She also said she’ll be running the club for longer than 6 months as well and was going to show the books to the trust. Wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her.

The day will come when the trust have to step in. But let’s be honest here, they haven’t got a pot to piss in, nowhere near enough to run the club. Fundraising efforts should have been started a long time ago.

I know they work extremely hard and are doing it for free which is admirable, just when the time comes us and HUST will be relying on Jeff for funds.

It was announced that the club was for sale on December 22nd, not November. Previous to this after the Trust AGM it was accused of 'scaremongering' by the person behind #savepoolsday for informing people that this was coming. I have answered your question, the fundraising campaign was actioned almost straight away then but the Trusts objectives are different to raising in the short term and can't possibly involve handing over money to the current owners so they correctly took a step back so the crowdfunding campaign wasn't hijacked. The Trust is also working with potential investors with a view to taking the club forward and actually saving it long term with all due respect that could be seen as a fund raising scheme at much a higher level. As good as it's intention crowdfunding or #savepoolsday will do nothing in respect of the clubs long term future, it's buying time and no more.

What is wrong with the Trust working togther with investors if it saves the club?? This is clearly what they are working towards and theres clearly a belief this can happen.

Fundrasing began when the Trust was founded.

How do you think a fundraising campaign by the Trust would been viewed before December 22nd? They had been accused of scraemongering only weeks before....

Jeff Stelling has done more for the clubs PR and profile over the last 20 years than anyone, it's time we ALL got behind him and joined the Trust.

When the trust raise funds I would say they are likely to beat 50k given that Stelling has said he would donate. People are far more likely to give 500 quid to an accountable trust than they are a just giving page without a clear plan of where the money will be used.

I’d say you might get less people donating bigger sums.

But had a fundraising drive started in say October, at which point it wasn't common knowledge that the club was in dire staits, would it have been seen as scaremongering? Sage only openly said just before Christmas that they were pulling the plug, in the meantime they've continually talked about the difficulty in the accounts auditing as a reason not to show Supporters Direct on behalf of HUST the books. Yes the delays were raising concern, particularly as other things off the pitch were not quite right either, but if you'd said to most that we needed to raise funds because the owners were going to walk in three months you wouldn't have been believed by many.

I don't think it's coincidence that the announcement was made following the FA Trophy defeat, a run to the final of that and maybe a playoff spot would bring in significant revenue but with that evaporating Sage decided to sneak the news out when most were thinking more about Christmas Parties than football. .... almost immediately HUST started a Member's consultation on fundraising as they are obliged to do, but events overtook them. Do it now, and it looks divisive even petulant; instead we've had a string of good statements appreciating what people are doing while pointing out the questions about how we got into this mess and looking for a long term solution being vital.

Pam and Sage talked a good game at the start, they were after their money back yes, but all signs were they saw it as a medium term project - I don't think HUST can be blamed for Sage getting cold feet when what looks suspiciously like budgeting for a cup run didn't come off.

Or even a moderate degree of success in the league, like winning some home games for example hasn't come off

Thank you for a decent reply.

I totally understand where you're coming from in terms of Sage pulling the plug when we have fallen out of two trophies and aren't being competitive in gaining automatic promotion. If we were only 6 points off top, would they have done this? Probably not.

Saturday is an excellent opportunity for the trust to raise their profile and get more members to sign up by handing out leaflets outside and inside the ground. Obviously there'll be buckets to collect funds to go directly to the club but it's still a great opportunity for HUST.

As someone else has already stated, Jeff will be putting money into the trust but they can't just rely on him surely?

Can I just add two things to the excellent posts that have been made.

First, everybody needs to think long and hard before they post about other supporters' efforts to raise money to keep the club going. I've been a member of the trust since it started and I see it as the only body that can give fans real influence on how our club is run in future. Admin or miracle benefactor that is the case. It doesn't mean that a well-meant fund raiser to keep the club out of administration until new money/owners can be found should be declared stupid or laughed at though. It also doesn't mean that mocking other fans on public forums is a good plan. You should be able to put an alternative case without being sneery or abusive, if you can't manage it don't post.

Second thing is that even if Sage get the money on Saturday the publicity and goodwill might still help to save us.

Absolutely agree with this.

It's brilliant that fans are donating from all over the world (whether or not they know where the money is going) but I think Jeff, and other people with more money than most, will be waiting for the Trust fundraising drive to put their money in. The current fundraiser is great and has touched on a lot of people's emotions. I think others will be more cautious and looking at the longer term picture though.

Hope im wrong but some body buying the club with loads of money is a pipe dream and if you think stood outside morrisons with a bucket is going to save the club you are vastly mistaken.

What the people of hartlepool have to ask themselves is do we want a football club even if you dont go to the matches so what is the way forward.

Any business has to have a stable income stream and that is were the Trust comes into play if you have for example 2000 members paying £20 p/m D/D gives you 40k this amount to be used for the day to day running costs of the club excluding the players.

On the playing side i dont see any other option than going part time and pay the players on a pay per game basis with the monies generated by the club.

We have to accept the reality of the present situation and take 5 steps back before we can hope fully move forward for a better future we all want for pools

One of the realities is that the only way the Trust could take on the running of the club is getting it for next to nothing, or nothing, and then keeping costs within earnings. In the short term that would probably leave us struggling on the pitch and would only be likely to happen after administration..

A better option would be shared ownership with an owner/consortium that wants to work with fans, has the best interests of the club at heart, and is prepared to put an injection of cash in to keep us going while things are reorganised and our house is put in order. That seems a realistic possibility to me and I hope its the sort of deal the Trust board is working on with Jeff Stelling and others.

Totally agree, one of the most sensible posts on here.
Talking about collection buckets, I can remember a certain Mr Clough going round the towns working men’s clubs doing exactly the same thing, and we survived.

Delete the first page and what a cracking, well reasoned thread this is.

One thing that needs corrected from that meeting last night is their statement and belief that going into administration will not remove the £1.8 debt. This is at best wrong and at worst a lie, and either way is utter utter nonsense. Now I am not sure of the motives for saying this but it has put the frighteners on a lot of people and its just wrong. Now I am not knocking these people for their efforts but they really should get some facts sorted and clarified prior to getting themselves a hole. For some reason a lot of people hang on their every word and yet again they have their facts wrong.

Since when did the Bunker get so reasonable. Great to see though and so much better for it. Some excellent posts on the last two pages.

Technically no but in reality yes. Sage would be lucky to get more than about 10p in the £ back as far as I understand it.

Think I'm right to say that going into admin doesn't remove the debt. But the person running the administration can negotiate a deal with creditors for so many pence in the pound to count as settling the debt. 5 or 10 pence in the pound deals aren't unusual because creditors often prefer 5% or 10% back. There have even been football related examples of 0% deals being agreed.

Whatever the % agreed though the whole thing only changes the debt situation when everybody agrees and you come back out of administration. Anybody who said, "Going into admin doesn't remove the debt," was telling the truth but they should have added, "however, coming out of admin often reduces it massively and that can only happen if you start the process in the first place".

It's possible that anybody who said that was genuinely confused while under a bit of pressure so they didn't go for the fuller explanation which gives people a fuller picture. For me the worst thing about admin is you effectively hand control of the situation to the creditors and hope they'll agree a reduced debt - they aren't obliged to and there have been football related examples (including Darlo) where they didn't. That's one of the reasons why, although I'd love to see a fan owned club, I'd prefer it if we can somehow avoid admin. It isn't an easy option, its playing with fire and has to be a last resort.