before and the type of players we were getting in, although he said he would like to help it wasn’t really a situation which we could agree on.

I understand he contacted you yesterday (Sunday)?

YES, we spoke yesterday and I asked him if we could meet to try and see what we could do to help resolve the situation especially following his interview on the radio the other day. In the end I eventually got through to him mid-morning today and he said he has now booked up to go Portugal to get away and take stock before he decides what to do with his career. So, we have to accept that is really the end of that line of dis­cussion.

There are other ongoing situa­tions with people who might be looking to invest in the club and people who might be prepared to step in and take the club off me if I just walk away. I have had one offer to do that but that is very difficult because I am tied in with the club and I do feel totally responsible for the situation. I mean it is all well and good putting money in and we have achieved a lot with it but not being able to carry it through would be disappointing.

Is it local and national people who have come in?

BOTH. It is particularly local people who are offering help at the moment but there are some national folk who could be interested as well. The profile of the club is high and we have been doing well on the pitch of late so there is plenty of interest of course. We need to do something soon if we are to protect any of the players that are here rather than seeing them all move on.

I have got one particular person (Ian Ridley) at the moment who has given me a dead­line of 6pm today to give him an answer whether I will just walk away from the club and let him take it over lock, stock and barrel. Although part of that deal would involve me funding the rest of the season, so there is all sorts of things in the air.

People are obviously taking advantage of the situation as well and it is giving me minimal time. At the moment it seems to me that I need more time to settle down and do the right thing. There is no point in getting someone in who has not got the money to do it or has not got knowledge of the full situation. So, it might be better that I stay really and try and sort it out.

So have you not made a decision yet regarding this offer?

NO I have not made a decision as yet but I am certainly being put in a very difficult position and like I said I am just trying to do what is best for the club.

From the supporters' point of view, this football club has always been up and down like a yoyo even before you arrived so is it a case now of the club trying to find the best way to gain some stability?

Obviously I now know more about what to do and what not to do through my mistakes and this is a wonderful, lovely club. The support that there is, is wonderful and fan­tastic but I could have done with more fans coming through the gates as well but that is not anyone's fault.

That just comes down to the area and I probably over-estimated what we could get and what we could achieve, and made a lot of mistakes along the way. And once you get on the treadmill it is virtually impossi­ble to get off but what I need now is for everyone to pull together.

That is what we have got to do to get through this, and I just don't want to walk away. That is not me at all, I just want to do whatever is right for the club but I am certainly being pressured from all sides now and there are people who would like the club for a pound. There are also people who want to put money in but have some security for it and there are other people who are pre­pared to put money in to help me.

One thing I have learned over the past few days is that I have got more close friends than I thought. Some have made generous offers but then there are some trying to take advan­tage of the situation.

There are many names being banded about all over the place, I suppose lan Ridley will be one, has he been in contact?

YES he certainly has.

Is that in regards to him coming back?

YES indeed and that is something I am going to have to think very seri­ously about and deal with. From Ian Ridley's point of view I suppose he is going to be in a position to say I told you so but the fact of the matter is I have invested a lot of money into the club for no personal gain. I am sure he will be a difficult person to deal with going through this. He has his own agenda and I don't think I am a part of that.

Do you wish you had taken more notice of lan Ridley's warnings from a couple of years ago?

I AM not sure what the warnings were really. I think it was 'just watch this space, he cannot afford it'. And long term I suppose it looks very much that way now. At the start it would have helped me if I hadn't had that constant niggle in the background that kept warning people from accepting that I was trying to do the best for the club. Some of the things that were said were sometimes true but more so there were things that possibly were not true. It is just one of those things I am going to have to live with.

For the good of the future of the club I don't think that I can be pushed into making quick decisions and decisions that might be wrong for the club.

I suppose that is the important thing now, making the right decision this time for the good of the club?

IT is going to be hard but all the fighting and back-stabbing in the world is not going to help the situa­tion that is for sure. We need the fans and everybody connected with the club to help now.

I am asking everybody for help, I'm not trying to do this on my own, and I am trying to get as much out­side assistance as I can. What I am not able to do is accept that there are people out there who want to give me a short deadline to take the club for no money. Whether they have got money to invest in the club or want to take the club and use it, it is something that I have got to deal with.

