https://www.rovers.co.uk/siteassets/fans/fans-forum/ff-zoom-minutes-8.3.21.pdf

We need to start aligning/coordinating things better. No wonder “the club” carves this fanbase open and keeps them in fear. Right now we need a coalition of fan groups to reach out to the wider fanbase and make a boycott possible. Without this option there is no need for Waggott to take the FF as anything more than a glorified old school working men’s club meeting with better coffee and nibbles. He can just do what he wants and fans will just shrug. Yet those same fans will still be here when he has decided he’s ready and rich enough to move on or retire.

I think you have more power than you think. It isn’t necessary to shoot and ball but comments can be pointed and direct. In the current climate, and particularly while Waggot blindly backs Mowbray, these sessions should be very uncomfortable. The club have to engage with supporters to meet League rules. It should be the FF threatening to boycott rather than fearing cessation (which is only really an inferred threat) https://www.efl.com/supporters/supporters-charter/consultation--supporter-engagement/ “Clubs are required to meet with a representative group of supporters at least twice a season to discuss significant issues relating to the club.“ The club need to start treating fans, and particularly the FF, with more respect and honest than they currently do. They are paid to be at these meetings, you and the rest of the attendees are volunteers. If they cannot then it should be you all who are threatening cessation through withdrawal of your good will.

1. SW apologised for not telling the FF about this prior to a planning application leak. His main concern was to confirm there were no covenants on the land. We are told that the sole reason for this exercise is to update our tired facilities (despite them still being advertised to sponsors as “state of the art”) yet planning of this improved facility is limited to proof of concept stage with no idea of budget. What assurances have been made or will be followed up to ensure Cat 1 status? How will fans be kept informed to avoid further unfortunate leaks? 2. How did the first fans’ consultancy meeting to review ideas for the return go last month? Who attended? What pricing strategy is intended? Because of a huge loss of trust - partly relating to us once again having a manager unaccountable for results and a CEO unable or unwilling to act - there needs to be commitments in writing at each stage and future engagements planned and followed through. The SW comments in the minutes read like lip service. At a healthy club we would all be looking forward to getting back to Ewood next season and we would share the CEO’s enthusiasm for improved facilities. Instead we only have distrust and a stadium, pitch and recruitment department all in poor health. And that’s ignoring the state of the first team where possession and narrowness of defeats is seen as some kind of shield against criticism for being in the wrong half of the table and looking down.

Which is why those sorts of rows need to take place before going in front of the club. Surely everyone must be concerned enough about the sale of parts of Brockhall to at least warrant a FF pre-meet?

Press accreditation in football should be to the FA, UEFA and FIFA, working under clear guidelines. Individual clubs should not be able to hold the press to account (let alone be able to blackmail them) - in a free society the press should hold business to account! Otherwise you end up with a Bezos owning a Washington Post!!

I can respect that it’s not what you signed up for but some have greatness thrust upon them. You have the power (via your mod team) to control the volume and temperature of what people say on here. With that power comes a level of responsibility. The club will surely see BRFCS as a fan group, even if you don’t, and that it has a BRFCS “spokesperson” who attends their Fans Forum meetings. Has it been explained to Waggott that BRFCS is not a representative group but more of a meeting place, like a “fans forum” akin to the fans forum itself? And that the person attending does not provide any representative input? And that being so should “BRFCS” be at these meetings at all? Or am I incorrect in what I believe that the fans forum to be and what I expect Waggott will claim it is when he ticks the box for the FA about supporter group engagement? All genuine questions, by the way, NOT digs at you or the admin. Things seem to be quite delicate for a number of groups who want to maintain, or aspire to have, a particular relationship with the club. This may never happen though and instead everyone watches as the whole thing is dismantled in between tea and custard creams on a Tuesday every month. The FF, i.e. it’s attendees, should be holding Waggott to account. Right now they could, dare I say should, be insisting on being part of an adult discussion about Cat 1 planning pre-land sale and about a supporter-friendly ticket pricing initiatives to get people back rather than about kit designs and catering supplies - or the entire group should be boycotting the meetings/zoom calls and writing to the FA, to BwD council, and to our local MP, to explain why. Given that the attendees ,by and large, are affiliated with certain independent fan groups, who all know each other and all have the club’s best interests at heart, it should not be beyond the wit of man or woman to achieve.

