There's still one that's active. People are posting there, but some have been put off by the latest shenanigans.
The accounts are out and they don't make great reading: a big hole of where a certain amount of cash has actually come from exists. This may well be the reason the auditors couldn't sign off the paperwork and why the club failed its license.
Anyway. Whilst grubbing around in the dungy effluence of the Internet I found a previous message board, which is technically still alive but from which there was a mass migration elsewhere in about 2015.
It is very informative, and goes back to about 2013/14. This is what discussions largely were:
* Nev Powell has done his best but it's time to go.
* Nev Powell is paid too much.
* When other people point out that success deserves positive promotion and attendant rewards, they are referred to the previous two points.
* The board are useless and don't put in any money.
* The board has stolen 30k for a tax bill.
* The board must go.
* Nev must go.
* I am banned from other sites because I say Nev should go.
* The Nev Lovers are heads-in-sand ostriches.
* The Nev-Loving board is deluded.
* Player X is injured and should not be being paid.
* The BCFCSA unilaterally handed over 30k to the board without asking the people that raised it.
I say discussions, but it was generally the same three or four people under various aliases repeating themselves and getting hot under the collar when they were caught talking to themselves. Some other themes:
* X is gay and does gay sex.
* The franchise posts links to franchise stories, trying to drive traffic there (shameful isn't it).
* X is not a Bangor fan.
* Where has the money gone?
And, disgruntled and mischievous/annoying people also did things like:
* Posting the same message in a flood of different languages, taking two or three pages up with drivel.
* Posting song lyrics over two, three or four pages.
It's kind of how to kill a message board isn't it.
What does this all mean? Well, in retrospect this is what was going on, pre-the current regime getting involved.
* Bangor had gambled on getting into Europe again, but when they didn't, there was a huge hole financially (the club was actually in profit in the early 2010s)
* The league-winning team was not added to effectively in a particular January transfer window, and lots of money was wasted on a couple of dodgy signings that didn't help.
* Rent on Nantporth was and is absolutely crippling, as are running costs of the facility. Farrar Road in its latter years was being paid for by the developers so that eased the purse strings and we won the league.
* The 30k tax bill was down as I understand to the fact that travel-to-work (training, games) was not in fact exempt from taxation, and therefore this mistake needed rectifying. Talk was that a certain midget had grassed City up, but there's no proof.
* There really was no other option but for the terrace money, the 30k, to be given to keep the club going at all. It was either that or a club that went bust. (In retrospect that might have been a better option, and we'd have a terrace and a team untouched by... well we all know who... and we might be in the Welsh Alliance, but damnit it would be honest).
So things were far from rosy before the current regime took over. And, in fact, when the consortium was announced it was almost miraculous. Until the news about who they were came out, of course.
Things were in dire straits a couple of seasons back. Something needed to happen.
It was the wrong choice with whom to get involved. Plain and simple.
And the person that engineered it is to blame.
Maybe the rest of the board got sideswiped and conned. Maybe they knew. I don't believe they or the BCFCSA as major shareholder (shares issued for that 30k) would ever have voted it through had they known. No chance.
Ay carumba.
You lie down with dogs, you're gonna get fleas.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
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