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MINUTES OF 3rd AGM HELD ON 19^th JUNE 2007 

Venue:            Centre Spot, Crabble, Dover

Present:          Mick Padfield, Tim Padfield, Bill Browning, Gary Cattermole, Darren Herbert, Aaron Cattermole, James Cattermole, Mick Wright, Eric Parker,  Alan Hudson, Mark, Graham, Craig Hooker, Chris Lyden, Ken Old, John Offord, Craig Innes, John Wheeler, Simon Wheeler, John Cattermole, Rodney Otto, Stanley Payne, Glen Virtue, Colin Kelly, Michael Lorne

Apologies:      Tony & Elizabeth Homersham, David Browning, Jon & Lauren Wheeler, Sean Beer, Bob Gee, Norman Deal, Mark Padfield, Paul Padfield, Frankie Benn, Andy Bates, Peter McRoberts. Mark Huntley, Derek Butcher, Bill Davidson, Guy and Saras Wouldham, Mark Stanton, Bob Gee, Darren Beale, Trevor Glass.

AGENDA ITEM 1- The minutes from the second AGM were presented and adopted by the meeting. There were no matters outstanding.

ITEM 2 – Tim Padfield welcomed the members to the 3rd AGM. He told the meeting that he believed that tremendous reputation that the club has, both in the UK and Europe, is down to the efforts of Gary Cattermole and Mick Padfield. He praised the work that both of them put into making sure that the club continues to thrive, despite the fact that neither of them need to be involved in the running of the club, as they are both season ticket  holders and get little benefit for all of the work that they put in. He pointed out that Gary continues to organise ticketing arrangements, for which the club continue to charge no extra fee. Tim pointed out that the extra 30p added onto a ticket is levied by Arsenal. He pointed out that other clubs appear to add a sum to the tickets to help cover administration fees. He also pointed out that Mick has become the sole organiser of the ‘legends’ dinner, which now appears to be a not to be missed event, not only for our members, but for Arsenal supporters from home and abroad. He pointed out that at £15 per head the dinner represented excellent value. For this money you got a three course dinner, a distinguished speaker and entertainment. He informed the meeting that Mick has already secured the services of Sammy Nelson for this year’s event. He closed his speech by asking the meeting to show their appreciation to both Gary and Mick

ITEM 3 – Mick Padfield presented this years accounts to the meeting. He pointed out that as at 31^st May 2007 the club had a healthy balance of £1,449.58, compared to £678.76 on the same date in 2006. He pointed out that the club do not seek to make a profit from its activities, setting prices which are affordable, yet cover the costs of the event. He pointed out that when the club was first set up it owed him approximately £330, as he had paid a number of initial bills from his own account, so in three years the club had made over £1750. Mick pointed out that membership fees had increased to £730 this year, from £292 the previous year. This is an amazing figure when you consider we only charge members who do not hold any form of official membership with Arsenal. He pointed out that this years accounts contained a one off payment for a laminator, which is used to make the clubs membership cards and a fee paid to the company that host the clubs website, this was a two year fee. He also pointed out that the club had purchased a gift for one of the original Dover Gooner, who has emigrated to Australia and a fee for the purchase of bacon rolls, which were provided to all members who travelled on the coach to the West Ham game!! He pointed out that the accounts made no mention of the tickets purchased by the club this season, which was in the region o £35,000. He confirmed that Sammy Nelson had agreed to speak at this year’s dinner, which he hoped would be on Sunday 9^th December

ITEM 4 – Again no nominations had been received for people wishing to stand against the current officials and committee, so all were returned unopposed. The officials and committee for the 2007/08 season will be:

                        Chairman – Tim Padfield

                        Treasurer – Mick Padfield

                        Secretary – Gary Cattermole

                        Committee –     Paul Padfield

-         Mark Padfield

-         Bill Browning

-         Darren Herbert

-         Jon Wheeler

ITEM 5 – Gary Cattermole told the meeting that at the beginning of last season Arsenal sent out about eight sets of tickets in a very short space of time and this had put a strain on the credit card which the club use to purchase tickets. He pointed out that as result of this the committee had been trialling a system, whereby anybody wishing to purchase tickets had to provide him with a blank cheque at the beginning of each month; this was then completed once the credit card statement had been issued. He informed the meeting that this system had worked very well and as a result the committee had decided to formalise this system by adding it to the club rules. The meeting was then asked to vote on the following amendment to rule 7:

(a)   From the 2007/08 season any member making an application for match day tickets must forward a blank cheque to the secretary within 72 hours of making their application.

(b)    If a member fails to send the secretary a blank cheque, to follow up their application for tickets, they will not be included in the subsequent ticket application. 

(c)    If a member is making multiple applications for tickets during any month, their cheque must be sent to the secretary after their first application has been made.

(d)   All cheques will be completed once the secretary receives the relevant credit card bill.

(e)    Before any cheque is banked the secretary will advise the member as to the amount that their cheque has been made out in. They will be given an opportunity to dispute the amount, before the cheque is banked.

