Folkestone are buzzing with new directors at the helm

Ryman Premier League club Folkestone Invicta unveiled their five new directors on the first day of the new year.

One of the five new directors is Mr Nigel Busbridge, whose company sponsors the club and it’s Cheriton Road ground.

Mr Busbridge joins Gordon Wallis, Jim Pellatt, Lynn Woods and Mike Perfect on the board, under the chairmanship of Mr Bob Dix.

Mr Busbridge’s name is probably familiar to many Invicta fans as his company Buzzlines is the main sponsor for the club.

“Obviously my wife and I run Buzzlines Coaches and we own a successful business which is mainly an operator from Kent but we do run nationally too,” he told www.folkestoneinvicta.co.uk.  

“I’ve been watching Folkestone Invicta for about five or six years now and I’ve known Andy Ingleston for a while and his son and mine both play football for the Colts under 10s.

“It was about two years ago after a lot of badgering on Andy’s part that persuaded me to become a sponsor and having sponsored the Club for two years I just feel this is a natural progression for me up the Club and I’m extremely excited of what we can possibly achieve.

“It’s clear to every Folkestone fan that Bob (Dix) and Andy have turned the Club around because it was in an awful mess five to ten years ago and now the financial position at the Club is stronger than it has ever been.

“It just needs to go to the next step now in the sense that it needs certain people to be responsible for certain aspects within the Club and with the Board we have in place it enables people to concentrate on one thing as opposed to just Bob and Andy between them for example”.

When asked what the main difference between being the main sponsor of the Club and being a Board member Nigel explained. “As a sponsor, before it was just an amount of money that was paid to the Club for advertising and the main reason why my wife and I decided to do it was to give something back to Folkestone as a town and to encourage the youngsters as well because they get a lot of enjoyment from it and we have a superb youth system so we wanted to support that.

“The main difference now is although we will continue to invest that money into the Club I will be looking at improve the corporate area of the Club and look after the sponsors and the facilities around the ground because it can definitely be vastly improved.

“The scope is certainly there to get new businesses interested in sponsoring the Club, even in little ways, and if we can improve the experience and environment they have then the more appealing it’ll be.

“If we have match sponsors then it’s about making sure that they get treated correctly and when they turn up that they have got somewhere to go and sit and have somewhere to go and have a drink because at the moment you go into the Wilf Armoury Suite and you’ve got sponsors in there and they’re mixing with all the other fans”.

In addition to improving corporate hospitability, Nigel also stated that one of the key priorities for the new Board would be to increase the number of supporters coming through the turnstiles.

He said: “We need to get more people through the gate because the Club has definitely got the potential to be well supported. I mean if we can get even 50 to 100 more people through the gate that will make a hell of a difference to the Club because it will give us a bit more revenue to invest in the playing side.

“That ambition is quite achievable but it’s about having the right things in place to achieve that and make the local population interested in football at the Club.

“As a Board we’re not stupid; we know that we’ve got to have the team on the pitch to make the Club successful. Yes ok we’ve got a relatively young team that have had a bad run of results recently but to be fair they haven’t played badly at all. The team just haven’t been able to score consistently and from my point of view and probably from Neil’s (Cugley) that’s where things need to improve and maybe going into the New Year that’s where the team will have to strengthened”.

The new Board will meet on a regular basis and Nigel mentioned: “We’ve got a meeting planned for Friday this week and I think that’s a good thing because obviously not everyone can turn up at the same time but if you can have meetings available for us to meet up then it improves the communication and the ideas that come from each other.

“We’re all in regular contact with each other through email and it is not a case of just forming this Board and then meeting up for a pint after a game on the Saturday. We email each other every day and the emails sent are copied to everyone so no one is kept out of the loop.

“I think if you talked to the rest of the Directors they would say the same sort of thing that we are all working together to make the Club more secure and form the roots for something bigger to grow because there’s no point in having a big roof if you haven’t got the strong foundations to support it so that’s what we’re aiming for and maybe we won’t see that this season but hopefully in one or two season’s time, we’ll have a more professional club to build a decent team around”.

