Cooky wrote:

Is this a joke??
I’ve just ripped up my 2 tickets I bought for the FA cup game in disgust.

This is quite clearly a tongue-in-cheek statement. If anybody took any offence to it then I suggest they go and get their skin thickened.

Forums, an unofficial forum at that, are a place for fans to praise and vent, agree and disagree.

It goes without saying that Neil and his family have invested a lot of time, effort and money into CTFC and long may it continue.

 

I think it’s a really poor idea and made worse by the press release published today. I think renaming a ground after a commercial business smacks of exploitation. This isn’t about Thornbury Surfacing or Neil who is a thoroughly decent chap, it’s more about preserving history. Chairman come and go, so will Neil and Thornbury Surfacing. The ground name shouldn’t be transient. It should stay consistent. I think the renaming undermines and tarnishes the good work and investment Neil has made. Now people will think that the good work was only for commercial opportunity and a ground now named after his business. This is no different to Ashley and sportsdirect.com!

Charlie Bird wrote:

No problem with the name addition. I say addition as many sides keep their old name as the second line of their address.

The Thornbury Surfacing Ltd Stadium
Hardenhuish Park
Bristol Road
Chippenham

Is just fine by me.

About time we caught up with the 21st century, probably the only team in our league not to have a stadium sponsor/name.

As for the actual name it recognises the current chairman’s vast investment in the club and I for one am very grateful.

Is this wishful thinking CB or something already agreed by the club?

I stand to be corrected, but I think the difference of opinion could have been largely avoided if it was made clear from the outset that Hardenhuish Park, the home of Chippenham Town FC, hadn't been consigned to the dustbin. Unfortunately the club's statement reads as though it had.

Ground structures which make up the stadium, will come and go, and to future generations will be known by many different names, but the soil upon which they sit, will forever be known as Hardenhuish Park. 

Some clarification on this small, but incredibly important point, would be very much appreciated, and then we can direct all our energies into a certain F.A Cup tie.

So it is with huge pleasure that I am delighted to announce on behalf of Chippenham Town FC, that the Board recently unanimously decided that in recognition of the immeasurable and sustained support provided by Chairman, Neil Blackmore, his wife, Jane, and their family since assuming the Chairmanship of the Club, that Hardenhuish Park should in future be known as the Thornbury Surfacing Ltd Stadium.

 

My only hope is that people understand in time why decisions like this are made. Sadly this club has always had a few slow minds with fast fingers and in this instance, it has upset the chairman and his family as accusations of this being a vanity project or about Neil's own ego could not be further from accurate. Neil has always given selflessly during his tenure at the football club, shirking the limelight in favour of a quieter chairmanship, unassumingly going about his business in a way that not many are accustomed to seeing from someone who owns a football club.

Every now and then, decisions like this have to be made with the best interests of the club at heart. Without Mr Blackmore, we are a ship without a captain. We will idle until we sink or of course until someone else takes a trick at the wheel however, I don't see people lining up behind Neil with copious amounts of money and vision to take the club forward so my suggestion to all would be trust in what we have and back the man or (and this is just my personal opinion) risk losing him. If Neil doesn't do this for fame or glory, he surely doesn't do it for the additional hard work and energy expelled into running the club, I can only imagine he does this for the same reason we turn up in our numbers every week. Love, passion, and wanting to make a difference in the club. When he is slated for doing so, my first impression if I was in that position would be "Well, what's the point?" "Get some other person to plough money through the club in the hope of improvement" Because there is no doubt regardless of what others have done before and will do in the future. Neil has taken us to the highest level we have ever played at. Single handed? Of course not, but under his chairmanship, Chippenham have reached heights many could scarcely dream of when we were getting battered around the Southern League and looking likely to fall back down as opposed to what happened mere seasons after. 

