Woodstock Jag

There's a very simple thing you can do if you don't think TJF should have a Club Board rep, Jim. Respond to the public consultation, when it goes live, saying it should be brought to an end.

The TJF Board in December 2022 was invited to put someone on the Club Board and declined. We suggested instead that Caroline should join that board as a capable and trusted person in the Thistle community with business experience and relevant links to key stakeholders (especially the Women’s Team committee). Caroline Mackie has attended zero TJF Board meetings in my time on TJF’s Board and at no point has taken an instruction, direction or steer from TJF on any board decision (to the best of my awareness). The introduction of a Club-Trust Agreement was committed to in the fan ownership roadmap in January 2023. The draft text of it was published and consulted on in January 2024. Textual changes were made in response to feedback from several beneficiaries! And it’s silent on TJF representation on the Club Board! The Corporate Governance Manual was published in October 2024 by the Club and feedback was publicly invited. It is that document which explicitly acknowledges TJF’s nominee. And it’s that document that the trustees insisted was worded so as to allow a review of the position. I literally don’t understand this question as it’s not coherent English. Alongside the Club Board, the Jags Trust and the final individual trustee, who only stepped aside after the CTA was signed! We are literally consulting with the fans about whether this should change before making any changes to the arrangement, but sure. Conspiracy. Undue influence.

You have no evidence at all that we can. Because you can't name a single example. TJF is, incidentally, a trustee of the PTFC Trust. This means we actually owe fiduciary duties in relation to Trust decisions to all beneficiaries, not just to our members. It is only by virtue of being a Trustee of the majority shareholder that TJF has any influence over the Club Board at all. Because you have no evidence to support your claim. If this were how it worked one would expect you to have at least one example of a decision being taken that was in the interests of TJF despite it clearly not being in the interests of the Club. The Club's Corporate Governance Manual, providing for more enduring arrangements on board composition, was only adopted in October 2024. It isn't permanent. As I've explained to you before, the Club Board prepared a draft of the Corporate Governance Manual, which would have made TJF's nominee permanent. I personally, in my capacity as one of TJF's trustee representatives, asked them to clarify the language to make clear that this might be discontinued (the operative phrase in the manual is "if nominated"). And as I've mentioned earlier in the thread, and as TJF's chair indicated in an open communication to fans in December, we will imminently be consulting on whether TJF's presence on the Club Board should continue, or if it should be replaced with a different arrangement. There will be the opportunity for fans to make the case for what they want, which is just as it should be. Literally one of the alternative options we will be putting to fans in our consultation is the possibility that a TJF rep could be directly elected instead of chosen internally from the elected board. The other two options are a third elected fan rep or getting rid of the role completely. I've told you this before, but you don't listen!

Name one.

It was my idea to play our new youth prospect Ukulele but the rest of TJF’s board felt a domestic singing policy was preferable.

TJF has, just this morning, introduced a mandatory tyre dragging component to first team training in an attempt to curry favour with the minority shareholders.

To quote a shareholder at the AGM last week: ”checkmate!”

A higher proportion of the fanbase than SMISA at St Mirren and Foundation of Hearts at Hearts, and comparable proportion of the fanbase to The Well Society at Motherwell. Under the PTFC Trust structure the Trustees also represent almost 2600 beneficiaries. TJF doesn’t have a shareholding. The pledges were decided by our members, at our AGM.

And, for what it's worth, a consultation on whether that arrangement should continue is imminent!

Even if TJF raised £0.00 the PTFC Trust would still have a veto over the Club Budget. It's in the governance structure of all fan-owned football clubs. Would you prefer that the Club Board was allowed to set whatever budget it saw fit, and for shareholders only to find out about its contents at an AGM? TJF does not "have a say in key staff appointments" - the Club Board leads on and decides on matters of personnel. The Club Board asked a TJF board member, who is an HR professional, to sit on their recruitment panel for a couple of posts in the summer. It is sensible for the Club Board to seek relevant expertise to support recruitment. But the decisions are the Club Board's and the Club Board's alone. TJF does not "decide on cash reserves" - the Trust, as majority shareholder, indicated that it was only willing to put the Tranche 2 deal to the fans if the Club Board committed to use its best endeavours to preserve minimum cash reserves and current assets thereafter. Those two targets, in practice, require the Club Board to set and deliver balanced budgets. I remain bewildered why you're against this, or why you're against a majority shareholder insisting on this. TJF does not decide who stays on the Board/who is removed from it. The majority shareholder, the Trust, does. Just like at every private limited company in the land.