Back on the pitch, Folkestone Invicta could justifiably consider themselves to be very unlucky after coming away from Hartsdown Park with a 1-0 defeat inflicted by high flying Ryman Premier League side Margate.

Robin Trott’s side who have made no secret of their ambition to win promotion to the Conference South on their climb back up the non league pyramid, signed a host of players in the pre season period, notably several from Conference side Gravesend & Northfleet after their switch to full time status saw the departure of many part time players.

Manager Neil Cugley said: “Obviously we went into the game with quite a few injuries and that will always tell with our side and Margate were doing well in the League so it was always going to a be a tough game and trying to keep Hockton quiet wasn’t going to be easy, but I was immensely proud of my players throughout the game.

“The lads acquitted themselves really well and we had tough conditions against us in the first half and really I felt we should’ve at least got a draw, if not a win because we hit the post, the bar and came so close but yet didn’t get anything from the game.

“Margate came on a bit stronger in the second half and passed the ball a bit better despite the conditions but I still felt that we deserved something from the game and even after we went one down I believed we might get back into it.”

The Seasiders travelled to Margate without injured skipper Adam Flanagan (stomach), striker Paul Jones (groin) and defender Samuel Kola Okikiolu who was unavailable through another commitment arranged before he signed for the Club. On loan Gillingham player Luke Howell was also out of contention with a hamstring problem.

Cugley said: “I hope Flan will be back by the Harrow game away on January 13th as his stomach injury is getting slightly better. Luke Howell should also be back by the Harrow game so things are looking up on the injury side. Paul Jones’s groin is ongoing and I really don’t know when he’ll be fit to be honest”.

The Folkestone boss also announced that the impressive Howell will be at the Buzzlines Stadium for another month after Gillingham agreed to extend his loan spell with Invicta.

“We’ve got an agreement with the Gills that we can keep Luke for another month after he’s fit so hopefully we can keep him until mid February and benefit from his undoubted quality because he’s played really well for us since we’ve had him”, said Cugley.

The Football Club has been further boosted this week when www.folkestoneinvicta.co.uk  exclusively revealed full details of the five new additions to the Club’s Board.

“To be honest the last two, three years have been a struggle for me and the team just because the League is so competitive and we’ve had a limited amount of funds,” said Cugley.

“I honestly cannot describe how happy I am to see this happen to the Club because it will now give me at least a chance to attract some better players to the Club and also just allow me to build a squad which is strong enough to contend with injuries.

“I’m looking for new players all the time now and am on the phone a lot looking at what is available and it’s so pleasing I can go and do this. I told the players after the Margate game that things will be changing and I hope they want to be a part of that.

“If you look at the players we have to come back we definitely will have a squad which are mid table standard if not better if we can play consistently and it’s just a shame at the toughest time of the year we have so many players out because we haven’t really got a bench and we’re just relying on a lot of youth players, who to be fair are doing very well”.

“I can never question the players application or endeavour because they really have been through some tough times over the last month and the fighting spirit is still definitely there because you only have to look at us coming back from two down against Horsham and also giving Margate a decent game where we were unfortunate to lose.”

Folkestone welcome Billericay Town to the Buzzlines Stadium this Saturday for Invicta’s first game of 2007.

“Billericay is another tough game which will test us again as we will still have four or five players out,” revealed Cugley.

“They’ve improved a lot since we last played them in the Trophy and they’ve got some good results against top teams so we’ll definitely be underdogs but my players will give their all as usual.

“We need to do the same as we did to them in the Trophy game in the fact that we didn’t let them settle on the ball and we did lead twice in that match”.

The final score in that Trophy match was 3-2 to the Essex side, despite Ellis Remy and Flanagan putting Invicta ahead twice in the first half, with Billericay scoring two goals in the final twenty minutes to seal victory.

Invicta will be hoping that this Saturday sees the Seasiders take the points and kick off 2007 with three points in front of the Folkestone faithful.

Visit Folkestone Invicta's website:  www.folkestoneinvicta.co.uk

Folkestone Invicta v Billericay Town
Ryman Premier League
Saturday 6^th January 2007
Kick Off 3:00pm
At Buzzlines Stadium, Cheriton Road, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5JU