All of us have a boss at work as mentioned before, I run my own business, a rather successful Lead Generation company and that has led me to the point where my clients are my bosses, my shareholders are my bosses, the accountant is my ultimate boss. I sponsor a local football team in Portsmouth, only youth level, name on the shirt stuff and basically give the kiddies a kit to play in. This cost me £600 for all new kits, printing and a few little bits of equipment. And here's the kicker, my accountant had a moan at me about this! "What are you getting from this arrangement as a business?" First question asked. The answer to that is very little. I get the sense of pride watching 11 children run around in kits that look and feel like proper football kits, it excites them and they love it that they are sponsored because it makes them feel special. Totally worth £600 to me, to the accountant (and these people truly are the devil I assure you) he considered it a total waste of company money. The reason I tell this story is because imagine what Neil, Thornbury Surfacing LTD and the various other dedicated board members have put through the club for essentially the same right? I sponsor a kit, Neil sponsors a kit but although the levels are VERY different, essentially it is the same marketing, the same advertisement just on a slightly larger scale. Now think whether Neil pays, just £600 for this privilege, think what Neil puts in both in terms of personal finance and business finance and imagine just for a minute if you will what his "shareholders" "associates" and "accountant" think of the amount of money being received by CTFC for a kit sponsorship and a board around the ground. 

I can run you off a list of stadiums that have changed names, location etc. To accommodate a sponsor or an increase of revenue coming into the club, this list would go on for hours and hours, damn near every club in the UK now, except for the ones who do not have too, have this arrangement in place. Of course United have Old Trafford, Liverpool have Anfield, but we are not these clubs! We need to do what we need to do to survive in football or risk being another club consigned to statistics because I assure you, should we continue as a support to poke the bear over something trivial like this, we could well face that reality and then I promise you, Chippenham Town FC will not be in this position anymore. 

So for all I care call it the ground whatever you damn well please, this is a decision made by the board FOR THE CLUB and not the few that have jumped up in arms about something that quite honestly, if they thought about it, doesn't really matter anyway. We speak frequently on here about modernising the club, about going into the 21st century. Stadium sponsorship is very much a part of that future. We cannot be bleating on one minute about a card machine in the bar and then put the sword to any changes made to improve the revenue of the club, it's simply not the way it goes. 

I am certain to see many of you Saturday and no doubt this will be a discussion many will have around the water cooler but come on people, this is a decision made by a man and his board with no previous of ego, vanity or self gain but has always put the club first. If this is the first "controversial" move made by the BOD, have they not earned the benefit of our trust? We've come this far believing in them, why stop now? 

COYMB

Hopefully any director/board member reading my following comments won't take it the wrong way - these are just my thoughts, not criticism of the club. Getting to this stage of the FA Cup with featured TV highlights is unchartered territory (for both the club and current board)  so naturally mistakes might be made, and with hindsight I feel this could have been handled better.

How the news was announced was (probably unintentionally) almost equating criticism of the decision with criticism (or lack of appreciation) of the chairman. Indeed posts here disagreeing with it have been taken as "hurtful comments". But if it was done to honour our chairman why name it after his business and not himself? (indeed the "Blackmore Stadium/Ground" does have a better ring to it). Taking the announcement at face value it seems more a board decision than the chairman's - I'm not pointing fingers or blaming anyone and as I say to me it seems an honest mistake in how it's been done.

For me and a few other fans the timing of this also seems too much of a coincidence and without it being directly announced as a commercial sponsorship deal, it does feel the club isn't quite being up front with us. I'm sure most fans would have been more understanding if "Thornbury Surfacing have agreed naming rights of the ground for the rest of the season/until x". With our moment in the limelight, certainly few would begrudge Mr Blackmore and his company for getting a bit back after all he's done for the club in the past decade. And yeah we'll all still call it Hardenhuish Park anyway, but I think how it was done has perhaps not gone down with some of us more than the name change itself.

Anyway those are my thoughts, hopefully we can move on soon and not let it overshadow what should be one of the greatest weeks in the club's history. Again I hope people can accept the reasoning behind my comment whether they agree or not. We're all just fans wanting the best for the club, not trying to criticise or "hurt" any individual or the club.