New Owners Press Conference.

After the news just before Christmas that the Millers hade been taken over by a groups of supporters under a new company called Millers05, this was the first chance the press had to meet the new board of Rotherham United.

The new board members are :-
Chairman - Peter Ruchniewicz - Born in Maltby, now living in London and is a partner of a London Laywers, also on the RUST board.

David Veal

Marketing Director - David Veal - Chairman of RUST, born and lives in Rotherham, also owns Coffee Exchange based at Hellaby

Finance Director - John Harrison - A former director of RUFC many moons ago, a Chartered Accountant based in Worksop, also on the RUST board.

Community Director - Chris Dobbs - Although a Miller for all his life, Chris now lives and works as a Planning Officer for the local authority in Worcester. Chris was also the RUST representative on the old RUFC board and is also on the RUST board.

Business Operations Director - Trevor Smallwood, Ex-Managing Director of First Buses and was a Director at RUFC until a couple of years ago. Trevor is a member of RUST from its inception.

A packed VP lounge saw the board unveild and give thier views and plans for the future of Rotherham United.

New Chairman opened up by introducing everybody, and by telling all "The plan is to stabilize the buisness, Work to a balanced budget, Build a new stand to get more incomings into the club and whatever we earn we can put back into the playing side and spectator comfort. That is what we're aiming for, Everybody here is a lifelong fan and our only intrest is to certainly take nothing out of the club, but put it all back in and do what we can to promote the best intrest for Rotherham United."

Some help for loan player

Moving onto the playing side and help for Ronnie & John, "In the short term we're going to do what we can to support Ronnie and John, we will do what we can on limited resources to naje sure we give ourselves the best chance to stay in this division. Ronnie and the lads worked hard to get us up here and we're determined to hang on to our status if we can. Should the worst happen we would like to think we have put in place plans to come back strong if we can, but our main focus is what we can do and what we have available to make things happen."

Moving onto Millmoor and the grounds future.
"We will be staying at Millmoor for the Medium term, although in the long term we are looking at moving into a community stadium, that is something we need to talk to the council about, as my colleagues have already done so, and I know there is a politcal will to build a stadium for this town and this is our goal."

T

RUST - Always a say

hen the details of the takeover were spoke about, "Clubs like Rotherham like many other clubs cannot now just rely on one benefactor, its now needs a spread of responsibily and engage with its supporters, for this reason we were always keen to give the supporters trust a key role in the running of the club. RUST is not running the club but it will always have a pivotal say in the club. In the short term we have funding until the end of the season."

"There is now no reason for people to stay away, hopefully that cloud will move away from Millmoor now, and hopefully we may even get a penalty!!"

New finance director John Harrison added, "Its public knowledge that at Christmas the club had debts of around £3million and was losing another £1.2million per year which is obviously unsubstainable. part of the deal with the previous owners the debt of £3m has now been cleared as so we now start of with a zero balance, and events of the last few weeks have seen the the losses reduced by around £250k. Also the sale and lease back of the ground has been very generous to us and will result in the overheads reducing significantly."

"However we still have to things to bridge the gap between income and expenses, we have funds in place until the end of may, all the contracts we have will be honoured Ronnie under no pressure to sell and there is a small amount available for loan players." Harrison added.

Chris Dobbs

"The goal is that we get strong and then anything we generate will go back into the playing side, spectator comfort and to get stronger, thats the message we will send out and thats the whole point of doing this." Ruchniewicz told.

RUST rep Chris Dobbs told the press "There will now be regular board meetings and we are listening to fans thoughts and ideas and taking the on board, and where we can act on them."

Manager Ronnie Moore said "The thing thats come out of this is that the club is now nice and positive, we need the fans to come back. I'm looking forward to a bright new era."

The main details are:-
Booth no longer has any shares withen RUFC, he will take the role of President but has no control or say in the running of the club at all.

Millers05 as a company has no value, it is just a vehicle to aquire the shares from Ken Booth and enable the deal.

The land which Millmoor stands on is now property of CF Booth, but RUFC will have a 26.5 year lease on this. This cannot be broken by Booth grp until 11.5 years with 18 months notice. RUFC will have options to break the lease after 6 years, with a yearly review.

The rent is at a concessionary rate.

Carl Lucock has left the club.

A new 4000 seater stand will be built at Millmoor to increase income. This will hopefully be built by December.

Ronnie's contact will be talked about over the next 8-12 weeks.

There will be a share option for existing Shareholders.

Summing it all up Chris Dobbs said "This is a new regime, there will be change. Things were pretty dark not so long ago, especially on the financial side. It was the time to step in, That darkness has gone now, it could well have got worse before the end of the season, now its not going to."