MillersMad: Moving onto the new stand. Do you really believe the Council will help fund a new community stadium in the next 10 years.
Peter: Oh yes I do I don’t think there is any doubt about that, but what it needs is it needs the owners of the club, like it does with any project involving the council, the owners or the developer has to drive it, you know we are going to drive that and we have already spoke to the council, as it happens I do know the leader Mike Cuff who is a very able chap. I know him from other business and developments. I know his work that he did at Widnes where he developed a very similar situation to Rotherham, and I have spoken to Mike Cuff, they are more than anxious to respond to the needs of the community and Rotherham because that is what they are there for, but we have to make the case and then they have to see if they can make the case for grant aid and to allocate, but they will work with us make no mistake about it, they have already been very helpful in making sure there have been no obstacles in the way of getting the first part of the development out of the way. They are working now on the feasibility study for sites and so on down the line, but it’s not just a pipe dream and yes there is a lot more work to be done and so on, a few of us who are the board members we are familiar with that sort of work, we are able to work on that where others might have to go out and pay fee’s you know, because we are doing it ourselves and you know we know the ropes and I feel we have got a very good chance of it. That’s the one aspect I think I’m more confident than anything else of.
MillersMad: If we build this new stand and develop millmoor, say the community stadium doesn’t actually happen for 15 years say, the landlord has got an option to serve notice on the club after 11 years, what would happen?
Peter: No it’s after the end of the 10th full season, so he would have to give at least eighteen months notice so it’s about 11 and half years down the line yeah. Well what will happen will have happened well before 10 years, if we haven’t got the community stadium on the horizon within the next 5 years, we would have been working on plan B which is our own exit route or our own development whatever, nobody sits back and then hopes what is going to happen. Any business like that plans for what is going to happen next, a lot can happen in that sort of time anyway, and I don’t make light of it, we have traded off freehold ownership apart from the land what we need to clear the debt and get us viable in the short term, because that’s what is vital about this club, we have got to become modern, we have got to be a modern commercial outfit that actually gets us the sort of revenue streams that most other clubs have got and we haven’t. We had to go down that root, without any Abramovich or Booth there’s no way forward for the club, but having said that we have got more than enough time to get strong and to see the way to go down the line, I don’t have too much of a problem with that, because it’s a reasonable business risk to take for us in our situation. 
If I can just say something else about that anyway, Millmoor you must remember, within 10 years the rest of it will fall down the rest of it, it doesn’t matter about the new stand it can be thrown away if necessary after that time. The rest of Millmoor is tidy, but it’s not a modern stadium by any means as we all know that, you just look at the way spectator comfort and facilities are moving, can you imagine in 10 years how outmoded that would be if we do nothing about it, so anybody would be faced with the fact do we develop Millmoor, you can’t develop Millmoor with just what the club used to own, you need the car parks and you need the other bits to it, so either way you are stuffed, so it’s not as if we have thrown away the option of developing in the future, we would have been dead long before then. So I think we have looked at all those angles.
MillersMad: Is there any penalties if the club default on any lease payments?
Peter: No but it’s a normal lease arrangement, I mean in any lease if you don’t pay the rent then you can get the lease forfeited. Ours is a concessionary rent and for goodness sake if we can’t pay that rent then we deserve to get turfed out that’s what I say, but you know we are well aware of those arrangements, most commercial organisations don’t own freeholds and have leases and have much bigger rents, Marks and Spencers have nothing but leases, I deal with leases every day, I’m not really fussed about that at all so we will be all right.
MillersMad:: It’s a rather trivial question, but he’s basically asking if we can get the camera moved to the other side if the new stand is built as it’s currently pointing towards the least attractive side of Millmoor.
Peter: I don’t think that’s trivial at all, I raised that this afternoon
MillersMad:: I understand what he’s talking about as that side is the least attractive, that tin hut is awful.
Peter: It looks awful, we talk about the endlessly, well I talk about this endlessly, it’s my big boat bearer, I’d love that roof to be there.
MillersMad:: You have raised that before, because I’d love the community stand roof that to be all the way down it would look so much better.
Peter: Even Mr Booth laments that not having being done, it should have been done In 1981/1982 when the other Roof was put on, it looks awful it doesn’t look conference it looks third world basically, in fact I did ask that question this afternoon, I think temporarily we will have to put the camera scaffolding on top of that thing, there is a gantry that is planned in the new stand, don’t forget we are trying to get that stand up by December, it will maybe go on the other side, if it’s still holding up the camera on that side, it would look a lot better.
