Pete Nash is both a member of our board and the Chairman of the Weymouth Football Club Supporters Association (WFCSA). In our exclusive interview with Pete, he spoke to us about his roles at the club, sending shirts to fans in Australia, seeing Pelé play and much more…
Like every other club, the fans are the most important part, but something sets us apart from the others. We mean it.
We are a club that’s owned by supporters, so it’s vital that they are given a say in how we move forward. Any ideas or concerns they might have, they are always addressed.
The main thing is to make their matchday experience as enjoyable as possible, and with my role as a board member, a role I’ve held for the last two years, supporters are always guaranteed a voice.
Essentially, I am the link between the board and the fans. Not only can I inform them what’s going on at board-level, I can take any of their suggestions straight to the board of directors. That’s quite a useful connection for a club to have.
For someone in my position, it’s crucial to keep the fans informed and engaged. That’s all you can do, really. I constantly remind them that they have a channel where they can communicate. Good, bad or indifferent, that channel is always there for them. I will always talk with any fan who approaches me. Feeling isolated or marginalised is never a good thing. That applies in all walks of life.
Those are just some of the things that I’ve done since I first got involved with the WFCSA in 2012. As a group, we’ve also helped grow our level of activities, such as quiz nights, which we now run regularly throughout the season, alongside establishing our very own yearly “Hall of Fame” ceremony, beginning in 2019. Those awards not only put us and ex-players in the spotlight, but they also raise funds for the club. We’ve then got our fourth successive Boxing-Day Raffle coming up this year. That is something we’ve worked very hard at; we’ve grown it from a general raffle, which would raise a couple of hundred pounds, to a much bigger event that generates a couple of thousand pounds!
But our biggest success without doubt is the club shop, which I was put in charge of about a year later after I joined the WFCSA, and have managed ever since. The items we’ve seen develop inside the shop are nothing short of outstanding. From our bespoke clothing, we now have t-shirts with our own in-house designs on them, to coats and jackets with our club logo, which we’ve managed to do with our own printing press.
How we operate has massively changed compared to when I first started, everything is made and ready to be sold much quicker now!
During this time, I’ve also helped grow the online club shop, which we managed to build from nothing. With the help of promotion through social media, we’re able to reach fans from all over the globe. If I had to make a guess, I would say I’ve sent around 100 shirts worldwide. For a club our size, that’s very impressive.
We’ve got regular customers in Norway, Germany, Italy, and a couple in the USA, too. Not a bad spread, is it?
Last week I even posted a shirt to Melbourne in Australia. Can you believe that!?
Some of these buyers are expats, whereas others, I think, have family connections here. But, believe it or not, I think a big selling point is our nickname, “The Terras.” It’s quite a unique name, isn’t it?
Though beyond all of our proud work that I’ve just mentioned, the most enjoyable thing we’ve done is something very recent…
I’m sure I don’t already have to tell you that we had Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne visit just over a week ago for a late-evening Q & A session inside our ground. Tickets sold out within 24 hours and, let me tell you, The Wessex Lounge was completely packed. It went down an absolute storm. To not only plan the event, but to see people have a fantastic evening, it’s difficult to describe just how chuffed I was. I was so pleased for the club. Having someone of Gazza’s stature really put us out there. We’d never done anything like that before.
But despite that success, running the WFCSA certainly isn’t without its challenges, the biggest of which will always be the task of fundraising. We are fan-owned and we can’t rely on a sugar daddy to give us loads of money!
All the money that will help us survive the season, we need to find ourselves. We always ask the question: How can we generate more for the club?
But it’s not just about making people help with necessary funds. We need to make sure that we give back to supporters. Luckily, we do. This season we, with the backing of the board of directors, have ensured that all season-ticket-buyers will become automatic members of the WFCSA!
It doesn’t stop there, though. In the club shop, we have a two-tier pricing system that offers discounts to members and season-ticket-holders. Beyond this, we also offer a “Members’ Reward Scheme,” where 15 local companies offer all sorts of discounts. The Chalk and Cheese pub in Maiden Newton, for example, will give fans 15 per cent off their final bill. All you have to do is show your membership card!
It may seem like we only raise funds for the parent club, and that is our main goal, but we support other areas, too. Beyond the first team, we back the women’s team and all levels of youth. For example, we helped pay for the under-18s coach to travel to Helston when they were in the FA Youth Cup. Anyone in the club who needs our help will get it.
It’s also vital to note that this is all being done by volunteers. I cannot stress how important volunteers are. Without a shadow of a doubt, they are the lifeblood of the club. From the pitch team, who prep the pitch for every home game, to the painting crew, where Ricky and his team keep the stadium looking shipshape, there is an endless list of people who help look after the club, all at zero cost to the club. I can’t put a value on that.
I think it’s priceless.
After reading all of this so far, it may be fair to assume that Weymouth has been a part of my whole life. But that’s not the case.
In fact, football hasn’t always been in my life.
I grew up on a dairy farm in south Devon in the middle of nowhere. With no local team, car or even a mode of transport, football wasn’t really a thing. That may sound a bit strange!
This isn’t to say I had no exposure to football, though. The first match I ever saw was in 1973, when Plymouth Argyle faced Santos, who had come all the way from Brazil for a friendly. My Dad got tickets from his farm boss and took me and my two siblings down to Home Park in a Land Rover. If you haven’t worked it out already, a certain Pelé was playing. Not a bad introduction to football, eh!?
My first introduction to Weymouth wasn’t until I was 18, in 1976, when I saw the floodlights of our old ground, “The Rec,” from HMS Osprey in Portland. I was in the Royal Navy at the time. From then, they became my team.
But I still couldn’t watch them until around 1983. I was on the frontline unit in the Navy and I kept going away, so my wife would have to send me the Daily Echo so I could see how we were doing. When I was able to start going to games, I saw a big club competing near the top of the Alliance Premier League, which was the fifth tier at the time. Our “friends” from up the road, Yeovil Town, were in the same league!
My happiest memory as a Weymouth fan is without doubt our equaliser away to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup in 2005. Us away fans were absolutely ecstatic, and it set us up for a home replay, which put us in the spotlight.
Another memory that isn’t too far behind was when we got promoted to the Conference Premier under Garry Hill later that season. To win away at Bishop’s Stortford on the penultimate game of the campaign to clinch the title and take us up, that was a truly amazing feeling.
Now, as for this season, the problem is that memories can be a little short. It wasn’t long ago when we were on the brink of going under, so we are still in a rebuilding process. We had to spend an awful lot of money this season repairing the stadium. We’re still growing, but we’re doing something right. We need to keep working hard, and if we can finish mid-table this season that would be an unbelievable result.
Overall, Weymouth Football Club is integral to the town of Weymouth, both in representing the people from here and spreading itself out to the wider community. We have a responsibility to do that. I’ve been to places such as Fleetwood and Morecambe, both smaller than Weymouth, and their football teams are in the Football League. I also look at teams like Cheltenham Town and Wycombe Wanderers, who used to come down and play us at The Rec, and see their positions. In terms of aspirations, sometimes I think that could be us.
But we’ve got no God-given right to be there. As Mark Molesley has said, you’re entitled to nothing in football. Everything you want has to be earned.
