To The Board

[lammy]

You sold me a dream 10 years ago which I have held onto ever since.
You made me believe we could reach the Conference National and then aim for the league.
Since then everything we have done as a club has made me believe that this is where we are going - until now.
We are going down and you are giving me the impression you don't really care.
This season we started as favourites. Not a team happy to finish mid table. We were going to win the league.
Mid march we are 4th bottom. We have no team spirit. No passion. No clue.
The manager has been making mistakes since August. Remember those 5 centre halves against Bromley!
Your loyalty before Christmas was admirable but we are now 6 weeks from the edge of the season. Everyone can now see that even if we stay up Shaun Gale is not good enough to manage this club. We must make a change now. A new manager could still has a couple of weeks to sign players to turn round this desent into the Southern League.
The spirit has been sucked out of the club. Every other game now finishes with a chorus of 'what a load of rubbish'. These boards are silent because all enthusiasm has gone.
If we go down we will be where we started all those years ago - 2 leagues below the conference.
I thought January 2008 was going to be the start of a great adventure, not the date when it ended.
Don't stick your heads in the sand. If we lose saturday we will go down. Don't delay any further.
PLEASE remove the management team today.

[shaun]

I can't argue with any of that.

The very MINIMUM that our club should expect every season is the play-offs. That is not arrogance, it is based on the infractructure that we now have in place and our ability to sign some of the best players from this league.

Quite how we find ourselves in this position, I have no idea. It is nothing to do with injuries, missed chances, individual errors or any of the other excuses we hear week in week out.

The only conclusion I (and most others, it would appear) can come to is that the management of our club is out of its depth. Anger has been replaced by apathy and something needs to be done fast.

[Adam]

Anger has been replaced by apathy and something needs to be done fast.

That's the most worrying thing for me Shaun (and I'm as guilty as the next man). I've given up wondering about what our best XI is, what formation we should play, I don't even turn up to a game with a result in mind.

I turn up, have a good laugh about how rubbish we are, and go home again. If we win, then I generally think "how did we scrape that", if we lose, I shrug and think "didn't expect anything different"

If we go down we will be where we started all those years ago - 2 leagues below the conference.
I thought January 2008 was going to be the start of a great adventure, not the date when it ended.

Sums it up for me.

[mrlibertine]

Couldn't agree any more with that. Spot on.

[mark c]

to my immense disapointment I have to concur with the above postings,Galey has tried his damndest for this club and undoubtedly bleeds yellow,blue and white.

last night was about it for me, I couldn't even be arsed to join in the "what a load of rubbish"
it was directionless,clueless and frankly embarrasing.
back in 2000 the club had an equally hard decision to make with the team in an equally perilous position,spookily after a defeat at Dorchester.
that decision saved us that season,i'm really sorry to have to say this, but that decision has to be made again.

relegation will be the end of any ambitions to get into the conference,if people think this league is hard to get out of, its nowhere near as hard as the ones below.

[skif]

Thing is I worry that our management team's involvement in other financially useful elements of the club aside from first team duties, plus the length of their contracts, renders them virtually unsackable. I would imagine the response to the Charlie Oatway abusing fans issue will be flim-flammed 'cos we can't afford to lose him, in terms of money in, and money out.

Apathy is absolutely the correct word. As Adam suggests if it wasn't for the 'standing with me chums' aspect I can't imagine there would be much to drag us to games at the mo. The odd good performance has provided a false picture.

There is no anti-Shaun Gale agenda here either, I can't imagine there's anyone who didn't want him to build on the cup run and really establish his reputation, but it hasn't happened.

Can I give the example of Martin Ling at my local league club up here, Leyton Orient. I personally witnessed him getting shouted at by the O's fans at a game back in October due to very poor performances and there was an angry clamouring for him to go in the stands and on forums. However once he did go there was an outpouring of gratitude and respect for his loyalty, commitment and his early achievements in the job. If Galey was to go, I'm sure that would be the model for what would happen at our club.

So as much as we like the bloke, we have to admit that the crash in morale of a loss to Thurrock this Saturday may well condemn us. Even if we're saved by Weymouth, Lewes or others dropping divisions, or if we do remain solidly 19th from here on in, that will be nothing to celebrate.

[MarkR]

I just feel that the club's board bottled it months ago when a number of fans had clamoured for a change of management & we're now paying the price by facing the real prospect of relegation if we don't beat Thurrock. If we go down, I think our ambition of playing in the Conference National & the Football League will die with it as a large number of players will leave & we wouldn't be able to attract quality players so the hard work from the cup runs we had would be wasted BIG TIME!! It all boils down to the fact that the board didn't want to pay out a hefty compensation to the management team had they taken the onus to sack them!! I think Gale & Oatway must go NOW & rather than pay them compensation, we should sue them for giving us 'a poor shoddy service' under the Trades Description Act as we fans paid good hard earned money to see a Play Off chasing team seeking promotion & not the rubbish we got this season - the worst I've seen in hawks history!!

[mark c]

I think Gale & Oatway must go NOW & rather than pay them compensation, we should sue them for giving us 'a poor shoddy service' under the Trades Description Act as we fans paid good hard earned money to see a Play Off chasing team seeking promotion & not the rubbish we got this season - the worst I've seen in hawks history!!

YOU REALLY ARE A PRIZE IDIOT
you have only paid to get in to watch a game of football that is all you get for your season ticket or £10.
jeez suing people because its not been a good season PATHETIC nothing else just PATHETIC.

BTW that is not a dig at your disability just at your level of football intelligence.

all of the postings on this thread appear to be have been thought out , yours is an insult to all Hawks fans whose stomachs are churning with worry today and all youre interested in is making some cheap bucks.

the worst in Hawks history obviously you missed the bulk of Dave Leworthy's reign and the latter part of Billy Gilberts, now they were really bad.

and if you don't agree I suppose you could always sue me
it really does say something about you.

[Scott]

I read that as tongue-in-cheek with regard to the 'trades description act'. No one could mean that for real surely?

[simon lynch]

But Scott, what you have to remember is that last night's performance, and some of the one's gone before it, have left people very, very fragile, and often the funny side is not seen, even in the most tongue-in-cheek comment. I have to say when I read MarkR's comments not for one moment did I feel inclined to laugh at either his 'jokes' or our predicament...

Last night was the worst I have felt coming away from a match in a long. long time (I missed the Welling match which apparently was worse). Dorchester were nothing special - they relied upon having a big centreback to repell anything that came near him, and scored from one of very few chances they had, and that was from us switching off at a corner. Other than that the defence did ok.

The one thing I have noticed is that, with the exception of some of the players who are newer to the team (Hinshelwood / Fogen / Martin), no-one wants to put a foot on the ball - it's either a first time lump up the pitch to no-one in particular, or a fancy flick into space if it does get into the last third of the pitch. There appears to be no cohesion, no confidence in some of the players who have been out there all season.

When we do get in front we look an ok side - Bishop's Stortford at home proved that - but it seems whenever we go behind the players confidence ebbs away. An easy thing for me to say, but they should stop feeling sorry for themselves whenever they have a setback, and move on - thinking about something that has happened in the past isn't going to influence what will happen in the future.

There's plenty of people expecting a positive response on Saturday now - not least Gale and Oatway, but also us fans. We need 3 points and a good performance to restore even a small amount of faith.