Is there a time frame? Is it a case where you have to get things sorted in the next month or something like that?

YES we have to get things sorted out as quick as we possibly we can. The first priority is getting a team to take to Halifax on Saturday and Exeter on Tuesday, and then for the home game on January 27.

I think I can achieve what I want to achieve to make sure that the club is stable and if people stay on side and trust me to do my best then I will undertake it to see us through.

What I will not undertake though is being attacked on all sides by everybody. I accept there will be attackers and people will have their views and opinions on what is going on but I need to be given a chance to get this resolved. I have got the club in this position and I need to be given the chance to get it out.

What is the future now? Is bring­ing young, local players in the way ahead?

I THINK we are going to have to go part-time and we are going to have to bring in the best players we can for the money that is available. Again it is something I am going to need time to do and to get my teeth stuck into.

I suppose it is a case of trying to get everyone in the community on the same wavelength?

WELL, yes. I am talking with the supporters to try and get their ideas in place. We are trying to get the expensive players settled some­where else because we have an obli­gation to them and their futures, and their lives, so basically we are trying to do everything we have got to do but all these things take time. They are not an overnight thing,

I think what the fans do not understand is that if the club is not bust or close to going bust, why have all the players been transfer listed and such drastic measures been taken? Can you explain that situation?

THE most important thing is keep­ing the club alive and if things had carried on much longer it would have put that in even more jeopardy. There was so much money going in there that basically it was out of control. I cannot blame anyone for that because they were all doing their jobs correctly. Garry and Kevin stuck to their budget and it is just a case where moving into the Conference over-anticipated the amount of income which we were going to get.

Our income has not increased sub­stantially from where we were in Conference South. The average gate is up but not enough to sustain the wage bill that we had. It has been a struggle but hopefully we can get through it. To raise the money for the last four months of the season on the budget that we had would have been very difficult for me.

There has been a lot of talk about Hollybush Hotels and the amount of money it has put in but I own the whole of Hollybush and what went in was my personal money. It is nobody else's money. It's not credi­tors or anyone else's and I have always only been able to put in my own money.

Two-and-a-half million pounds has been put into the football club to achieve a certain amount of success and ongoing it was costing around £100,000 a month. It is impossible to carry that on. New contracts for the players and the staff would have had to have been negotiated for next season and there was no way this club could move forward with the way we were going.

What is the position with the actual ground itself? Obviously the ASDA deal is off but I under­stand you looked at other avenues as well?

WE have looked at all sorts of avenues concerning re-developing the ground and providing extra income for the club but there is nothing we can do imminently. All these things would take a certain amount of time. The money I have put into the club just sits there really. It's a situation where it has gone into the club and if ever one day anything is done I might get some of it back but it is unlikely; I would have thought.

So do, you own the ground or is it owned by the club?.

THE club owns the ground and the club has contracts with the players and the staff.

So all this talk about you possibly selling the' ground for your own personal gain is rubbish?

I HAVE got an agreement with the club not to sell anything or do any­thing that is not for the good of the club. It is not of interest to me to sell this ground to anybody and under the agreement I have with the club there is no way anyone would want to come in and buy it. There is a very specific agreement that says I will not benefit from the sale of the club or the ground and I won't, I can't. The money that has gone in, has gone in and the chances of getting any back is very limited indeed.

I mean one day the ground might be redeveloped and I have got a share holding in the club, which may then have some value but at the moment there is nothing except bits of paper.

Have you ever looked back and thought I wish I had never got involved?

OF COURSE I have but I can't say I wish I had never got involved. I thought I could do something here and I got involved because I was asked on to the board. I came here for a couple of meetings and there was a crisis meeting about selling off the shares cheaply and possibly selling off the ground which I did not think was the right thing to do.

At the time I envisaged that. I would be putting in £500,000 to secure the future of the club. The fact that I then got carried away with it all and lifted that up to £2.5million or thereabouts is my problem really. I am not asking the club for the money back, I am not asking for the redevelopment of the ground for my benefit, I am not asking for any­thing apart from support and to get through the situation we are in.

