Hi Matey, did you see “ Panorama “ last night ? It was truly jaw dropping. An average sized 1970’s terraced house turned into 6 flats ! The landlord was charging £950 for each flat ! The took the previous owner around and she was almost in tears. Somebody was living in what was her old bathroom, somebody else living in her old kitchen ! Unbelievable .

Regards John C. ( Tyrone )

Hi Andi,  things had been rocky between the clubs until a couple of years ago. Then Hornets got a new board who made big efforts to get things back on track. The football club felt the same way and relations between the two clubs were really good. The best they’d been for a long while. Then the football club got a new board.

They went through the ground rental agreement with a fine tooth comb. Previously it had mostly been “ gentleman’s agreements “. They wanted a big cut of the car parking for our games. So nobody gets paid now and car parking is free. They wanted to charge us exorbitant amounts for use of the scoreboard - stewarding etc. So then we were only allowed to use 1/8th of the ground with a limit of a 1,000 unless we paid exorbitant charges. We’d agreed a fee for the use of the ground for the England v Fiji game last year with the old board. Rochdale is the home of Fiji rugby league. The new board wanted £60.000 up front for us to stage the game ! So the game went to Salford and everybody lost out.

They closed our club shop, then they closed the club office, took down all our signage outside the ground. Finally they removed all our memorabilia from the main stand ! If it wasn’t written down in black and white we couldn’t have it. They didn’t want us at the ground but they knew we had a cast iron lease of the ground so they decided to freeze us out by other methods. 
Well, look were it’s got the bastards - relegation from the football league unless they get a miracle.

Up The Rovers. Tyrone. ( John C. )