Flooding at Gloucester City

Let me be entirely honest about this. I joined this Forum a couple of years ago to carry out some research about Phil Neal, prior to his coming to speak to the Supporters Trust at Gloucester City, where I had to introduce him - and he was excellent !

Sadly, it is extremely unlikely that any of us will go back to Meadow Park now. You must have seen the photographs of our almost submerged football stadium a few weeks ago. Now that the waters have receded the damage we are left with has totally devastated the club.

We have managed to fix up a ground share with Forest Green Rovers, but whether we can afford or running costs this season remains to be seen. Our own ground was uninsured because it was uninsurable after two previous floods, and how we shall ever get back to Gloucester Heaven only knows.

We have never wanted to go out with a begging bowl. Our faithful 400 fans have paid for ground maintenance, floodlight repairs players' medical needs and all that goes with sustaining a non-league team. We found £7500 in the close season, and it's all come to nothing. Even our Club Shop, including replica shirts and other memorabilia, is in ruins. In the past six seasons we have raised £210K, but now we have nothing to show for it.

Our first friendly after the flood was at Frome Town, and they gave us £300. Bath City gave us the gate receipts when we switched the next game to Twerton Park. Chippenham Town sent a cheque. Northampton Town Supporters Trust gave us the proceeds of their raffle the other night, and I had the pleasure of going there to receive it.

The bigger clubs seem slower to respond. If there is any supporters organisation in Liverpool that would care to help, please let me know, or go to our fans web-site : Tigerroar.com. We need every kind of help. For instance, one of our number is looking for auction items and has written to the twenty two most wealthy clubs in Britain. The first to respond positively to his request and send an autographed football was Glasgow Rangers.

My apologies if this appeal offends. Just think what you would be prepared to do if it were your club whose existence was threatened. Next March marks the 125th anniversary of the first meeting in Gloucester to try to introduce association football. We desperately want to reach that birthday.

We have a fantastic manager, who has built the best squad for ages this season. Watch out for us. Perhaps we can play Liverpool in the Cup !

Sorry to hear about your bad situation mate. It must be a really hard, stressful time.
The flooding really had a terrible affect and no doubt will carry on doing so when most people have forgot about it.

Personally, I can't help, but I wish you good luck in raising funds for the future of your club.

Absolutely right, Kenny. People only had drinkable water through their taps on Tuesday of last week, more than two weeks after the flood. You approach our ground (when we had one !) by passing through a small street. The pavements were just littered last weekswith carpets and three piece suites. It brought it all home much more than any pictures could do.

In our Club Shop hundreds of old programmes sat in plastic boxes that were still filled with rank water that stank to high heaven.

Noah

The LFC Reds Forum is a 'cashless' supporters group and we do not have any funds sloshing about, however individuals on the site I am sure would be interested in helping. It may have been useful to have firstly posted the correct link - www.tigerroar.co.uk - and secondly to highlight how people can donate if they want to.

Information from: http://cof.tigerroar.co.uk/showthread.php?t=516

Donations to the Gloucester City Clean-up fund can be made to the following account:

Gloucester City Supporters Ltd, (Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, Bootle)

Sort Code: 72-00-03
Account Number: 89485489
Quoting Ref: CLEANUP FUND



I will mention it in my next editorial on the website and I have thrown in a tenner.

I am indebted to you for this. I am afraid that I am not too computer literate, and so an url sounds to me like something from Lord of the Rings, and working with jpegs is quite beyond me. Your posting is just what was wanted !


Very many thanks for your donation. Our programme seller, who doubles as the Trust Treasurer,  is an ardent Reds fan, and he will find this particularly satisfying on several counts.

I too am a Gloucester Supporter but also I spent seasons when I lived in England, following Liverpool and used to go to matches with the Bristol Branch of the Liverpool Supporters.

Many fond memories and some bad ones like Hillsborough too. That was the only match I ever had a seat at, for some reason that fateful day I didn't feel like standing in my usual position behind the goal.

Two clubs moving grounds for different reasons, your new ground will look fantastic, it is so different to anyone elses, there certainly has been some thinking outside the box on that one. For what I regard has my home team we are moving out of necessity, the ground is ruined and yes we probably could raise the funds to fix it up (100k) but there is no entusiasm to do this because it will flood again.

Any help, promotion of our plight within your club would be greatly appreciated. Maybe even at some point a friendly could be arranged between us, to help our plight.

We have had a great deal of support from Non-League clubs locally and our friends further a field at Corby, some bigger clubs have sent us items for and auction we are holding (thanks to Middlesborough & Glasgow Rangers).

We are not really wanting to beg, we were so full of confidence for our team's season and then the flooding. But we are a positive lot and we want to see our gates rise to the several thousand we had years ago and we still expect this to be a good season for us and I hope likewise it will be a good one for the best Premier team in the land. LFC.