What has happened to the clock that we were going to be replacing?
Steve Martin, 'We have got, well a sponsor bought a new electronic scoreboard which we are hoping will be in place for our next home game. You may have seen work going on behind the
police box for the last while, and that's because we are building the scoreboard. It is
electronic, has the score on it, with the sponsor's name on the bottom, who happen to be
R&M Bearings, my company, and in the middle it has got an area for adverts, birthday
wishes, all that kind of stuff, which hopefully will produce money for the club for many many
years to come. But hopefully it will be ready for the next home game.'
Why has the club never really considered giving out free tickets to schools? The school I went to (Monifieth High) would regularly get tickets from United, but never Dundee.
Obviously this attracts paying parents, and brings in potential supporters.
Back to the CEO, 'That's an excellent question, just so you know, for the last two matches, I have signed off on free tickets to two different schools, 180 tickets and 340 tickets, so perhaps
we were not doing it then, we definitely are doing it now, but Steve and I are working on a
plan. For instance you will see at the next Dundee CCS Ice Hockey game that they have 300
tickets for their junior section where the kids can get in free, and the parents of those in the
junior section will be half price (part of a reciprocal agreement with Dundee FC).
'We are really going to be attacking this subject; it is not just words, certainly not empty words when we are talking about the youth side. It pains us every time that we see a little kid
running about in a United T-shirt, or a United strip, because we think they should be running
about in a dark blue one, or we should be bursting a gut to make sure that they are. So we
are actively redesigning our programme just now, Steve and I are looking at raising other
funds to make our training programmes and our school actions much stronger than they have
been in the past, and I fully believe that you are going to see a big difference over the
summer, because I know Steve is actively working on that, and I am working very hard to
back him, I will hand over to Steve as well, he can give you a bit more of the details, but just
so you know, our coaches that we have, again like the rest of the staff, are phenomenal, and
they came to us with, if not exactly the same point as you have just made, but saying, how can
we compete? We hope to expand them as a team, and we hope to give them greater funds in
their capacity in the future.'
Steve Martin continued, 'yes, I was going to mention youth development, lots of people on the
websites wonder what we do with development, is there a development programme? Well of
course there is, it's a very very active one, thanks to these two guys up there, Chris Paton and
Craig Feret, who are two full time, fully qualified youth coaches. They then in turn have
another ten part time coaches who do excellent work with the teams that we have.
We currently have our 13s, 14s, 15s and 17s, and when you consider last season we only had two teams, and now we have four. We are looking in the future to have six teams and maybe
even a girl's team eventually, but again, as Scot has mentioned about future plans, it all
depends on finance.
'As far as schools go, people think we never go to schools like Dundee United, but in fact we go to more schools than Dundee United, we go to 5 at the moment, and also Chris and Craig
go to visit them during their health weeks, all they have to do is apply to us, and we will get
one of the full time coaches up there, with a player, and possibly Deewok, so we do look after
the school kids. We have been concentrating on primary schools, I must admit, and that's
probably the reason we have never been to that particular school.
'Also the academies, people think, well one of the bug bears we as a board have is seeing kids running about with tangerine strips on, we see it every day, especially at weekends etc.,
now Chris, Craig and I come up with ideas, at the moment it is 20 pounds for a session that
the kids pay, and they get nothing from that apart from some very good professional
coaching. Now we are looking to attract a sponsor at the moment, we are actually speaking
to the Society guys about this just now, between us, the business Trust, and the Society, we
can maybe sponsor Dundee Strips for next season which means that if these kids pay 20, or
maybe 30 pounds they will get a full Dundee strip when they apply for their academy
coaching. So if we get things right, within the next one or two summers you will see a lot
more blue strips kicking about as well.'
'There is also an exciting thing at the moment which I am personally working on, I have not really brought it to the board in any structure at the moment, although they do know about it,
Kuwait actually approached one of our former employees a while ago, well last summer, and
a bit of groundwork had been done on it, but it kind of fell by the wayside, so they have
actually approached us again to see if there is a possibility of arranging for kids from Kuwait
to come across for a full summers coaching academy. Now what they probably mean is a full
week where the mums and dads go shopping in Edinburgh, and Chris and Craig will be the
babysitters, but that does not really matter, because they are prepared to pay a lot of money
towards it, so we are looking to set something up for that as well.
'I could go on all day about youth development, because that's my baby as it were, but if anybody is asking how much does all of this cost, well I can put the figures in front of you
now, I can tell you that every single thing is self funding, but the work that Chris and Craig
do over and above their full time coaching duties here, actually makes us a profit, a healthy
five figure profit every season.'
Scott Glenday added, 'I would like to echo Steve and Scot's sentiments with regard to Chris and Craig's efforts, I think they do a commendable job in the community on behalf of the
football club. What I would like to go back to there is that at the start of the season, the
Business Trust and the Society Board had a joint sponsorship, where we made season tickets
available for under 12s for £20, making football affordable for primary kids. I think what we
will do is, this week, we will revisit that, and if there is a balance left, and I am sure there is,
and maybe see if we can do something with Chris and Craig, and see if we can get some of
these season tickets for the remaining matches out in the community for kids, maybe a good
value package to try and attract kids in for the remaining games.'