Lee Carter: Fight back begins for AFC Telford
AFC Telford United managing director Lee Carter believes the club has began fighting back both on and off the field.
While manager Liam Watson and his team were claiming a surprise second win of the season at Woking on Saturday, Bucks staff and volunteers were at the newly-opened Southwater Development in Telford to help try to grow the club off the pitch.
Telford are one of very few fans-owned clubs in the country and, last month, Carter told fans they need to raise an extra £300,000 a year to be competitive in the Conference Premier and beyond.
And, last weekend, Carter declared the time was right to debate possible changes to the Bucks' ownership model to help attract more investment.
Attracting new members and support is also going to be vital to the Bucks' expansion plans and the club manned a stall in Southwater Square on Saturday to discuss these issues with the public.
Carter said: "It was a brilliant event. We got a lot of interest at our stall. We spoke to about 200 people over the course of the day.
"We signed a lot of people up who were expressing their interest in becoming involved and it just felt good as well.
"It was unpolished and unrehearsed but it just went perfectly, in terms of raising the profile of the club and getting people interested.
"Bear in mind that Southwater is a few miles from Wellington and it's amazing still the amount of people in the Town who haven't come across us before.
"Our strength will be in the number of people that we have got who are active in the club, who are members and take an interest.
"Everything else will flow from there but at the same time we can see a bit of a recovery on the field now, so lets call it a fightback on both fronts."
He added: "Of about 200 that we spoke to about 50 joined the Supporters Trust so that is a great start. We have got to continue and take every opportunity we can to promote that."
"It also gets more people involved in this discussion we want to have about the longer-term future of the club.
"You can't have that conversation just with current members, even just with current fans.
"There is a whole population of people where we have got to establish what football means to them and put together a football club that reflects that.
"We are not a million miles away now because there was a lot of positive feedback."
The club also paraded the Conference North trophy which it won last season and handed out free tickets to children for upcoming home games.
