Hawks still waiting to find out aid levels

Hawks are still waiting to discover how much financial aid they will receive from the Government after being forced to start their season behind closed doors.

Along with other National League clubs, they had been expecting to lift the curtain on 2020/21 with some spectators inside the grounds.

But Boris Johnson’s, below, recent pressing of the pause button on the return of crowds to ‘elite’ sporting events has scuppered that.

The Government have said they will give the National League £10m over three months.

Cash will be handed out to each of the 67 clubs based on how many fans attended home league games last season.

Last season Hawks averaged 1,386 over 17 home games - a total of 23,562 supporters.

If the government awarded them £10 for every fan, they would bank £13,860 for every home game that took place behind closed doors.

Last season, the players’ weekly wage bill was around the £7,000 mark, though that has been reduced for the 2020/21 campaign.

Meanwhile, Hawks and other clubs have got bills to pay and expenses to meet as well as players’ wages.

By the end of next Wednesday, they will have played three home games - two in the FA Cup and one in the league.

In all, Hawks would have paid out over £1,000 to the match officials.

‘The expenses for the three match officials can be anything between £400-600 a game,’ said chairman Derek Pope. ‘It’s even more money this season because now they’re all travelling in separate cars - before you might have had two in one car.

‘In the FA Cup we’ve also got to pay the away team’s travel expenses.’

Not only are Hawks currently missing out on admission money, they are missing out on secondary spending such as food and drink.

Pope said the club would regularly bank over £1,000 from selling food at a home game.

‘It’s strange,’ he said. ‘We can’t have fans here in the outside and all socially distancing.

‘We’ve done a lot of work on social distancing - we’d worked out we could have around 1,400 fans here all two metres apart. We were looking forward to welcoming them back, so it was bit of a disappointment to find out we couldn’t.’

Hawks had already sold 500 season tickets prior to being told the season would start behind closed doors. All season ticket holders will now get a free stream for all home games. Anybody else will have to pay £8.99 per match.

‘We’ve spent a few thousand pounds getting all the equipment, cameras, laptops, in order to stream the games,’ said Pope.

‘It’s all spend, spend, spend… we spent a lot in the summer deep cleaning the ground (ahead of the play-offs) and that’s still going on now.’