(f)     Any members who wish to pay for their tickets by cash or bank transfer, will not be affected by (a) to (c) above. However, they must advise the secretary of their intention to pay by one of these methods at the start of the season.

(g)   If a member is unsuccessful in their application for tickets, their blank cheque will be returned to them.

The amendment was carried unanimously

The meeting was informed that with the clubs finances in such a healthy state the committee had decided to hold the membership fees for members, who do not hold an official membership with Arsenal, at £5 for the coming season, this fee has not increased since the club had been set up. The meeting were also informed that the family membership fee, which covers two adults and any number of children under the age of 16, would again be held at £15.

ITEM 6 - Gary Cattermole informed the meeting that during the past year the clubs membership had grown to 289, from 157 the previous year. At present the club has 25 gold members, 44 silver, 24 JG and Cannon Club and 46 red. This meant that 150 of our members hold no form of official membership with Arsenal. He told the meeting that the committee had been surprised at the growth of the membership over the past year, but that this year’s renewal rate was slower than last years. However, this may be due to the fact that the renewal forms had only been sent out on 10^th June. He informed the meeting that during the last year the committee took the decision not to accept any further memberships. This was due to the fact that with only a maximum of 44 match tickets being able to e purchased, they felt that if the membership got much larger then it only make more people disappointed when applying for tickets. He said that the situation would be kept under review as the renewals came in. He informed the meeting that he had attended a course at Arsenal on 10^th June where he had been told that already this season Arsenal had made about 1900 red members up to silver and that meetings were taking place to see how many more silver membership would be released this season. He again repeated his message from the previous year in requesting that all embers who do not hold any form of membership with Arsenal, consider signing up to the red membership scheme.

Gary then repeated the fact that over the past season the club had purchased about £35,000 of match day tickets; he pointed out that as the tickets had been purchased on a credit card which offered a cash back scheme the club had made about £92, on ticket purchases last season. He told the meeting that at the last supporters club meeting Arsenal confirmed that as from the start of next season stewards would be making spot checks on people sitting in the supporters’ club area, so he urged all members to carry their Dover Gooners membership card at all times. He informed the meeting that any member found to be abusing tickets purchased by the club would be dealt with severely; this could well mean that their membership would be cancelled. He pointed out that the club is still not purchasing all of it tickets for all of the home games; he highlighted that against Watford last season we only applied for 23 tickets. He told the meeting that he appreciated that everybody wanted to watch the bigger games, but this was not possible and priority would always have to go to the silver members for these games, as it does for all games. He then told the meeting that a new system was in place for ordering tickets for home games this season; he told everyone that if a deadline was missed then the application would have to go on a waiting list, so he urged everyone to submit their tickets requests early.

He then told the meeting that he had been asked by one of the clubs silver members if it would be possible to sit outside of the area set aside for supporters clubs for some of the games. He told the meeting that he had contacted Arsenal and they had told him that it was possible to apply for tickets outside of the area, but they gave no guarantee that they could meet the request.

ITEM 7 – James Cattermole informed the meeting that in the coming year he was looking to expand the use of the website. He hopes that the site could carry adverts for companies run by any of the members, this would be free. He asked anyone that wanted to advertise on the site to send a company logo and or the company website address. He also hopes to improve the way that items of club merchandise were ordered from the website. He was also looking at the possibility of adding a guestbook, a forum, a FAQ page and a page for the younger members of the club. He also urged the members to send any photographs or videos to Gary Cattermole

AOB – Gary told the meeting that one of the members had asked if we would be running more coaches to home games this season and if we could hire smaller coaches for the smaller games. Mick pointed out that coach costs £380 to hire and that his own research had shown that to get a smaller coach does not save that much money. He informed the meeting that this was a subject which the committee have discussed and that we would look to run more coaches this season, however this would never include midweek games as the coach would have to leave Dover so early, it would be prohibitive to people who were working.

Gary informed the meeting that there were still a few spaces available on the stadium tour, which is due to take place on 8^th August, he told the meeting that this was being run on a purely first come first served basis so if people were interested in going they should let him know ASAP.

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Mick took a question from the floor concerning the purchase of the new away kit. He pointed out that if any member wishes to purchase the new kit, then they could ask a member going on the stadium tour to purchase it on their behalf as Gary was arranging with Arsenal for all members on the tour to take advantage of the 20% discount on merchandise, offered to all supporters clubs, in the Armoury on the 8^th August.

Mick passed on his congratulations to the members of the seven a side team, who represented the club at this season supporters club tournament at the Emirates. He told the meeting that they had reached the semi finals, before losing 3-1 to Arsenal America.

Gary took a question for the floor concerning the reasoning behind cancelling this year’s end of season BBQ. He said that it was purely down to the poor response to the event and it was not worthwhile asking Matthew to host the event for such small numbers, under 20. However, Mick did point out that we  would look to hold one next year, but maybe closer to home, thus enabling more members to come along, if they wished to do so.

The meeting closed at 2110

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