Because it’s the payment system we inherited, it’s cheaper than other services with the facility you describe, and it would be an administrative nightmare (for absolutely no benefit to the Foundation’s fundraising efforts) to migrate to a completely different system. Apart from pretty much every members’ circular email in the last two years saying if you want to cancel or change or ask a question about your membership subscription, just email us. Look mate, if you want to cancel just email us. It’s not a cryptic crossword. Yes, we chose a payments system in November 2021 thinking “gosh lots of people might want to cancel in February 2025 when the team is a bit crap, let’s make it really hard for them”. In the time it took you to cook up this conspiracy theory and post about it, we could have cancelled your membership about 20 times over. No. If you email us asking to cancel we will cancel it and say we’re sorry to lose you, and say you’re welcome to rejoin at any time. If someone indicates, unprompted, a change in financial circumstances as their reason for cancellation, we’ll pause their subscription, alert them to the fact that there’s the Basic or Concessionary rate (if relevant as an alternative) and say we can switch them to that lower rate if they email us back saying that’s what they want to do. If they don’t email us back, or indicate they still want to cancel, their mandate is cancelled with no payments taken from the point they ask to cancel. Then they can cancel their Direct Debit with their bank or cancel the recurring payment with their card provider, without having to contact us. Apart from literally putting it in the template of our circular emails.

I think we all know whose fault this is. We wouldn't have all these depressing stats if The Thistle Archive just stopped collecting them!

That's not the case at all. The CRM software TJF has doesn't enable members/donors to modify their own subscriptions. This CRM was chosen back in November 2021, simply because it was the cheapest one to set-up at the time that could process both direct debit and card payments. It was chosen before any of the current TJF board were involved. A system with user-controlled subscriptions would be more convenient for us, as it would save time and reduce by about 60% the amount of correspondence we have to manually work through from members. The vast majority of emails we receive are to change the subscription rate (whether up or down). We stick with what we've got because it saves money and that means more money can go back into the Club instead of into admin. If you want to cancel your TJF membership, all it takes is a quick email to [email protected] and we can do it in two minutes. This is indicated towards the bottom of every circular email we send. If you have a Direct Debit subscription, you can also cancel it directly with your bank, just as you can with any other Direct Debit. This means we get notified when your expected monthly payment doesn't happen and your membership automatically lapses at the end of the month. If you have a recurring card payment, you can also cancel it by contacting your card provider, and the same process would then apply. However, again, it's much easier if you just email us.

After performance/appearance-related bonuses, employers' NICs, pension contributions and health cover costs, £100kpa isn't far off the total employment costs of a mid-to-top tier Championship player. But I think you're right when you say that's not typical and there's a big variation. There will be a lot of players for whom the figure is much closer to £50k to cover all above costs. Edit to add: one of the real kickers can actually be accommodation costs for those being brought in on loan or relocating from elsewhere. I noticed in Morton's accounts review from back in November that they've actually bought and (with help from sponsors) renovated a house just so they don't have to pay as much on ancillary costs for players to come up from England.

The TJF Board is not involved in football personnel decisions at a “fan-owned, not fan-run” football club. It’s as simple as that, TL. It’s not our job. Decisions about the management team are for the Club Board.

This.

