Dunfermline Athletic director Ross McArthur reflected on a year of progress on and off the field at East End Park and insisted there’s much more to come.
It has now been more than a year since fans’ group Pars United effectively saved the club by securing a successful CVA, taking control of both the club and the club’s East End Park home.
For his part, McArthur, who was one of the men thrust into the unenviable position of bringing the Pars back from the brink on a new-look board, feels everyone who has contributed to the Pars’ survival can take a great deal of pride from their achievements since the dark days of last year.
But standing still is, for McArthur at least, not an option.
“The football team is important because that’s what wins you points and gets you out of divisions, but the football club is the most important thing and that’s the thing we had to really rebuild,” he told Courier Sport.
“You tend to look forward and the things that need to be done, as opposed to looking back, but maybe a lot of things have been achieved in a short period of time.
“Since we’ve come out of administration we’ve increased the season ticket numbers to 2,100; our Centenary Club Lifeline, which is our membership scheme where fans pay £20 a month, is now at 1,020, so that’s another £200,000 to the football club.
“We’ve brought in a lot of extra commercial income than the club has done in the past, and we’ve got to remember that that’s in the third tier of Scottish football as well.
“The ground has been smartened up and we’ve done a lot of work in the dressing room area, making it look the part that this is a big club and profiling the history of the club so that opposing players coming to the ground think “Oh right, this is a big club” and also to help the motivation of our current crop of players.
“We’ve been working on a community programme for months as well, with three former school teachers who have put together a schools strategy with three different programmes: one looking at numeracy and literacy, one looking at health and wellbeing and the third looking at employability where kids will get a tour of the stadium and we’ll play a DVD of all the things that happen on matchday getting them to think that this is not just a football team here.
“Ourselves and Dundee are also ranked first in Scottish football for the best disabled facilities but we don’t want to rest on our laurels and we’ve had a massive access report done to highlight all the things that still need to be done.
“It’s been incredible and there have been a lot of positive things done here that other clubs have started to sit up and take notice of.”
As Pars chairman Bob Garmory suggested in Courier Sport last week, McArthur reckons it is imperative that the club is not allowed to slip back to the state that took it to the brink of extinction on several occasions last year, with standards being set high on and off the pitch.
McArthur revealed that it has been a massive learning curve for everyone on the new-look board at East End Park and hopes the club’s board can continue to take the fans with them on their “journey”.
“We don’t know all the answers,” he continued.
“You’ve got to remember that we don’t have many actual employees we only have five full-time members of staff here and we’re lucky to have so many people volunteering their time and effort for the sake of the football club.
“At times in business you can just talk, but in this instance you’ve got to listen.
“A lot of people can’t listen. But we do listen.
“We’ve got a governance structure where we have meetings with the fans where at least three board members are present.
“It is very open and transparent and I think that’s where you can engage with people and get the best out of people and keep them motivated because it is difficult keeping volunteers motivated,
“The big challenge for me, having had my own business for the past few years, is that you can say to an employee: “You have to do this.”
“But when it comes to a volunteer it’s difficult.
“You can set a deadline but it’s difficult to keep them motivated and that’s been a challenge for us.”