Wrexham Supporters Trust Announces Election Candidates

Wrexham Supporters Trust has today announced the seven nominees who are vying for two board positions.

The two positions arose as a result of the resignation of Brian Cameron in May due to his commitments as newly elected councillor for Whitegate and the second as a result of a new board position, which arose from governance changes.

Trust members are able to vote for two candidates and ballot forms need to be sent to The Exacta Stadium, Bumpers Lane, Chester, CH1 4LT. It may seem a bit odd that ballots are being sent to Wrexham’s main rivals, however in accordance with the WST Election Policy an Election Supervision Group (ESG) has been set up and the chair for this group is Campbell Smith of Chester Fans United.

The closing date for the ballot is 5pm on Saturday 4th August 2012. The result will be announced at the members meeting on Wednesday 8th August 2012 at the Centenary Club at 7.30pm. You can also vote on line at http://www.wst.org.uk/www2/index.php?option=com_rsform&Itemid=197

The seven candidates are Jenny Cantwell, Steve Gilbert, Mike Griffiths, Dave Jones, Dave Mainwaring, Anita Robinson and Geoff Scott and their election statements can be viewed below.

Anita Robinson (nee Rooney)

Unlike other Wrexham supporters I haven’t been a supporter for all that long and will admit to only really starting to attend games over the last few years but last season and this coming season holding a season ticket. Growing up my dad and step dad were football fans and I grew up watching our pub (The Castle Inn, Brynteg) play every Sunday and I enjoyed this immensely.

I like to think that I have been brought up honestly with hard working values. After leaving school aged 16 I found work holding down more than one job at the same time gaining experience in sales and catering. For the last eight years I have worked for the National Health Service as a Senior Clinic Clerk with seven years being in a supervisory role. Whilst working fulltime for the NHS I have studied to gain qualifications such as a Higher Diploma in Administrative and Secretarial Procedures as well as ECDL and ITQ.

I am 28 years old and currently live in Caego, so not all that far from our Racecourse home. I have a happy home life with my son who is four years old, my boyfriend and his little girl who is two and a half. We are all big Wrexham fans and I feel you will struggle to find two more enthusiastic young children than my two. Both children are Junior Dragon members and we can’t wait to buy them shirts this year. Although I’ve not been a fan through the glory years or through too many of the hellish years I am more than aware of the deep traditions and community values of Wrexham Football Club and the fight it has endured. I would like to thank each board member and all who have sat on the WST board as well as the membership for all the hard work ensuring we now have a OUR football club back. With hard work can make truly make Wrexham FC great again and ensure that there is a club for my children and one day grandchildren to enjoy like we all do.

Being a Trust member has been good fun I have met so many new people and have made some fantastic friends and it’s this community aspect I would like to see grow. I have enjoyed the last twelve months volunteering out on the Saturday stall and in Turf shop. I have found myself in a fortunate position being part of a dedicated team of supporters that have used our initiatives in getting the WST out there to schools and fetes. Other highlights for me since the takeover would be selling WST scarves by the bag load at the services on route to Brentford in the FA cup, helping out at the WAGs fashion show, running the Sports Relief mile with Wrex The Dragon and walking up Snowdon with the RED ARMY. I am again walking Snowdon this year and by the time of reading we will already have done so. As well as fundraising for the WST and Sports Relief the last two years I have supported Nightingale House Hospice by taking part in the Ladies midnight walk.

If I am elected to the trust board, I feel my honest, hardworking ethics as well as my very good organisational and communication skills see me fit in and get on with the job in hand. The job in hand I see is of building a better Wrexham FC for now and the future. I will also carry on with my role in helping promote the WST and WFC whilst engaging with the local communities through working with the Saturday stall team. With my qualities I think I can assist in the areas pointed out by the board, PR, fundraising and more notably sales due to previous work and volunteering for the WST. With bags of enthusiasm being a “young ‘un” I think I have lots to offer.

