Hi,wondering if you could help...

[bryant4114]

Hi, i'm a local Uni student doing a piece on the rent row between Eastbourne Borough and i'd like to get some thoughts of the supporters, just some general thoughts on the row


Also recently elected Lib them MP Stephen Lloyd threw support behind Boro so do you think he can make a difference?

[shadwellarmy]

Yes, of course an elected politician can make a difference - the real question is will he? If he thinks enough votes are up for grabs over the issue, then he will make a real difference. As this is a local issue, and does not involve appeals to national bodies and European planning laws and such like, a local political initiative is probably enough to settle the matter. But, as I said, the real issue is how many votes depend on the rent at Priory Avenue being kept low. I suspect very few.

I'm sure that my views are similar to the vast majority of supporters. I feel that Boro contributes a great deal to the town (good publicity when we do well, such as last year's FA Cup run, a fair number of people brought into the town, and if we get promotion it will be several hundred on several occassions during the year. As a seaside resort, some at least will be making a weekend of it, mostly out of season, spending money here. The club also gives the town a focus, alongside Airborne and the tennis, for 'civic pride'. Not to mention that it is one of the best community clubs in the UK [with awards most seasons to prove it] providing a wide range of sporting, social and other events and courses, from archery to dog-training) and this contriution is done free of charge to the council - in fact, the council is paid rent by us in order to carry on the work. As the club has been (and continues to be) amazingly successful, the council sees a way of grabbing more money for no effort by raising the rent. The rent rise is a serious threat to the club, which is probably the poorest-financed club in England playing at this level anyway, and the extra loss of revenue could quite easily mean the loss of one or two players that could mean the difference between another successful season and relegation, with all the losses for the town in general that that would entail.

The general feeling is that Eastbourne council has never helped the club, that our success has been dispite, not due to, the council, that the council has been one of the least helpful towards its local team (compare with Bognor Regis, Dartford and several other SE councils), and that the council sees the club as little more than a source of funding for whatever the council's pet project is for the coming year.

Overall, I would say that most Boro fans are very hostile to the council, see them as an 'enemy' and don't trust them an inch, and in return the council sees the club as nothing other than a bit of a nuisance but with cash potential - certainly not as an asset to be developed.

Most Boro fans come from the Langney area, which historically has seen itself as seperate from Eastbourne and, in many ways, ignored by the council; the row over the club's rent can only confirm this in people's minds, and certainly does nothing to promote Eastbourne as a town.

[villa]

Couldn't have put it better myself.

[vern]

[be]DITTO[/be]

[goonerboy]

the council hasn,t got a pot to pee in thats why the are selling all there assets ie coach park,housing building in seaside and also i think the towner art gallery...the do come up with some really good idea,s like making boro spend the yemi money on a traffic island in priory road.what a bunch of richard heads....

[davidb]

I've already expressed an opinion in another thread ... and incidentally I live in Old Town not Langney. I went along to a game at Priory Lane in the early 90s I was hooked!

[shadwellarmy]

I've never lived in Langney either; a Sarff London boy who moved to Eastbourne in 1998, shortly after getting married, lived in the Town Centre and then Hampden Park, visited the ground a few times and considered myself to be a part-time Boro fan (after my main loves of Millwall, Rangers, Shrewsbury Town and FC Freiburg - long stories for each, which I may bore you with at some future point), and only started really following Boro this last season - season ticket holder and fans club member, plus my first away games. Surprisingly, I only started following Boro when I moved out of Eastbourne, to Hastings!

It coincided with my giving up on Millwall (another long story, but the short version is having had enough of the ignoring of fans needs at the club, highlighted in the first game of the season, home to Yeovil), Southern kicked off a week later than League One, so I made my way to Priory Lane, bought a season ticket and changed my main allegiance (but have not gone so far as adding a Boro tattoo to my Millwall one - yet!).

I still hold that most Boro fans are Langney people, and consider themselves as such, rather than Eastbourne in general, let alone further afield (but there are about half-a-dozen of us who travel in each week from Hastings, plus thre or four each from Bexhill and Collington, that I know of, probably a few more). If Boro does go up, I think that some real effort needs to be done to widen the fan base. We do actually have quite a large area that could be considered a natural recruitment area, stretching from Hastings to Brighton along the coast, and as far north as Lewes, possibly Haywards Heath, until we overlap with other clubs. If we go up, then we are head and shoulders above Lewes, with only Crawley in West Sussex to compete with. Of course, I ignore the Dark Side at BHA as irrelevant to anyone interested in football, but accept that they may have a minor following in Brighton itself!