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Dartford chairman Steve Irving says club aim to return to National League and double their turnover in next five years as they debunk fallacy that there is a lack of ambition at Princes Park
Dartford have outlined their vision for the next five years to the club’s hardcore supporters.
Chairman Steve Irving believes the future’s bright after addressing fans at a forum last week.
There’s an extra air of positivity around Princes Park given the impressive form being shown by Ady Pennock’s squad in Isthmian Premier.
But in a wide-ranging interview, Irving reiterated the club’s desire to get back to the National League, aims to double their turnover in the next five years and the impact relegation had on the club last summer.
“It went very well, it was the first chance in a long time that we’ve been able to put something together in that sort of format outside of a shareholders’ meeting,” said Irving on the fans’ forum.
“It was an open forum, everybody was invited to come, both in person and online. We outlined plans for the future. We’re in the early stages of putting that five-year plan together and it was a case of relaying to everybody what the vision was and where we feel we want to be in five years and what the club plans to do about getting there.
“There were presentations from Norman Grimes, vice-chairman, who is leading those doing the business plan, Mark Brenlund presented some financials for the five years in terms of what the future looks like and what additional revenue we’d need and Gareth Morgan laid out the things we’ve got to look at and the difficulties.
“People call us a big club, but financially where we are aligns with many other clubs in terms of budget, debt, ownership, so it was really to set the scene for everybody.
“The feedback was very positive. Supporters were pleased that we’ve gone out there to put such a meeting together, they were pleased to hear honesty and detail which some supporters who are new to those meetings have not heard before.
“It was a call to arms in some respects for shareholders, supporters’ association members to come together and look at areas they can help, such as volunteering and finding new sponsors, to things like if anyone knows someone who can come in and fix the sound system, for example.
“The positivity was on the back of the 15-match unbeaten run and six wins on the trot. It could have been different if it had been six or eight weeks ago. It was fairly upbeat, there were one or two testing questions around structure and not just the company structure and what the vision is.”
It’s now 10 years since the Darts last played in the top flight of non-league football. But Irving insisted the ambition remains to get there again, despite what some fans might think.
“We had to re-emphasis this fallacy that some fans have that the board has no ambition, that we don’t want to move on or go up, which has always been a bugbear of ours and there’s no truth in that,” he stated.
“Within the five years the aspiration is to be back in the National League, both for the men’s first team and for the women’s first team, which is Step 3 in their system.
“What the costs look like, to get there and full-time training, how much more income we’d need each year is quite a frightening figure. The aspiration is that is where we want to be, and beyond that is for another story.
“A lot of people think Dartford don’t want to go any further, they want to stay as an old-fashioned non-league club. As a club we just want to get back to the National League - we could do that in two seasons - but we’ve got to be able to sustain that and it’s always about stability and sustainability.
“We’re not a club that has multi-millionaire moneybags, directors or chairman. We have to build it with the support of the supporters.
“The question was asked about structure and would we change the structure of the company. I said ‘no’ again, all the time the current board are running the club then that wouldn’t change. The older faces were nodding in agreement in the audience, there is still the support there to not allow any one person to get involved with the club and take it over.
“That means we’ve got to work very hard at getting the right sort of income, so we’ve got to grow turnover considerably - probably double it in the next five years to achieve any of this.”
Dartford have got long-term sponsors, the likes of G4S and Bericote, and have taken on running the tea bar at Princes Park and set up their own season-ticket holders’ bar facility. Irving acknowledged they’ve got to publicise 50/50 draw tickets and their monthly Warbler Club better.
Utility costs have gone up 45 per cent, like most households, but Dartford need to reduce costs and increase revenue.
“It’s increasing turnover by gate receipts, we’ve got to attract more people,” he added.
“We’re looking at potential ways in and around the ground to make more money. It’s looking across the board at every level of income to see what can we do to make it better and the same with expenditure, what can we reduce without affecting playing budgets?
“Our community programme is very strong but we don’t get enough schools coming to games at the moment. We used to, but that dropped off around Covid and we haven’t really got back to it.
“Darren Phillips is our community lead and he’ll be attracting schools to come back, have a school of the day for each game. There’s already season tickets out there for parents to come in paying a concession price with the child free.
“We want fans to encourage friends to come along and get numbers on the gate. Winning helps and hopefully if that carries on over the next few weeks and we’re in a position nearer the end of the season to go up, hopefully the gates go back to 1,000-plus which is the minimum we need to get to.
“We need to get those new supporters, the youngsters who we were 50 years ago to be the next generation of fans. It’s starting to build, we did have our problem with some of them two or three years ago, there was a nasty element but at the moment we’ve got a nice hardcore of young boys and girls that come along regularly and they travel to away games, too - Chatham was great to see so many kids down there supporting Dartford.
“We’ve got to get a better presence in the town. We’ve always talked about getting some unit in town and that’s never happened but we want to promote more, via posters and maybe pop-ups. We want to have more hats and scarves out there, get more replica shirts sold and increase the visibility around town. The best thing for that is winning and also FA Cup runs, of course.
“Why does the club have no ambition in the FA Cup and FA Trophy? It’s nothing to do with ambition, the prize money is huge, but we don’t have managers who have come in and said we don’t want to do well in the FA Cup - that’s never happened. If we’d put a youth team out in the FA Cup then I’d accept it.”
Relegation comes with its cost financially but it’s also allowed the Darts to take a step back and reassess.
Irving admitted: “Relegation opened our eyes perhaps to where we’ve fallen back a little bit and we’ve had to reset. We were looking at this a year ago but getting relegated wasn’t a good time to go out to the fans and ask them to come and talk to us - maybe that was a bit cowardly!
“You lose out on sponsorship from Vanarama so while at Step 2 the league only gets 30 per cent of that money, we still lose that proportion that we would have got. Through the community programme we had to drop out of the Premier League Primary Stars scheme that we were a member of, and one of the few clubs outside of the Football League that were actually thriving within it. That cost £25,000 to the community programme so it had to be found from somewhere else.
“Relegation meant the crowds dropped, we’re down around 200 people on Saturday crowds so we’ve got to get the regular numbers back over 1,000 - that’s costing us around £1,500 a match of lost gate income. Put all those three things together and it all adds up.”
But the green shoots are already starting to appear, led by Pennock and his new-look squad. After an inconsistent start to the season, Pennock’s charges have found their feet and his willingness to play the club’s youngsters has not gone unnoticed.
“We have to build and the good thing is we’re building with a new manager and a squad of young players,” said Irving. “Hopefully we can go back to the way we’ve been previously in terms of building around half a dozen or so hardcore players.
“We’ve got a manager who is brave enough to play academy players. We’ve got a really good academy and other managers haven’t probably been brave enough to play them regularly where Ady has been.
“Six or seven have come in, some are first-team regulars like Olly Box, George Whitefield and Sam Odaudu. Jeremiah Pinder is the youngest one now, and others have had their chances.
“It's been exciting to see a manager give those kids a chance and to see them flourish and building a fantastic spirit. The team spirit has been fantastic, we’ve got a great group of lads who get on well together and there’s no egos so it’s exciting to see.”
Interview With Steve Irving on the Fans Forum Meeting.
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