Q: At the end of last season there was a lot of support for the club and a lot of people paid the full price for their season tickets when they renewed, where did that extra money go?

ME: Dean spent it on the team, [laughs] and that’s not a glib comment. 

DR: Please, please more! [laughs] 

ME: Blimey, it’s just like a management meeting!

It really wasn’t a glib comment, it actually shifted the playing budget that’s what it did. I hope that’s what people would expect really. It allowed us to keep one or two that we may not have been able to keep and it allowed us to recruit one or two that we may not have been able to recruit in positions where Dean thought that we looked a bit thin. It’s as simple as that really. It went into playing.

DR: Thank you [laughs]

ME: That’s alright it’s not my money [laughs]. It was a tough time, it was very difficult to keep making estimates all the time and we got down to May and June and usually we would reforecast every quarter, at that point we were re-forecasting every week. Every Tuesday morning I used to get everybody in to go over it again because it was shifting so quickly. The gesture by many, many supporters was very much appreciated, it did move things as one of a number of things: NEC’s renewal moved things, the supporters in their number and in their value moved things, Lexus coming on board moved things. You know the phrase a movable feast – that was this summer for us, so thanks.

Q: In twelve months time when were sitting here and we’re [d.v.] and we’re back up in the Premiership, what are your goals for the foreseeable future, say 2 or 3 years?

ME: I’ll say what I said when I came to Quins, I’ve never changed, our goal can only be to grow the club in such a way on and off the field so we are the equal of any team in Europe and that’s coming from a long, long way back – I realise that.

In 2000 we had a very small ground, with a very small crowd and we were losing millions of pounds. I always thought that south west London could support a team that was the equal of Toulouse, Leicester, Muster, Cardiff, or Scarlets or whoever and I still believe that. And you’ll say ‘what is he talking about we were relegated last year’. It’s the great paradox, in some ways I think about it every day, on the other hand in the long run I know it shouldn’t change where we get to in the end. I still have this dream that we’ll have the stadium built up to 15,000 and it will be full every week, we’ll have 10,000 season ticket holders, Friday night it will be sold out for Harlequins Rugby League, it will be sold out on Saturday for Harlequins, both Harlequins teams will win and we’ll be the biggest club in the country. I don’t know how long it’s going to take but while I’m here that’s the dream and I do think that it’s achievable, if I didn’t I’d be in the wrong place.

Q: In your dreams do you ever feel like changing the scoreboard? [laughs]

ME: I love the old scoreboard [laughs], I’ll be sad to see it go!

Q: There are great facilities in this stand now but I’ve got two questions: 1. Are there going to be more seats in the Members’ Bar and 2. If you sit at the north end of the stand you’ve got to walk a long way round the back of the stand to get to the Members’ Bar, is there a way to make this better?

ME: Yes to the first question, the Members’ Bar isn’t fitted out yet, there’s a lot of this stand that isn’t fully fitted out yet. There’s a big plasma screen to go up, there’s all the memorabilia to go up, there’s all the furniture to come in, basically we crashed it like hell just to get the building up and running, the loyalty wall isn’t up yet, it’s not finished. 

To reply to your second question there are only certain times when you can’t come round the front – the gates across the front of the concourse are only closed when the teams are about to go to warm up, when the teams come back after the warm up, two minutes before they come out, and during the game, they are actually open for three or four minutes for people to get to their seats before the whistle blows.

On the one hand you’ve got people in the East Stand saying ‘for Christ’s sake can you not stop those bloody people walking up and down’ and in the Lexus stand you’ve got people saying ;I’ve got to walk all the way round the back of the stand to get a pint’ – I can’t win really! [laughs]

But, the Greene King Marquee is going to go in the north west corner so that will alleviate it to some extent and we’ve overloaded the mobile beer sellers, the Major Toms, in that end of the ground too. But I make no apology that I don’t want the level of perambulation in front of the Lexus that we’ve got in front of the East [applause], saying that I wouldn’t want to get between a man or a woman and his or her beer if I can possibly avoid it.

Q: Do you think that’s the wrong way, do you think you should stop them from coming out of the bars until there is a break in play? 

ME: To be honest I’ve thought of closing the bars during the game altogether on the grounds that I thought people were here to see the rugby, but perhaps that’s going a little too far. I don’t think it’s too bad this side but whoever designed the concourse on the East side should be taken out and publicly garrotted! It’s great socially but it really screws up people in the first five rows and that’s one of the reasons we made it smaller this side.

It’s all to do with people’s expectations, and don’t get me wrong I want people’s expectations to be high and I think things are getting better every year, it isn’t perfect, I quite like people complaining because it keeps us on our toes but you can never satisfy everyone.

I saw in the news this week that Saracens don’t have a bar in the ground any more, they closed the only public bar at Vicarage Road, I think it’s great that our guys are complaining that they have a 150 yard walk while the game is on. [laughs] But I think that’s right, it helps us because it keeps the standard of service going up, you can always make things better. 

People want to have a beer and people want to watch the game and they are mutually exclusive, because the easier you make it for people to get to the bars the more people’s views get obscured, that’s a fact and you just have to try to strike a balance.

In the next section we’ll find out if Evans or Richards wanted to sign Lomu.

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