The statement that we have put out this evening makes for some tough reading.
With our landlords KSIMC telling us that they will not extend our lease, or even contemplate selling us the freehold to the Grosvenor Vale site it feels, as the title of this post suggests, like quite a hefty kick in the proverbials.
And coming in the week that Jermaine signs for Everton for nothing, it just makes this a very painful few days for the Football Club. To get so close but not to hit the jackpot is deeply frustrating; to apparently not even hit the board is another thing all together.
Enough mixing of metaphors! It’s at times like this that you look at yourself and what you / us as a Board have done and wonder if we have made the wrong calls. That will ultimately be for others to judge. It would be easy to get depressed and give up, to feel that the football gods are always going to make life difficult for us. But this is Wealdstone, and we’ve known enough adversity in the past. We came back before and we will come back again.
As far as the lease goes we need to remember that we still have eight years to run. We are not being kicked out now. So there is time to sensibly plan for what we need to do in the future. Perhaps that will be at Grosvenor Vale, perhaps Prince Edward and perhaps somewhere else.
Let’s not give up on Grosvenor Vale either. Things can change. We have supporters, the Council, the residents and much of the community who have engaged positively with us since we moved in just two years ago. Our discussions with KSIMC have until this point been positive and we were led to believe that a lease extension was not going to be an issue. Their first communication with us after their AGM when this was discussed told us that this had been rejected for now, but a follow up email suggests that the lease will not be extended at any time in the future. Quite why they have changed their stance so dramatically is difficult to understand and no doubt we will find that out in good time. But just as they appear to have changed their mind this time so we can hope that our future discussions with them may lead them to change again in the future.
On a personal note I will not bullshit, receiving this news is a huge blow. As always with Wealdstone we seem to climb a mountain only to find one even higher lurking just behind it. I suspect that in the great traditions of our club we will roll our sleeves up and get on with it – but I am sure we will need more help and expertise to help the Club forward and anyone reading this who wants to get involved should let me know.
We have a new season to prepare for, and we will do what we have always done, try to support Gordon and look optimistically to the new year in the Ryman Premier.
There is a long way to run with this one yet – don’t lose the faith!
