Welcome to the 2024 Annual General Meeting of the Pompey Supporters’ Trust. The is our fifteenth AGM – a significant landmark in the society’s rich history. This follows a truly historic campaign for the football club, in which we celebrated the club’s 125th anniversary season with promotion for both the men’s team and women’s side. It was a hugely successful and enjoyable year on the pitch, and we’re really proud of what the Pompey Supporters’ Trust was able to achieve too.
We began the 23/24 season, almost exactly one year ago to the day now, by unveiling the Jimmy Dickinson statue, following our successful Crowdfunding campaign. We’re so delighted with the artwork produced by the sculptor Douglas Jennings – I remain convinced that it’s one of the best statues in world football. I’m so grateful to everyone who donated to the campaign, bought one of the books which helped to raise the total, or just supported what we were doing. It was a nerve-wracking moment when the cloth came off to reveal it for the first time, but I’m delighted the response has been so positive, and it’s a huge source of pride seeing people interact with it on a matchday. Being able to bring this legendary figure to life for younger and future generations is a wonderful legacy we’ve been able to contribute to the 125 celebrations. I’m pleased to say that the area around the statue is due to be refreshed and updated shortly, incorporating the club’s Hall Of Fame wall and some added greenery.
Throughout the season, we continued in our main role, facilitating fan engagement between the supporters and the club through a number of different channels. We hosted a Q&A event at Fratton Park Andy Cullen, John Mousinho and Rich Hughes, where our members could hear from the men shaping the future of our club. The Matchday Experience Working Group we help to run was nominated for an EFL Fan Engagement Award after playing a role in improving the catering offer at the ground. We further improved the Tony Goodall Fans’ Conference, having partnered with Her Game Too to result in greater female representation in these meetings. The club, led by Andy Cullen, have continued to engage in supporter meetings with genuine openness and a willingness to act on feedback, which has led to tangible improvements across many areas of the club.
In order to represent the opinions of supporters more accurately, we carried out a supporter survey in March to canvas the views of the wider fanbase. Nearly two and a half thousand fans took part – this gave us an incredibly useful snapshot of which topics fans cared most about, and how successful they viewed current performance in these areas. As well as publishing the results in full, we shared the results with the club, and recorded a video interview discussing the key findings with Andy Cullen for the club’s YouTube channel.
As a result of the survey, we commissioned a new street art mural featuring 6 iconic modern Pompey heroes on the side wall of the club shop, chosen by supporters. This was a really fun project to lead on, and resulted in some good-natured debate among the fanbase over who should feature. The six names to eventually top the poll - Alan Knight, Guy Whittingham, Kanu, Linvoy Primus, Paul Merson and Robert Prosinecki – should spark off many happy memories whenever fans walk past the mural on a matchday.
To cap off the 125th anniversary season, we staged a fan ‘tifo’ display in the Fratton End for the final home game of the season. This was a challenging project to organise, with nearly 5,000 cards to place accurately overnight ahead of the fixture. I’m hugely grateful to the PST board members who gave up their time to do this, and to the Fratton End ticket holders who held them up in unison to create a striking visual image to mark the end of this special campaign. Thanks to a commercial sponsorship, I’m pleased to say we were able to stage this project without any cost to supporters, and at almost no cost to the Trust.
There are various other activities we’ve been involved in this year. We’ve continued to provide half time refreshments for our disabled supporters in the Fratton End, to help them on those cold winter nights. Our Treasurer Simon Colebrook provided an independent review of the club’s accounts, to help fans understand what they mean in plain English. We’ve provided a small donation to help with the formation of the Women’s Supporters’ Club, reflecting the growing importance of the women’s team to the club, and further funding for the 125th anniversary photography exhibition held this summer.
As we move into the 24/25 season, we look forward to another successful campaign on and off the pitch. We begin tonight by staging the formal part of our AGM, where we can give an overview of our activity over the last 12 months, present our financial accounts, and vote on motions put forward by members. We’ve once again opted to host this online, ensuring that PST members can attend regardless of location.
We will follow this up with a members event held in person at Fratton Park, where I’m delighted to say we will be joined by John Mousinho, Richard Hughes and Andy Cullen. This will be an exciting opportunity to meet and speak with the trio leading our club. The event will take place on the evening of Wednesday 6th November. Tickets will be available free to members, and we will email a link through which you can book these shortly.
Thank you once again for your continued support.
Play Up Pompey,
Donald Vass
Chair
Pompey Supporters’ Trust