Predicting how tomorrow’s Carlisle United fans’ forum will go feels like a relatively easy task, guided by past experience.
At the top table, Nigel Clibbens will talk in informed and thorough detail, probably more than anyone else, perhaps with a positive flourish or two. Suzanne Kidd will say good and sensible things about the finances and other off-field business.
John Nixon will give insight to varying degrees, maybe even the odd mild indiscretion, about the big picture stuff. Billy Atkinson will do his best to defend CUOSC’s honour. Steven Pattison’s intermittent contributions will be, one way or another, robust.
Some may surprise us, although, over the piece, it’s unlikely. Exchanges will occur as they do, and then it will be wrapped up: another session with United’s directors over, until the next one.
As before, the forum will also be familiar in other ways. It will be just as notable, again, for what isn’t said, and who isn’t there, as what and who is.
Whilst the opportunity to scrutinise any of those in seats of power at Brunton Park is always welcome, a recurring feature of these events is that, whilst there may not be a couple of empty chairs at the front of the room, there really should be.
The transparency involved in a directors’ forum at United remains incomplete. Whilst Nixon, Clibbens et al will no doubt speak for those not present, we will again be deprived of direct access to two of the most significant voices and parties involved in the club. The two most important, it would be easy to argue.
READ MORE: Carlisle United owners and directors to face questions from fans at forum next week
Andrew Jenkins, we have long been told, no longer enjoys the forum format and prefers to meet fans in smaller numbers. John Jackson, of Purepay Retail Limited prefers not to meet fans at all, given he has been a CUFC Holdings director since the summer of 2018 and participated in no forums, conducted no interviews and made zero public comment.
There is no obligation on either man to attend. EFL rules say that, at events like tomorrow’s, a club must “be represented by its majority owner, board director(s) or other senior executive(s)”.
The word “or” in rule 127.2 gives Jenkins his pass. He cannot under any terms and conditions be dragged to the table. It is fair to say the man has attended a great many such events in the past and it appears accepted that now, in his mid-eighties, is no longer the time.
It is recent enough that United’s long-serving chairman and the man with the most shares in CUFC Holdings was rather indiscreet at a past forum about the wages of a particular player. It is not the sort of disclosure the Blues would prefer to make, and so the risk is now reduced by Jenkins’ absence.
All the same – he remains one of the chief powerbrokers at Brunton Park and, other than his programme notes during the season and those smaller-group meetings (how many fans have experienced one of those recently?), there remains no unfiltered access to his thoughts at a pivotal time in United’s recent history. Shame.
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When it comes to Jackson, there is no pretence that, under different circumstances, he would be there. He is Edinburgh Woollen Mill and now Purepay’s finance man, brought in to oversee EWM’s loan to the Blues in 2018, these days representing the firm to whom Carlisle owe all that money.
“Invited but unavailable,” was United’s take on Jackson’s absence from a 2021 forum. Again, the matter may be ushered off the agenda with a word about his minimal involvement in regular club affairs. It is clear that his role, specific as it was at the outset, has not grown since. Indeed, it had "reduced" since EWM's loans to the Blues had stopped, Clibbens said a year ago.
So no, he may not be the man to grill about signings and EFL Trophy votes and fanzone marquees and the return of the Brunton Pasty.
He would, though, be very much an interesting panellist on the real brass tacks: the loan, the debt, the lack of talks concerning it, the decisions in the recent past which apparently displeased certain parties and the big question on how Carlisle United progress with that seven-figure debt in place, gathering interest by the month.
At the very least: he is a director. A Carlisle United director. A person who, on some level, directs Carlisle United. Would it not be, if not the obligatory thing, then at least the right thing to face some of the people without whom there would not be a club to direct?
Upon Jackson’s appointment to the board of CUFC Holdings, a statement included the words: “Edinburgh Woollen Mill continues to assist Carlisle United because we believe the club plays an important and valuable role in Carlisle.”
And so say all of us. Yet to what end is that regarded as the case now? What is the map from here, what are the reasons United, whose directors include Jackson, are still reportedly waiting for a reply from Purepay, whose directors include Jackson, to their ideas about the debt?
To an extent, those questions can, even now, only be met by partial answers and conjecture. However clearly, decently and dedicatedly those at the table tomorrow will attempt to answer them, the elephant remains in the room.
It says, at a time of general positivity at Brunton Park (linked tightly to Paul Simpson’s presence) and movements in wider football towards transparency, fans can still have a certain amount of the latter, but no more.
It might be well and truly within the rules for this to be the case. That doesn’t, though, make it good.
READ MORE: Still no talks with Purepay over debt, Carlisle United directors admit
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