That statement doesn’t help. As individuals they all care about the club. They need a real focus - ideally while we still have something to keep hold of and before that focus becomes shaking buckets outside Ewood.

Done

Please read (or re-read) and “sign” this letter on behalf of Rovers fans. https://www.protectjackwalkerslegacy.com

It’s an interesting point. BRFCS has always been different from other forums in that it has (mostly) allowed opposing view points and made itself relatively impartial. The question is, as a standard bearer for the club, at this moment in our history, should BRFCS be carrying the banner (literally and metaphorically) more visibly? I’m glad you’ve backed Rev on this. And I’d add that Rev and I still regularly disagree on some things but I’m firmly in his (our) corner on this one.

They had so many media luvvies involved that they could embarrass H&G publicly. Remember the video montage? We have to do it without that. The FF are a key component to that unity.

I think this is part of the problem at Rovers over the last 10 years, to be honest. Even in the darkest days of Kean et al, we didn’t have all fans on the same side. Barring relegation day chanting - which he brushed off as easily as calling until “the 1% who could[n’t] see what he was trying to do) - we (“the protesters”) never united against them and had the “super fan mentality” to contend with. There are still these people out there even now - assuming they aren’t club plants or relatives of club staff - who think Mowbray should be backed. ”We all do things in our own way” does not help to create any groundswell of pressure and keeps us divided under the guise of free will. We need to be together on this - it might be our last chance to salvage what Jack left for us. Even this morning, I was thinking about the 18 min and 75 min protest all those years ago now. All fans had to do was miss the start and end of a single game (but given the numbers we could have all fit on the concourse to watch it) as a show of numbers who were not happy with what was happening - and the majority could not even do that. We were being absolutely taken the piss out of any people would not stick together. Too many factions in our fanbase who “don’t like being told what to do by certain people”. Even for the greater good. It’s almost like a feudalist society where each group will smite the other rather than the common enemy. We need the likes of BRFCS, Ewood Blues, Rovers Trust et al to be meeting up without Waggott holding the gavel and deciding what they want the future of the club to look like and making sure that they are held to account to get us there. We need a William Wallace to unite us all, remind folk what we have to lose, and to instil a bit of passion but ultimately the leaders and elders in each tribe need to agree some common ground. Right now, we are seeing poor, losing football, and hearing about detailed plans to sell the club’s Crown Jewels, while at the same time there being no visible plans which demonstrate the supposed purpose of the change: an improved academy. How can it be improved when it hasn’t even been designed? At best, that’s an aspiration, not a plan. Everyone who agrees with Rev’s letter should be prepared to sign up to it. They should be prepared to display it and to distribute links to it (where they have a forum to do so). If there are people out there who don’t agree with it, let’s hear the counter argument(s)...

K-Hod’s comment was a pretty standard joke tbf. However, it has been established for some time that the FF attendees “don’t represent the fans, they represent themselves”. Not a particularly helpful arrangement but that was a comment on here a few years ago from one of them. To be fair, they have a point as none of them are elected by the fanbase to attend and are seemingly there at the request of their own unofficial groups. Case in point, K-Hod attends on behalf of BRFCS admin but if he was nominated then this was not by the forum members but the site ownership. Fair enough but with the way the FF is organised, managed and operated it isn’t a surprise that it isn’t fit for purpose. So what is the purpose? Seems to me that it is different for each party. - For the club it ticks a box that they are engaging with fans. - For the groups it gives them legitimacy with the club. - For the individual it is a chance to hobnob, a cup of coffee and a bit of a nosey at what the club want to tell fans. - For the rest of the fanbase the expectation is that this functions as a chance for “fellow fans” to hold the club to account and ensure that they don’t go off doing their own thing. If the Rovers Trust want a seat on the board then this really should be the place to start and to make the club (at least feel) more accountable. Case in point, if the FF was working as it should then the news about Brockhall (all being done for the good of the academy and the club) should have been announced to the FF first and there should have been some discussion and debate and then a follow-up as part of a consultation process. As it is either none of that was even shared with the FF or it was off-the-record and not to be shared with the wider fanbase or press. My guess is it wasn’t even mentioned. In either case, it’s either not fit for purpose or completely dysfunctional.

