Wednesday Round Up

There isn’t much to talk about at the minute at Broadhall Way. Work is going on behind the scenes to get the players fit and ready for the big kick-off on August 8th, but other than that there is nothing to report on. That’s not the case elsewhere in the Blue Square Premier.

Rushden face an uncertain future after receiving a winding up order. The Diamonds are having problems dealing with the costs of their Nene Park Stadium. Apparently their current financial difficulties are due to the current climate, with sponsors pulling out of deals and crowds dropping. Ex Boro midfielder Daryl McMahon is still hoping to re-sign for Cambridge at some point this summer. McMahon didn’t feature regularly towards the end of last season at the Abbey, but is still highly thought of by boss Gary Brabin.

“He’s a quality player and he’s desperate to come back and play for us, but he knows the financial situation at the club at the moment.” Brabin on McMahon

Just a few miles up the road, Histon are having the opposite problem and have been given a cash injection in order to secure the 3 signings that manager Steve Fallon planned to sign before Setanta collapsed. Ex Cambridge pair Shane Tudor and Adam Tann are 2 of the 3 expected to be playing their football at the Glassworld Stadium next season. Kettering have strengthened their squad further for next season with the signing of former Macclesfield defender James Jennings. The versatile 21 year old impressed Mark Cooper while on loan at Altrincham last season.

Closer to home, Phil Wallace has come out with a few statements this week to the Comet and they both don’t sound good. The first one was that he wanted more people to come and ‘support’ the club next season to help get over the Setanta losses. The second one was this article where he criticised the FA for not doing enough to protect the Conference and that the Conference should be looked after when it comes to negotiating TV deals.

There’s no doubt that the collapse of Setanta will have financial implications for the club, but I think they’re being a bit blown out of proportion. The figure is expected to be around £70,000-£100,000 a year. I don’t a few extra people turning up a week is going to help reduce that figure that much. I still think that PW has seen this ‘disaster’ as an ideal window to try and get more people through the gates and reduce the amount of money he’ll put in at the end of the season. Fair enough because it isn’t good for the club to keep relying on one man to keep it afloat, but to be honest these pleas to the supporters and FA are not going to bring another 1000-2000 people through the gates. The current financial climate is what is causing these problems and until that begins to pick up then I don’t think we should be expecting a rise in the attendances at Broadhall Way, however many times we’re told to bring ‘friends’ along.

Lastly a few updates have been made to the site. The ‘About‘ page has been updated to include last season’s review on the Stevenage Borough history part of the page. The ‘Squad List‘ is currently in progress with the player profiles being updated, while some are still being done from scratch. There is going to be more information on the player profiles this season. Also I have decided to take off all the reserve player profiles from the ‘Reserves‘ page. I currently haven’t got a clue about who is contracted to the club as a youth player so at the moment there isn’t much there, but once I know and get a bit more information then I’ll sort the ‘Reserves’ page out.