Please consider me for one of the vacant positions on the board of Wrexham Supporters Trust.

Dave Jones

My name is Dave Jones and I am writing this statement to provide you with an overview of my background, and the reasons why I want to apply for a position on the board of Wrexham Supporters Trust.

I am 39 years of age and I live with my wife and three children in Morda, just outside Oswestry. I have supported Wrexham ever since my Dad first took me to my first game against Crystal Palace in the old 2nd Division, when I was 9 years of age. I started watching games regularly from the Kop when I was 15 and have been a season ticket holder for 20 years. I currently hold a family season ticket in the Mold Road Stand and enjoy taking my boys to support the team.

I have worked for the Civil Service for the past 21 years in one of the largest UK Government departments. The first 13 years, I worked in a technical role which involved people management and customer facing roles. The last 8 years I have worked within the IT department, based in Telford, in an internal consultancy unit carrying out Business Analysis on potential areas of IT change. I have developed skills such as Project Management and Process Re-engineering that can be applied in any business.

I’ve been a member of the Shropshire Reds since its formation in September 1994 and held the position of secretary for a period of time. I joined WST as a member in the early days where the aim was to unite supporters to stave off the threat to the club and the Racecourse. I have always had huge admiration for the commitment shown by the individuals on the Trust Board during the two troublesome periods that the club has experienced in the recent past. If it wasn’t for their dedication then we would not have a club to support today and all Wrexham fans owe a huge debt of gratitude to them. I have always felt that if the opportunity arose, I would like to show my gratitude and help out if I could.

In October last year, I was co-opted onto the Trust Board to work on the development and implementation of the Community Share Scheme. Working closely with other Board Members and with Supporters Direct, I developed an understanding of how a share issue could work for WST and made recommendations to the Board on how the Scheme should be implemented. As a Community scheme, the implementation involved nominating a local charity that would benefit from members investing in the scheme. I have since developed an excellent working relationship between our chosen charity, Hope House and WST as a result of this initiative.

In April 2012, the scheme was successfully launched to members. To date, the scheme has attracted a good level of investment in a relatively short period. I am the first point of contact for all queries regarding the scheme and as well as answering questions from members, I have also answered queries from Portsmouth and Rangers Supporters Trusts who are looking at implementing similar schemes. I feel that we can be proud that we are the flag bearers for such a scheme that many other clubs will try and replicate in the future.

Being involved as a co-opted Board member has whetted my appetite to get involved further and I am therefore standing to become an elected Board Member. The Community Shares Scheme is a key area in WST’s fundraising over the next year or so and there is a role to be played on the Board to oversee this. Due to my experience in this area, I feel that I could perform this role. I also feel that my good organisational skills, relationship management skills and business experience lends itself to the sub groups that WST are looking to set up, in particular the Volunteer Co-ordination, Fundraising and Community Groups. I am also a fluent Welsh speaker, which can help in all areas but in particular the Communication Group.

I believe that his is an exciting time for everyone associated with the club as we embark on our first full season as a fans run club and I would love to be involved to help WST achieve its aim of transforming Wrexham FC into a successful and sustainable community enterprise. A good start has already been made towards this goal but there is still some hard work ahead. Once this has been achieved, I believe the rewards that all fans want to see on the pitch will follow.

Our Club, Our Future

Dave Mainwaring

I’m Dave Mainwaring and I have been supporting Wrexham Football Club ever since I moved to Oswestry in 1976 and have stuck with them through thick and thin since then. For my sins, prior to that I was a Crystal Palace supporter until Malcolm Allison destroyed them as Manager so I transferred my loyalties to Leyton Orient as the cream of the Palace players that Allison decided weren’t good enough for him had moved to Brisbane Road. The first time I saw Wrexham play was when they were beaten 5 – 1 by Palace in 1960! I can remember the Wrexham team included Ernie Pythian, Micky Metcalfe and Alan Fox as captain. I had the pleasure of meeting Alan when we played up at Darlington last season.

