Seager remains upbeat despite budget cut-backs

WHITSTABLE TOWN are the latest Kent club forced to cut their playing budget, writes Stephen McCartney.

Manager Marc Seager, speaking to www.kentishfootball.co.uk ahead of Sittingbourne’s 2-1 win at league leaders Kingstonian at Kingsmeadow yesterday, revealed the Belmont Road club slashed their already minute budget last week, ahead of their 5-1 home win over fellow strugglers Chipstead.

Seager’s side play two sides that are vying for automatic promotion, Sittingbourne (away) and Ashford Town (home) over the festive period and like every other Ryman League club, money is tight.

“I’m a believer that if you’ve got a top five or six budget in the league, you should be competing in the top five or six,” said Seager.

“If you’ve got a bottom five or six budget that’s where you look to be competing.

“Things were made tougher for me this week as the budget was cut, but fair play to my players. I think the club should be so grateful to the players that no-one’s left, they’ve all declared their loyalty and are going to stay until the end of the season.

“After the bad news, we’ve been able to bring Jon Neal in so everyone’s fighting for places.

“I’ve got to keep doing my job. Even though the budget’s been cut, I’ve still got to make us as strong as we can and that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Whitstable Town have suffered the biggest slump in attendances in the Ryman League Division One South - as crowds at Belmont Road have dropped 34.2%.

The team are in eighteenth place in the table with 20 points from 22 games and are only four points clear off the drop zone.

The Oystermen, playing only their second season at this level, have averaged just 154 this season and Seager explained where he sees the problem.

“Crowds are down, money behind the burger bar and in the bar are down, I think that’s the way society is at the moment with the credit crunch,” he said.

“I think (we) got carried away a little but when they were looking at averaging 250. The only reason our average was so high last year was we had Dover there and when we played Chatham we had 350.

“When you look at the Dover game we had 1,100 people so that’s more than less ten home games.

“It’s just the way football is at the moment. It’s happening at every club, Maidstone United, Sittingbourne, there all having to cut money. It’s even happening at the top level.”

But Seager said the current economic climate will force other clubs to slash their playing budgets and players’ picking up more reasonable wages can only be good for the game in the long term.

He said: “To be honest with you I think it will do non-league football the world of good because I think there’s been too many players earning more money than their abilities worth to be honest.

“As a manager I try to sign players and some of the figures I’ve been quoted are unbelievable but what you do is see players’ playing for clubs because they want to play for that football club and not just for the money.

“It’s never nice when you have your budget cut but I think it’s going to be good for non-league football.”

One player that has had his money cut is Maidstone United striker Lloyd Blackman.

Blackman was the Stones two goal hero in their 3-2 win over Kent rivals Ramsgate at Bourne Park at the weekend and the former Welling United and Folkestone Invicta man admits his club’s off-the-field problems does play at the back of his mind.

The Stones were put up for sale three weeks ago and joint-manager Lloyd Hume revealed that the club’s playing budget had been slashed by 40%.

“I think we’d all be kidding ourselves and all lying if we didn’t say it’s been playing on our minds,” Blackman told www.kentishfootball.co.uk.

“Although we enjoy playing our football it’s also part of our job and obviously the current climate economically everyone is having a major problem.

“We hear stories that the money situation (at Maidstone United) is not great and it obviously concerns us but as soon as you walk out on the pitch you really do switch off and just play your football.”

Visit Whitstable Town’s website:  www.whitstabletownfc.co.uk

Visit Maidstone United’s website:  www.maidstoneunited.co.uk