The difference is that in football the buck always stops with the manager and he pays the price with his job. If he really thinks that he’s entitled to sit there and pretend that doesn’t apply to him then he is simply taking the piss.

Warren Lucy said something similar yesterday, justifying the performance/result by saying that we have nothing to play for “not going up, not going down”, while Wycombe are “fighting for their lives” (despite being down and out). I can’t believe that he really believes this and more likely he’s just a walking cliché-spouter paid to promote Rovers (even at the expense of common sense and personal dignity). But it does make me wonder, is there some software programme out there that shows all permutations of the remaining results and because of who plays who they can’t ALL get the necessary points to overtake us? If so, I’d very much like to see it because right now it feels like we are in free fall. Certainly relegation form isn’t pretty on the eye (or soul). Is there even any point in continuing to watch games if the manager isn’t bothered and/or can’t do anything about it? It used to be a habit of seeing games because the ST had already been bought. Now it’s throwing good money after bad. If we really are “safe” then this is exactly the time to get a new manager in so he can see what is required. There is a huge rebuilding job required this Summer and Mowbray is demonstrating with each passing game why he is not the man to do it.

The only issue with the “we would all do the same” argument is that any of the rest of us wouldn’t give up or keep persevering with the same tired, falling approach time and again. We can all see the problems that Mowbray seemingly can’t. Yes, it’s easy being an armchair fan but we certainly wouldn’t take all this lying down while waiting (hoping?) for the axe.

The only difference between us winning and losing is how united or divided our fanbase becomes. I genuinely thought we would win today. Nailed on. Simply because a defeat today was unthinkable. It happened anyway and the apathy is palpable. From manager, from players and from fans. He simply has to go. How on earth are Venkys so impotent on this? This isn’t their first rodeo at this point. 10 years in and nothing appears to have changed.

Fair dos. But I am gonna claim you as a scalp on the joke! The only one as it turned out.

Where are all those people who were indignant at the Kean comparisons? 👆🏻That’s about as Kean as it gets. He knows he is done and he’s clearly trying to goad someone into sacking him. Bet he’s gutted Waggott is here or he would have been paid up by now. Get out of our club you charlatan!

Humiliation. Mowbray surely cannot continue now. Any talk of honour is certainly a myth that can be firmly put to bed. (Oh do shut up Warren - the most partisan co-commentator I’ve even heard, he surely can’t believe this BS!)

Wycombe are so comfortable they’ve brought on Akinfenwa!

I’m not sure rotation does protect from injuries. It may protect from fatigue but there’s a reason it’s called match fitness. Our players don’t get fully match fit because they are rotated out for rest (or more likely overthinking the tactics for specific opposition). We don’t have a core style or approach let alone strengths. We adapt to accommodate other teams - sometimes far inferior teams - and then the excuses start. This is what poor managers do, Bowyer was exactly the same. He needs to set up a team with a defensive unit and then set up the rest of the team to get the best out of our lads. Not try to neutralise the opposition. Especially when we can’t even do that. Otherwise you end up regularly on the wrong side of narrow defeats and bemoan bad luck. All not necessarily injury related but it becomes another part of the excuses as the injury room piles up as a result.

Amazing listening to the commentators. Rothwell just made a daft flick on the edge of the box but he’s not a Mowbray favourite so he’s currently getting a rinsing. Yet if Brereton had done that they’d have been singing his praises - “you could see what he was trying to do”.