Hornets do things differently

Rochdale Hornets has done things differently to most clubs in recent years. 

As the country’s first professional supporter-owned Rugby League club, Rochdale Hornets hasn’t been afraid to tread a different path.

After a number of years of steady progress, last season represented the first significant step backwards with relegation from the Championship.

Rather than dwell on what was always going to be an incredibly difficult assignment in 2014, Hornets see it as the dawn of another new era - one where off-field progress comes before on-field success, allowing the club to be more sustainable should promotion come around again.

Ryan Bradley has been chief executive at Spotland for two years now, overseeing promotion, relegation, a dual registration partnership with St Helens and a sell-out World Cup game in the town.

That Fiji-Ireland match - one of the games and events of the tournament - provided a turning point for the club.

“That topped 2013 off beyond anyone’s belief, but we reached a stage then where we hit a bit of a plateau,” Mr Bradley explained.

“We’d got promoted and everything was great, but with the structures, people and budget we had in place, we were only going one way and that was straight back down.

“We needed to take a little bit of stock and look at what we wanted to do.

“We went out and approached some key people in areas we wanted to improve, and formed an executive board to work alongside our own board.

“Previously when we’ve gone knocking for these people doors have been closed and there’s been no interest there, but the success of the World Cup and the success of promotion meant that those people were available to us.

“We’ve now got four executive board members available to us and they’re really pushing us forward off the field.

“They will help set us up off the field as a Championship club, so that when we get there on the field we can stay there.”

The four executive board members all bring something different. Julie Bowmer has an accountancy background and is the Rochdale Business Women of the Year and the North West Entrepeneur of the Year.

Richard Lamb is a London-based hospitality expert, Neil Wood had held several senior roles at the RFL and aims to help the club’s community team attain trust status, and Martin Ballard assists with marketing.

“Those four key people - if you were to buy their expertise, as a club we couldn’t afford it,” Mr Bradley said.

“Having them on board as directors means we’ve got access to that expertise to support what the club board as volunteers are doing.”

It’s easy to forget that Hornets remain a strictly members-owned club, a co-operative, and
one that made a profit against the odds in 2013.

“We think it works,” Mr Bradley said.

“We’ve had the success of promotion and bringing a World Cup game here. The year we got promoted we turned over quite a substantial profit after bonuses were paid.

“There’s not many professional sporting clubs that turn over a profit.

“Last year we’ll probably look at a small loss, but that was planned against the profit we’d made the year before.

“So 100 per cent, support-owned clubs work as long as you bring in the expertise to support it.”

Hornets face a significant 2015 in what looks a hugely competitive Championship League One.

Mr Bradley added: “We’ve just written a strategy up that we hope will take us over the next three years.

“That strategy is all about getting up into the Championship.

“If we did go up, the extra revenue that we’d get would go 80 percent towards players this time.

“The structures we’re putting in place off the field now is being done in the hope that next time we get there we’re ready, rather than getting there and then trying become a Championship club.

“Next year we’ve recruited a squad that’s probably better than we had this year in a higher division - we’ve more experience in there.

“We want to come back at the first time of asking.

“Ultimately we want to be a sustainable Championship club.

“We don’t want to risk everything to get there and then struggle to stay there.

“We want to build off the field now to ensure that when we do get there we stick there for a while.”