Armthorpe Welfare
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“In an ideal world we would like to see some significant ground
improvements which will help to attract more supporters and more
sponsors all of which will enable us to generate more revenue to fund
further improvements.”
his commitment to the club and we are
very pleased with his attitude and work
ethic. Once he gets a full preseason with
the club we are confident things will
improve on the field.
In addition we have been working
very hard off the pitch. We recruited
a new media/website manager which
we have never had before and he is
doing a fantastic job promoting the club
and keeping our online presence up to
date which is crucial now. We’ve also
recruited more committee members and
more significantly have just changed our
chairman.
The previous chairman was with the
club a long time and did a great job, but
his work and personal commitments
meant he was no longer active with the
club, more just in the background. The
new chairman joined last year on the
committee and has proven to be very
active and enthusiastic and has now taken
the role of chairman.
In addition we have plans for
improvements around the ground. We
can’t go into much detail at this stage,
40 Issue 70
but our no 1 priority is a new clubhouse
which will help attract more players, more
supporters and more sponsors, so despite
the league position, things off the field are
pretty bright.
FF: Would you consider yours to be a
community club?
MT: The club used to be the centre
of many families lives in the past when
the mine was open. The team was full
of village men and run by village men
with lots of people involved! But with the
closure of the mine, despite the increase in
size of Armthorpe, many people have no
affinity to Armthorpe, or have no interest
in football now. With only one adult team
and aging facilities, it is harder to attract
people from the village these days. We
aspire to grow and become more involved
with the community, but that can only
come once we start to improve the
ground, attract more volunteers and start
to involve youth more.
There has always been a strong youth
setup in Armthorpe that have gone by
Armthorpe Rovers and are a separate
entity. However, we are still able to
recruit young village lads once they
reach the right age after they finish with
Rovers if they’re not going into a pro
club. Our own youth setup is something
we can only aspire to have at this present
time, we have tried an under 19’s and
reserve setup in the past, but it is a lack
of dedicated people coming in to run it
that means those attempts have fallen by
the wayside – at the moment the focus is
on building a strong foundation around
the first team with the new management
team, and increased committee so that we
can then go on to grow the club.
FF: What do you believe could be some
of the biggest challenges the club may
face in the next 5 years?
MT: On a club level, the biggest
challenge we face is trying to remain
competitive at this high quality level with
such limited resources compared to other
clubs. Nobody here is paid a wage or even