By Prof
August 26 2004

‘Next 12 months for Harlequins are crucial’ seemed to be the take home message from the press conference. The redevelopment of the Stoop is a major project and the planning hearing for the West Stand should be happening some time at the beginning of October.

The new North stand is nearly finished and season ticket holders should be able to have a look round it at the Season Ticket Holders Barbecue next Saturday.

If the worse happens and the planning permission is turned down it will have a huge effect on Quins, the business plan relies on the extra capacity that the new stand will provide. If a new stand can’t be built then it will mean lower income from ticket sales and it would make it difficult to compete with the other teams and it would be difficult to reach our target and be ‘the best on and off the pitch in Europe’. Although the redevelopment of the West is very important there has been no talk of moving to another venue.

Tony Copsey also said what a great idea the Double Header is and how he hoped it would be a success and become a permanent feature on the fixture list. It is very much a neutral occasion, it doesn’t really matter who is the home side because all four sides will get something from it.

Copsey then explained that over the summer he had played for England for the first time. He had played alongside Jase for an England Legends XV against South African Legends, by the sound of it it was a great tour and even though they lost the match there was no dishonour in defeat, after all some of the SA players were still current and England did win the drinking on tour.

After the chatting the press conference proper started:

Tony Copsey (Quins’ Managing Director) was the first person to speak and to start with he apologised for the late start of the press conference and blamed it on Andre Vos having to do his hair after training.

Quins have done a lot to change our ‘city slickers’ image in the last four or five years. Our brand values more family and community focused club which is ‘building for the future’ and a lot is happening.

This change is coming on a firm base, season ticket sales are 5,000 builds on growth that we’ve had on the last few years and in the last two years we have had to cap the number of season tickets sold, last year at 4,000 and this year at 5,000. This is a tenfold increase over the last five seasons.

Against the other ‘home counties’ teams (London Irish, London Wasps and Saracens) we have overtaken them in season ticket sales, it is obviously a great advantage being London’s only club. This year the 5000 season ticket sales has been made possible because of the building of the new North Stand which holds nearly 2,300 people and takes our capacity to 10,000 from 8,500 last season. Lat year the Stoop had the smallest capacity last season but we were mid-table when it came to attendance in the league.  The extra capacity gives us a chance to expand our attendances even further.

Copsey, Evs and Vos at the Press Conference  ©Prof

On the commercial side CSF are in their 4^th year of association and NEC are in their 9^th year – the longest sponsorship deal in Premiership rugby – we’re delighted to have such long relationships with our sponsors. Amongst  our Platinum Sponsors Eden Park are entering their 5^th  Norton Rose their 2^nd; Greene King their 2^nd; Kooga their 3^rd year; and eTeach.com are renewing a sponsorship that they did a few years ago as one of our community partners, you’ll see their name on the collars again.

On the corporate side we have a waiting list for corporate boxes and we have already sold out 70% of match day hospitality for the whole season which bodes well for the next 12 months.

As well as the new North Stand we are hoping to get planning permission to build a new West Stand to replace the one that’s there by the start of next season. The Planning Committee should be meeting at the beginning of October and if we get the go ahead the old stand will be knocked down starting on the 2^nd January 2005. This means that the capacity will go up to between 12,500 and 13,000 and we will more than double our corporate hospitality facilities, physio rooms and offices and the away teams will be happy to hear that we will be building new changing rooms too. So this next twelve months is one of the most important times in our history. When we have a 13,000 capacity it will do us for a while.

We like to boast about the Premier Rugby Marketing Awards in which we have done well in the last couple of years and on the playing side there were successes we won the Parker Pen Challenge Cup and also the Zurich ‘A’ Trophy which just goes to show what a good job Tony Russ and his team are doing with the youth development, the Harlequins Academy also provided seven players to the England U21 team for the U21 RWC last season.

Then the talk moved on to the playing side, but that’s for another report which will be coming to this site soon …