At present I am Chairman of the Wrexham Supporter’s Federation and a life member of the Shropshire Reds who I joined soon after their formation and am currently their Secretary. I also am a member of the WST “Saturday Stall” and have also worked in the Trust shop at the Turf during the week. I have been a member of the Trust virtually since it’s formation, I am looking forward to receiving my share certificate in the near future.

I have been married to Barbara for 43 years have two sons, one of whom is a Wrexham supporter and four granddaughters who I made members of the Shropshire Reds when they were born despite two of them living North Carolina and the other two in Kent!

I am 64 years old and currently unemployed although I do act as a volunteer for the local “Dial-a-Ride” service, As I can’t see myself getting a job in the future I am able to devote a lot of time for my beloved Football Club,

My career has centred around both administration and sales and would hope that this experience would make me a useful addition to the Trust Board,

Geoff Scott

Hi my name is Geoff Scott and I am 59 years old. I have lived in Wrexham my whole life, and attended Rhosddu School, Grove Park Grammar School and Liverpool Polytechnic. I lived in Acton as a young boy and many on here would remember my Gran’s Newsagents Sweet shop Scott’s in Acton.

I am married to Carol and have two daughters Lucy and Alice, who are international and national tennis players. They are both massive Wrexham fans and attend as many matches as possible.

After a brief flirt with Accountancy I turned to a career in sales, initially working as a National Account manager with Nestle for over 20 years, before moving to a Scottish company called McCurrachs who represent Unilever.

My interests include all sports, history and archaeology. As a young man I was involved with Lex X1 for many years as a player, manager and fundraiser and was lucky enough to meet and become friends with ex Wrexham players such as Sammy Macmillan, Alec Lucas and Graham Whittle. I also have a passion for tennis and am currently Chairman of Wrexham Lawn Tennis Club.

My passion for Wrexham goes back a long way when my Dad, Harry Scott, used to drop me off in the boys pen and then go on to the Kop with his great mate from his school days Mike Robbins. My Dad even used to be an early dancing partner with Carl Tunnah’s mum June.

Early memories include the famous 10- 1 win against Hartlepool and the great Ken Barnes’ team.

We then get to the 1970s teams. I don’t think many of the younger members would believe a team including 6 or 7 home grown players who would later transfer to a First Divsion club – Premier League standard today. These players included Bobby Shinton, Mickey Thomas, Billy Ashcroft, Joey Jones Dave Smallman, Eddie Niedwicki, Graham Whittle…… and then to replace them with Dixie ,John Roberts, Dai Davies etc.

There are so many memorable games I remember including the many European games, as well as Spurs, West Ham, Arsenal, and Middlesbrough.

I hope that gives you a quick feel of my passion for the club. The future is now finally ours. We have to keep it and build for the future so our children, and Grandchildren can have what we had in the 1970s. My working and social life has been full of fundraising. For Wrexham, like everybody I have bought shirts, donated to signs around the ground, bought raffle tickets, books, DVD’s etc. I even walked up Snowdon last year with one of my daughters, raising almost £1,000! That experience was fantastic, but the walking and crawling down was a nightmare for my knees!

I was involved in the organisation of the Sweet concert at the William Aston Hall in 2006 with my brother Andy, which helped to raise almost £10,000. I hope to do the same again and generate even more.

My strengths are in the sales and fundraising sector, and I believe I could be an asset to the Trust board and to the club. I am hard working and passionate about the future of our club, which I want to see prosper, rise up the leagues and get back to where we belong; playing our football in the Football League.

And as my t-shirt says “Yma O Hyd”

Jenny Cantwell

I was born in Wrexham Maelor Hospital in 1974, the same year Wrexham FC changed their club badge to the one present on the shirts today.