MillersMad:: I’m guessing that the new stand will be built with the facility for the camera, so I’m guessing it would be the aim to have the camera in the new stand, but it would look a lot better facing the new stand, showing this off to the world.
Peter: It does look awful I agree with you, we all feel that, as I said the issue is that Millmoor lane no one wants to touch it, because it has stood the test of time and it’s standing there, if you touch it and put a screw in it everybody is worried it will fall apart, because there is no way of testing, yes they have tested it’s stable but the moment you try to do anything to it, are we going to lose the whole embankment and have a 2 million quid job on our hands.
Everybody is treading carefully, I have raised the question about the roof by the way, I have asked the Architect to look at surely there is some sort of Tesco car park canopy even that could come over; there must be some modern engineering solution that gets you there for Tesco club card points or something like that. We are looking at it but the fact is first of all we have got to get the new stand up, if we did raise a bit more and could do it I would love to do it because it just looks rubbish.
MillersMad: Funding for the new stand, we know there is 1.5 million coming from the football foundation, the rest of the money is coming from the share option?
Peter: Hopefully it will be 1.6 million, we have got a number of sources on this, the mainstay is, and the vital first thing is the share issue and new money, which of course includes RUST’s bit. Potentially a share issue if all shares are taken up should raise £918,000, now that’s a lot of money to take out of a community like Rotherham’s, you have to bear in mind that there is limited money around and there are other demands, so we are not banking on getting the whole of that but if we could that would be wonderful, other funding is coming from the way in which certain other seats will be sold in the stand, there is a selling of memberships of seats to businesses and there is a specialist marketing company involved in that called Bastian who are doing Coventry’s stadium at the moment, they are going to be doing Swansea’s, they have done Hull’s they have done other’s, they built the Colonial stadium, which is now called the Telstra stadium in Melbourne Australia. They are pretty clued up Aussie marketers who basically say we can get you that, we can produce that, they are not cheap but in the scheme of things we reckon they will do it for us, so that should raise quite a lot of money, we are probably talking a million plus, because what you can do, is also they call it securitising, you may know it as debt factoring, you can actually although these people are supposed to pay over a number of years, you can actually get the money upfront and they take a cut and then recover the money it’s a bit like that. So it will produce some money which will help us short term, which we need not just for the stand, but we hope there will be a surplus to help us with the cash flow anyway if there is any left over on the running side if there is any left over as it is pretty volatile until you get there. There is also a brewery franchise; we have been talking to breweries like and reporting to breweries, a catering franchise, so much work is being done behind the scenes, David Veal has had several meetings as well as his normal job and you know John Harrison, everybody has been working around the clock seeing all these people to try and reign in as much as we possibly can and see where we get to, so we have just got to make sure we get the money out of all that lot.
MillersMad: Will there be any timescale on the money coming in from the share issue? Would that create a problem if there was a slow uptake?
Peter: No because basically we have got to finalise this within the next month, the shares will have to be paid for probably in mid may, we probably won’t ask for one payment but maybe in two payments. Now the way that the RUST sponsorship will work is that, we are setting up with a finance company that will also be linked into season tickets and so on, which will enable the people who want to sponsor to be able to spread the payment in a way in which means it is accessible so we can get the tenners a month from people and everybody can play their part you know and so that’s how it will be accessible so no I don’t think it will provide a problem, but part of the difficulty we have got to get to is the development cash flow which because the stand has to be paid for in monthly charges, and that ties in with the football trust grant which has to be released at similar times.
MillersMad: How are we going on with planning permission?
Peter: Good, there was a slight hitch with an environment agency issue but that has been cleared up, we are very optimistic we will get planning permission in early April.
MillersMad: While it is being built, why don’t the away fans have the millmoor lane side and have the Rotherham fans in the railway end?
Peter: Actually I didn’t get the chance to ask that this afternoon; I think that is down to health and safety issues and crowd management, there will be particular strains put on that on stadium management whilst we have got a building site on one side. There is also ticketing and where people have got existing seats and accommodating everybody, it’s a good idea on the face of it but I suspect there are a load of practical issues, I will pass the question on though to see if there is anything in that.
MillersMad:: It would be nice if when the teams with a smaller away support such as MK Dons could just have the community stand and the Rotherham fans take the Railway End.
Peter: I’ll make a note of that it is the one question I didn’t get chance to get an answer for.
MillersMad:: It is something we have done before, so should be possible.
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