Vital meeting for Malvern (From Malvern Gazette)

Vital meeting for Malvern

12:19pm Friday 15th February 2013 in Sport

MALVERN Rugby Club have called an open meeting to discuss potential measures to improve their precarious financial position.

Projections show the National League Three South West strugglers are set to make an undisclosed loss this year but steps are being taken to reduce the scale of the problem.

They will be discussed in the meeting at Spring Lane next Wednesday from 7.30 pm.

Malvern, who sealed a 13-7 win over Oxford Harlequins last Saturday, hope to appoint a commercial business manager who could source extra funding to ease the situation.

Bill Pomeroy, Malvern’s secretary, said: “The current financial situation is predicting a loss and we are putting measures in place to tackle that. We will explain to the members what we plan to do.

“We shall still make a loss this year, basically because the expenditure has been a bit over the top.

“It was in the budget we set but the expected income streams haven’t quite come good.

“We are not going to go bankrupt tomorrow but need to sort out our income and expenditure.

“It is serious, though, and if we don’t do anything now, we will make a thumping loss. We will basically be cutting back on our expenditure.

“The switch to National Three South West hasn’t helped as we have a lot of long away trips, which can be expensive to book coaches for.

“The RFU help out with that but do not cover all of the costs. If we were still in the Midlands division, it would not be so bad.”

Malven officials will also seek nominations for the vacant roles of chairman and director of rugby, which were held by Peter Woods and Liam Hughes respectively, to work alongside head coach Nick Tisdale.

Pomeroy added: “Peter resigned his role, but still helps out as press officer, so we need to put someone in place as a temporary chairman until the next annual meeting.

“The director of rugby position is not really a coaching job, it is more of an organisational role, but Liam tried to do both and found he couldn’t dedicate the time needed.”