TJF will be compiling and submitting some questions for written answer which we'll make available on the website (once we in turn get the answers) that came from fans ahead of the AGM. Some were asked, but time obviously didn't allow for everything. However, some personal reflections from my own notes In terms of the official business: (a) all directors re-appointed (b) auditors re-appointed (c) Tranche 2 special resolution passed by the necessary majority There was a presentation delivered by the Club Board: Finances Richard Beastall (Chair) delivered the finance report, which forecasts the current season will deliver the targeted losses. There is some ringfenced spending on stadium repairs which is separate and will come out of the Tranche 2 funds. Some preparatory work has been done by the Club Board on next season's budget, and would see the playing budget revert to 2023-24 levels. This is early stage and still needs stress tested. The biggest uncertainty remains footballing performance, as prize-money differences for league position in the top 5 vary by about £90-100k per position, and that can be the difference between (frankly) making a profit and losing a six-figure sum. Tranche 2 should mean, according to the forecasts, that if we run break-even budgets and deliver them from next year onwards, there shouldn't be cashflow problems, though with some stadium repairs being brought forward into this season, the cash low-point looks to be somewhat lower than is optimal. One to monitor. A lot of the Q&A focused on the reality of getting to break-even, with some discussion about where lessons can be learned from other Clubs (both on cost control and revenue generation). There's an acknowledgment that hospitality and commercial growth aren't (yet) happening on the desired scale, but there's specific opportunities for up-side next season on the front-of-shirt sponsor (which is up for renewal). The Board was pressed on whether they would consider a Zero Based Budgeting exercise to try to identify where costs can be better controlled. They expressed an openness to this, provided that relevant expertise and capacity to do so can be secured from the wider support. There was some discussion about the impact of the recent employers' National Insurance increases, which puts about £60kpa on the wage costs for the Club. The impact of this is different for football clubs than for other SMEs as they typically have a lot of match-day only staff who are below the thresholds. Football The finance report covered off some football matters, including Harry Milne's sale (actual numbers don't get reported because of contractual non-disclosure provisions between the Clubs and player). Questions were raised about the football committee and summer recruitment strategy. I think it's fair to say that the Club Board fronted-up that it was, in hindsight, a bit of an exaggeration to call it a "football committee" in the first place. It was a label used to describe the fact that the Club Board would provide support to the football manager with contract negotiations and the practicalities of recruitment, whilst Kris Doolan would, with help from his assistant and various other football contacts, identify and select the desired recruits. The directors mainly involved in that side were Richard Beastall, Donald McClymont and Elliot Gilmour. The Board has readily accepted that this approach hasn't worked as intended, and has led to some sub-optimal recruitment decisions, and won't be sticking with it. The Sporting Directors' role is a key part of those future plans, to support the manager on both the recruitment side and better integrating the Academy pathway. The budget allocation for which is still a matter of live discussion (as it will influence what kind of candidate the Club can attract). I was personally quite impressed with the willingness of Kris Doolan (who was at the AGM) to take ownership of his recruitment decisions. He (frankly) didn't have to be there, but he fronted-up, was articulate and appreciated the constraints within which a sustainable football club has to operate. Whatever folk think of his objective performance this season as a manager, it's clear he's learned and is still learning a lot about that side of the game, and he's a genuine ambassador for our Club. Governance Elliot Gilmour spoke a bit to how the Club proposed to bring its Corporate Governance Manual to life, and developing meaningful KPIs for different parts of the business. He reflected on some supporter engagement work that had helped to shape a 5-year strategy. It was emphasised that a big part of making this work depended on getting supporters involved in the Strategic Working Groups, to build capacity and expertise around the Club leadership team. There was a particularly excellent contribution from the floor by Tim Burrows, who has recently been recruited to support the Finance Working Group. Some of you may remember he was one of those asking awkward (but pertinent) questions at the Tranche 2 open meeting. Speaking personally, I think this demonstrates that the Club's door is open to challenge, and keen to work with people beyond the immediate circle. Women's Team Caroline Mackie gave a summary around the women's team's progress, and it wasn't really discussed further in the Q&A. In short, as we all know, they had an absolute barnstormer of a season last year, attendances rose by about 50% and several new commercial partnerships were secured (which is why, a modest subsidy from the Club aside, they pretty much washed their faces financially last year). Academy Elliot Gilmour gave an overview of the Academy. There continues to be competitive success in competitions (including the U16s CAS Cup and U18s Foyle Cup). Additionally, both Ceiran Loney and Haydon Borland's sales have been a huge boost to the Academy budget, making it completely self-funding. This releases a contingency that the Club might otherwise have had to draw-on. There is a real push in the Academy to make better use of technology to monitor player development, including the use of a player development app (we are apparently the first academy in Scotland to deploy it). There's also some work with a new AI analysis tool called Eyeball, to build in data analysis for the U13-18 pathway. Commercial Alistair Gray gave the overview of the commercial side of the business. It was acknowledged that there had been a sluggish start to the year on both commercial and hospitality revenue streams, but that they were now recovering (particularly around occupancy rates in hospitality). Part of the challenge has been discontinuity in staffing arrangements to support those parts of the business, which recent and new recruitment should begin to address ahead of next season. There's a bit of a call to arms on supporter involvement here, as the more voluntary support in terms of the office that can be provided, the better targeted we can be with paid staff towards revenue-generating activities. Alistair has been leading on the Club's university and colleges engagement programme and aspects of those partnerships could deliver some commercial up-side in the longer term (as well has helping with fan acquisition). Stadium Allan McGraw gave an overview of some of the work that needs to be done on the stadium in the next couple of years, part of which will be funded out of the Tranche 2 funds, and some work is expected before the end of this season. There wasn't much discussion about stadium issues otherwise. Other There were some very valid questions about quality of customer service at the Club (unanswered phones and emails) which they are working on (it's a capacity issue). Some fans raised concerns about the Morton fans in hospitality causing aggro. The Club acknowledged this isn't the first time this has happened and are reflecting on the best way to deal with this without turning away paying customers.

Give peace a chance and all that.

Worth noting that this is the prize-money. In practice, the associated match-day costs mean that most Championship clubs lose money in the early rounds of the Challenge Cup. I've seen it suggested that participation is only regarded as profitable for a team like Thistle if they get to the semi-finals or better.

If you have budgeted for getting further, yes.

More complicated picture, but yes, they're one of the better ones. In 2022-23 they made a small (£20k) profit while finishing 2nd in the league and reaching the quarter-final of the Scottish Cup (good prize money, less so gate).

In the interests of transparency... Morton made a £190k profit last season (2023-24), and would have probably roughly broken-even without their Ibrox tie. They have a similar level of fan-ownership contributions to us and have a very substantial commercial partnership with Dalrada (bringing in £200k last year more than the previous season, now worth over £300k). But they also have much lower turnover than us because of smaller crowds and less league prize-money and this is reflected in a smaller playing (and indeed overall staffing) budget. A lot of the privately owned Clubs in our league are losing money (some on eye-watering scales) but I think we probably do want to probe and better understand what it is that Morton appears to be doing right. Their cost base appears to be a lot lower than ours (though so is their revenue-generation). That needs properly looked-into.

As explained in our reflections piece on the draft annual accounts, the inclusion of the women's team's financial activities in the Club accounts was taken following discussions between the Club Board and the auditors. The TJF board, very obviously, was not involved in those discussions. It's not our responsibility to prepare the Club's financial accounts. It's the Club Board and auditors.

That's caused by Football v Homophobia banners, actually.

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