The money has gone and now what we have to make sure is that the club survives. Administration was always a possibility but I would not do that because it would allow someone to buy the ground for next to nothing and then the club would be developed and possibly lost to the community. I have not got any reason of wanting to achieve that.

I have businesses in the town, I have an eight-year association with it, and I love the folks that live here and now I want to do what I can to help the club to survive.

Have you been speaking to other chairmen in the game recently?

YES I have and we have had offers of help from two or three local clubs. John Fry at Yeovil has been particularly supportive and offered us assistance, and other clubs have done the same and we hope that will also help us through.

What is going to sway you when it comes to making a decision on the club's future?

I AM not asking for public support, I just do not want people to try and disrupt the club anymore so we can get through the difficult situation that we find ourselves in. We want to have a club here and we want to make it work.

Would you still like to be at the core of it? Would you like to think that you will be here in a year's time?

I HAVE always said that I want to work and keep the club going. It would be very easy to go and hide right now but I have been here everyday working with Gary Calder and Gary Borthwick to keep things going and doing everything I can.

I have never done the easy thing and it has never been easy to be here especially in regards to people who seem to think that I have anoth­er agenda. I have never had another agenda except for the success of the club and that is where I have had my failing really. I have got into a situation where I have put a lot of money in and I can't put any more in.

Is that because of your business? Or is that because the bank says that you can't put anymore in?
NO, no, no. I have taken any advice there is to take and plenty of it and I just cannot put any more money in. The money I have put in is what I could afford to put in and I can't put it in anymore.

It was a huge sum of money and I think we have gained something from it by winning the league last year. But I also know from the fans' point of view that it has not been very good because it has also desta­bilised the club. It is something I expected but I have not been clever enough to deal-with.

The business is doing fine and what I have been doing is taking my profits out at the end of the year and utilising them on the football club. I have a business that employs 350 people and that needs to be nice and safe, and secure as well. I do not have a problem with the bank, I might have done if I had carried on putting in such vast amounts of money but I do not have a problem with them and they do not have a problem with me.

We have loans against assets. The assets far exceed the loans and we pay as people do on their homes, and we pay our mortgage on our properties. We have the equity value in the properties themselves and then we pay a mortgage over 20 or 25 years, or whatever. And those fees and charges are paid out of the profits of the business. The business is successful, it works well but not as successful as it would need to be to do what I have been doing with this club.

Looking at the long-term future of the club we will be sitting down with the supporters today and look­ing very closely at the opportunity of giving it back to the fans. We will be talking about setting up a sup­porters' trust and getting people involved on the board, and getting a closer connection with the fans.

I have an unusual relationship with the fans. I speak to everyone when I can and keep them informed and involved but it has been a little bit of a closed shop. It needs to be much more open now, we need to get the fans involved, we need to talk about a supporters' trust and we need to do something.

And if this ground is ever devel­oped, the money must go towards providing facilities, which will make the club sustainable.

I have spoken to Dave Higson (main sponsor, Park Engineering) at great length and he is keen to help. Quite a lot of the supporters are keen to help as well. But what we need to do is if they put in money or support, we have to make sure that it is used for the right purpose and not for anything that has gone before. So, I think what I am saying now is whatever I have put into the club we are going to forget. We are going to simply forget about it and move forward from here.

There is no charge over the ground, my company does not have a charge over the ground and has never intended to. I have always intended to try and get a redevelopment to give us a new stadium, a sta­dium that would be right for the town, and to get sports and leisure facilities on to the site.

There are grounds in our league at the moment that have social clubs that bring in £300,000 to £400,000 a year. Here we have got nothing. We have got a match-day bar, which brings in a couple of thousand pounds every two weeks, less costs.

We need to sit down with the fans now and get everyone involved, and talk seriously about what we are going to do.

What I do not want to do now is hand this over to an individual who is going to do what I have done. I am hoping that I have learnt from what I have done and now I am going to do my best for the club. That is my commitment to the club for the future.

If we can get through what we are in now and stabilise the club then we can look at ways at putting things back into it.

• At the end of the interview Harrison also revealed what the club's player budget was before the recent departures. He said: "It was not £25,000 a week like some people have been saying. The player budget was £690,000 a year."