I attended my first Wrexham matches during the 1989-1990 season after my first Racecourse visit to watch schoolboy football gave me the taste for the live game. I soon became a regular at the Racecourse and even after I moved to London to attend university, I still made the trip home on a regular basis for home games. I watched Wrexham at numerous grounds in the south east and made the memorable trip to Northampton when we won promotion in 1993, a game that goes down as one of my most memorable games ever. The train journey back to London also prompted London based fans to form an independent supporters group “The London Reds” of which I became one of the original members. I followed Wrexham during the historic FA Cup run in 1997 taking in Birmingham, West Ham and Chesterfield and managed to get my local pub in Islington to show the Chester Wrexham game much to the amusement of the locals who all got behind Wrexham!

When I returned to Wrexham in 1998 I became heavily involved in writing for the Red Passion fanzine and would regularly be seen selling it on match day outside the Kop turnstiles on Crispin Lane. I had the honour of interviewing Joey Jones, Gary Bennett and Dixie McNeil during this time and thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie of being involved in such an iconic fanzine.

In 2002 I moved to Scotland for 8 years, even stating in my interview the reason I wished to live in the Scottish Borders was due to my team being relegated 2 days earlier. Of course this wasn’t true as I still made regular trips back home, again arranged around home matches as well as taking in the northern away fixtures. I made the historic trip to the LDV final which is a day I will never ever forget, both for the fantastic result and the fans spirit of togetherness with what was happening off field with Hamilton and Guterman.

I returned to Wrexham permanently just in time for the 2010 season to commence and now attend every home match as well as numerous away fixtures. I have been a regular attendee at WST meetings as well as attending numerous WST organised events. I am proud to be one of the 180 brave souls who ventured up Snowdon last summer in extreme weather conditions to raise funds for WST and also helped rally round when emergency meetings and fundraising events were arranged when the future of the club looked bleak.

I have a BA (Hons) degree in Social Policy and have worked as a Homeless Officer for the last 10 years, dealing directly with the public providing housing advice and assistance and currently work within the Housing Options Team at Wrexham County Borough Council. I regularly liaise with numerous departments within the Council as well as local agencies within the private and voluntary sector. I can communicate confidently with people of all levels and from varying backgrounds. I see this as a major asset that I can offer WST.

If successful in becoming elected to the Trust board my main aims would include:

To strengthen Wrexham Football club’s existing links within the community and continue to raise the profile of the Club
To form new links within the community. This could involve making contact with local businesses, agencies schools and colleges. I would like to promote our club not only to locals within the community but also to those who have moved to the Wrexham area from elsewhere.
As a female fan I have always found the match day experience to be a positive one and would like to encourage more female fans to The Racecourse. I would like to look into developing new initiatives to encourage more families to attend as young fans are the key to our future.
I feel if I could achieve the above objectives, Wrexham Football Club can be seen by the greater community as an attractive fun and friendly experience.

Mike Griffiths

My name is Mike Griffiths, I am 63 years of age and currently live in Llay. I was born in Wrexham but moved to Richmond in North Yorkshire when I was a few months old because my father was in the Army in nearby Catterick. We returned to Wrexham in 1958 when I was 9 years old and have been settled here ever since.

I’ve been married to Lynn for 42 years and we have two daughters Helen and Kat who are both married and they have given Lynn and me five lovely grandchildren. Wrexham Football Club is in our blood and we now have four generations of Wrexham fans, my father and I, Kat and her children.

I am currently retired after working for B.I.C.C for 31 years (now known as Prysmian Cables) this means I can now devote my time to the Club I am passionate about and since June 2011 I have been a regular on the Saturday Stall in Hope Street, Wrexham and the WST shop on Mold Road selling merchandise with other volunteers who are prepared to give up their spare time for the club. In my youth I played cricket for Brymbo Cricket Club and later joined Wrexham Cricket Club, playing for them for 23 years and also played football for various local teams. I also became secretary of my works team at B.I.C.C. for a number of years once I’d hung up my boots.

