The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
No risks over Raith’s future
RAITH ROVERS chief executive Eric Drysdale has insisted the club’s board will not take risks with finances to return to Scottish football’s top flight.
The Kirkcaldy club had a relatively uneventful annual meeting on Tuesday night when shareholders were updated on Rovers’ financial status for the year ended June 30 2013.
The club’s accounts for the 12 months showed a profit of £81,350, with the fact that turnover was up by 18.3% to £1.043 million and total costs were reduced by 4.5% from the previous year representing encouraging signs for Rovers.
However, Drysdale maintains tight control over the club’s expenditure will continue to be exercised to ensure the books are balanced at Stark’s Park.
“It wasn’t at all an eventful meeting on Tuesday night — all the directors basically gave upates on their areas of responsibility and we were updating the shareholders on what our rationale was for doing what we’ve been doing,” he said.
“What I would say is that I’ve been a director for 15 years and we’re more financially stable now than we’ve ever been. But we have to maintain control on our costs and we have to adhere to the budgets we have spent a huge amount of time putting together.
“We will not be taking any risks that would jeopardise the long-term future of the club.
“This season we already know that financially we’ll be OK because of the games we’ve got coming up and there’s no reason to suspect we won’t continue to balance the books.
“We’re always trying to find new ways to increase our home attendances and we’ll be trying a few things later in the season, but the more fans who come along to Stark’s Park the better obviously.”
A home Scottish Cup tie against Celtic — which was screened live on the BBC — played a big part financially in season 2012/13, although there are several other factors which contributed to the position Rovers find themselves in.
“Financially it helped enormously last season to get a televised match against Celtic, but having said that we did have a lot of less lucrative cup ties so we didn’t earn as much as you might think,” Drysdale said.
“Obviously this season we’ve had the Ramsdens Cup run to the final and we’ve got a Scottish Cup tie against Hibs next week where we’re looking at a five-figure attendance.
“These are big for us and will make a difference in terms of the overall financial performance.
“One thing that I would say is that over the last three or four years we’ve spent just shy of £200,000 on the stadium, and that’s something that tends to be forgotten.
“There has been work done on the floodlights, the fire alarm system, painting, work on the main stand, and, of course, there was a lot of work done on the pitch after last January when you might remember the problems we had after the Celtic cup tie.
“Obviously we lost the game at the weekend against Alloa which was unavoidable but the pitch gets glowing tributes from referees and players alike.
“It also makes a huge difference to clubs like ours in the way the money is now distributed from the SPFL, as we get money in August and again in January.
“That makes a huge difference cashflowwise, because that’s always a challenge for football clubs when you’ve got regular monthly costs.”
Rovers are still right in the hunt for promotion to the Scottish Premiership but Drysdale admits the potential make-up of next year’s Championship is looking lucrative for the Kirkcaldy club.
“If we don’t get promoted, we’ve got the virtual certainty of Rangers, the virtual certainty of Hearts and we’ll have the distinct possibility of Dunfermline in the Championship, so there would be a lot to look forward to,” he said.
“That would mean that we’re going to have four or six healthy home crowds guaranteed. But that does not mean that we would change things dramatically in terms of our spending.
“We’ve had cup ties this season but that does not mean to say we’ll do as well in the cups next season.
“So we’ll be cautious but we’ll put a competitive team on the pitch and do the best we can within our financial constraints.”