An Update from our Supporter Director (Part 1)

Swans Trust

An update from Sian Davies, the Swans Trust Supporter Director (Part 1)

Last week (and before the Burnley game) Sian Davies, our Supporter Director wrote to all our Swans Trust members as below which we thought we’d share with all our supporters. If you’d like to automatically receive member updates and add your voice to help make us stronger it takes just a few minutes to join HERE.

Your membership fees and donations help us to support the local community, sponsoring football in local schools and junior leagues and other local charities. And all our members get free entry into our regular prize draws where you can win replica kits, signed books and scarves.

Sian’s message reads…

I am delighted to be writing this update on the back of four successive wins for the Swans. The performances are much improved and the results are following. It was great to see a packed crowd on the weekend as we battled to a hard-fought victory against Sunderland – optimism certainly is high in SA1 at the moment.

Since Terry Sinnett’s last SD update to supporters in June much has changed within the Trust. We held our annual elections, which included the appointment of new co-opted members to assist the board. We are delighted with how quickly they have settled into their roles and the work that we are asking them to get involved with. The Board now has a full complement of members and is pleased to have been able to help fill several identified skills gaps such as sustainability, strategy, modernisation, financial (audit), communications, fundraising and work with schools. This will help us deliver into a wide range of work and projects throughout the season which are designed to benefit our members and supporters.

We have held two Board meetings this season at the Swansea.com stadium. At our first meeting in September our former Supporter Director, Terry Sinnett officially informed the Board that he was stepping down from his role and from the Trust Board. The new Board then formally elected new officers for the current season, and I was delighted to be granted the honour of becoming your new Supporter Director.

Terry will be a great loss to the Trust. In the year that he undertook the role of Supporter Director he built on the firm foundations set out by Stuart Macdonald, and worked tirelessly to grow the role of the SD and the Trust within the club. At all times he worked with integrity and for the greater good of both the club and the Supporters’ Trust. I am honoured to be elected to the role of Supporter Director for the coming year and aim to continue, and build on, the excellent work of Terry and all those Board Members who came before him.

The role of Supporter Director is not an easy one. On the one hand the Supporter Director represents the Trust’s members but, on the other, is also a Director of our football club. This means that sometimes the Supporter Director has to challenge decisions made by the club, and at other times has to take decisions that may be unpopular with members but are for the benefit of the Club. I hope in such situations we, as a Trust, can explain clearly to our members the reason behind such decisions.

As we progress through this season, we are happy to welcome back so many of you as members of the Trust, as well as welcoming new faces as well. We know that some website and system issues have affected some people’s ability to join, but these are now behind us and we are working hard to continue to building the membership to where we all believe it should be. If your friends or family haven’t yet signed up for the Trust, we would love for you to help us spread the message and encourage them to join us too (www.swanstrust.co.uk/join-the-trust).

As part of membership renewal season, we also held our annual raffle, which was drawn before the home game against Hull on 17th September. The raffle is one of our major fundraising events, and we would like to thank all our sponsors for their generosity and to all of you who purchased tickets. We have informed all of the winners, and hope to share an article on this in the coming days. One winner received a surprise visit from Honourary Trust President Alan Curtis, who dropped off their hamper in person and spent time chatting with them. We’d like to thank Alan for his continued support of the Trust, and for all the work he does in the community.

On the field Russell Martin and his team look to have settled into a more consistent playing pattern that is achieving results and performances that are exciting our supporters once again. It probably comes as no co-incidence that performances have improved since the closure of the summer transfer window – we know how disruptive and unsettling this can be to individual players and the squad as a whole. We now face a challenging run of games up to the World Cup break in November but if we can continue to perform as we have been, we will pick up points along the way that will set us up nicely going into the busy Christmas period.

As far as the Trust is concerned, work carries on that is delivering today and building for tomorrow – this includes individual activity, and through our role as a shareholder, where we sit on the Club’s Board.

Club Board Meeting

Ceri Stone (Associate Director) and I attended our first Club Board meeting in our new roles last month. Present were Julian Winter, Gareth Davies and ourselves at the stadium, with Jason Levien, Jake Silverstein, Martin Morgan, Sam Porter and Bobby Hernreich joining via Teams.

Agenda Items:

#1 – Approval of amendment to the Articles of Association to include new EFL requirements
Earlier this year, new mandatory articles were proposed and approved at the EFL Annual General Meeting, which required clubs to include a provision relating to the registration of share transfers and how clubs recognise interests in shares. This was approved unanimously.

#2 – Finance Update (Gareth Davies, CFO)
An overview of the accounts was presented. As with all other businesses the Club is concerned about the impact of increasing energy prices which, despite being prudently on fixed price deals, could mean a very substantial increase in energy costs at their conclusion. To this end the Club has formed a working group to identify how cost savings may be made.

#3 – Rail Seating (Julian Winter)
Rail seating continues to be on the agenda but at present the club does not intend to introduce rail seating as there is no evidence to show that standing in a controlled non-seating environment is more dangerous than standing in an area with rail seating installed. There is a match-by-match risk assessment which the club believes safely manages persistent standing, and there have been no safety issues or accidents recorded in those areas where supporters stand.

#4 – Fan Led Review (FLR) update (Julian Winter)
Julian Winter provided an update on the current situation regarding the Fan Led Review. The Premier League are in discussion with the EFL regarding the distribution of broadcasting money and solidarity payments. TV rights end at the end of the 2024 season. The review of the future of Women’s Football was launched on 2nd September.

The Trust thanked Julian and his team for their work during the past month, including in the transfer window where we saw several new faces come into the club, whilst also retaining key players.

#5 – Supporters’ Trust Update (Sian Davies)

A Supporters’ Trust report is now a standing agenda item on Club Board meetings. The report we submitted is attached in the link below for our members and supporters’ information.

Swansea City Supporters’ Trust – Report to the Swansea City Board – September 2022.pdf

I hope you have found this update useful. Tomorrow I will share the second part of my report, which will include a summary of our recent meetings with CEO Julian Winter and highlight some recent engagement with members and fans.