My love for Wrexham Football Club started back in 1959 when my father took me to watch my first ever match at home to Accrington Stanley when I was 10 years old, I was hooked from that very game and since then have experienced the good times and the recent bad times. One of my fondest memories is the 7-1 win against Rotherham at the Racecourse in the 77/78 season when we won promotion to the old second division. . Even the late great Bill Shankly told of his fondness for Wrexham culminated in a famous night match at the Racecourse ground where in front of a packed ground on a muddy pitch we trounced and humiliated the first division side Newcastle 4-1 in the F.A.Cup, by playing them off the park. After the match in a packed press room, Bill Shankly took centre stage and said “This Wrexham side are the greatest third division side I have ever seen”. Those words have become legendary at the Racecourse and are indicative of just how great a side that team were.

Like most fans I’m not happy with our position in the Conference and would love nothing more than us getting back into the football league, however our main priority is ensuring we’ve still got a club to support and to make it sustainable. The season ticket sales for the coming season have been tremendous but we still have an awful lot of work to do and we should never ever let empathy set in.

The Club has come so far in the last 12 months but I would like to see us promoting Wrexham even more in the community, re-building relationships with businesses to increase commercial revenue and have a retail shop which is the envy of all the other clubs in the conference and league 2. I really do believe the club will now move on and go from strength to strength because we’ve got amazing supporters who won’t settle for second best.

Steve Gilbert

My name is Steve Gilbert.

I was born and brought up in East London until moving here 8 years ago with my partner and our two children.

I am a 48 years old self employed, with a very small accountancy practice and most of my clients are from the London area, having stayed with me whenI moved up here. I have been in practice over 25 years dealing mainly with sole traders. I also deal with some small limited companies.My main client is a lighting manufacturer/retailer and I work two days a week for them, running bought and sales ledger and preparing monthly management accounts etc.

In addition to my paid work I have for the past 4 years or so been Treasurer of Wrexham Olympic Gymnastics Club which I have found to be very rewarding. When I started we had not long lost our coaches and were
putting a new team together, we had one employee and were losing money and gymnasts.We have four coaches under PAYE now, we have cut overheads where possible,some by doing work in-house myself and we have a strong waiting list. We are looking at employing more coaches and expanding our classes to give as many children as possible the chance to participate – and we have produced Welsh squad members and a national champion. I am very proud of what we have achieved there.

My daughter is a member of the competitive gymnastics squad and has represented Wrexham as far afield as Cardiff and Ipswich.My son plays tennis for Wrexham academy and was part of the mini red
team that won the North Wales Aegon Cup this year.

In the past I was for many years the Treasurer of a social club in East London too. I am well used to volunteering and serving on committees and have always found it very rewarding, even though it can be hard work
at times.

In December last year I volunteered my help to the Trust committee in anyway that they thought my skills would be useful. They came back to me suggesting I could perhaps help Mark Williams in his role as Treasurer
as he moved into his new role with the football club. I exchanged several emails with Mark and had an informal interview with him before the Alfreton home match last season. I am more than willing to help him and the
board as they see fit.

As regards the football club itself, I was brought up in Leyton and my Father, though Irish, always insisted that you should support your local team so it was Orient for me. Indeed my first visit to Wrexham was in
the away end many years ago. When I met my partner I quickly became aware that her Dad and brother were die hard Wrexham fans and so I began to take more of an interest. We moved up here 8 years ago, my daughter was under 2 and my son just six months old. I made the conscious decision that, just like my Dad, I would bring up my son to support his local team. I started taking him to the odd game two years ago and of course the bug bit me as much as it did him. Last year we got our first season tickets and we have renewed again this year. I joined the Trust last year and my son is a Junior Dragon.

If elected I can only promise to work hard as part of a team and give my all for the Trust. My ambition is to play my part in having a club for my son to bring his son to. I have a great pride in Wrexham, the football club, town and it’s people. Supporting my local team is an expression of that pride.

Should I fail to succeed in being elected, my offer to assist the Trust on a voluntary basis will stand.