By Malcolm Nugent - CUOSC

A bumper crowd will herald the beginning of a new era when the Blues take on Charlton at Brunton Park on Saturday.

American businessman Tom Piatak and his family have taken control of the club, leaving everyone dreaming of an exciting future.

The Piataks first registered their interest in the Blues in February and have shown great resolve to get the deal done and take a 90 per cent shareholding in the club

CUOSC have long been working to bring about succession of ownership and believe the takeover and promised new investment is great news for the Blues.

We want to thank our members for voting through the resolution to dilute our shareholding to ten per cent and facilitating the deal.

We also want to pay tribute to Billy Atkinson, our representative on the Holdings Board. He suffered many frustrations during the months of talks but remained calm and patient throughout.

As negotiations over the new shareholders agreement developed he was ably supported by CUOSC chairman Matt Spooner, our 1921 board representative Nigel Davidson and his deputy Carol Wilson. The rest of our board were always ready to assist in any way we could.

Although our shareholding has now been reduced we have a good working relationship with the new owners and believe we can make a difference.

But as the major representative of supporters we have to make sure we remain relevant.

One of the ways we can do that is by increasing our membership.

The more we have the more say we will have and the more money we can give to the club.

We currently have 1,154 members but our aim is to get the total towards the 2,000 mark and upwards.

The CUOSC board continues to evolve and will do so again next month.

Eight members have put their names forward to fill the four places available on our ten-strong board.

These include Nigel Davidson and Carol Wilson who are standing for re-election. The others are Mike Denovellis, Gerard Gornall, Richard Mullen, Ross Parkinson, Martin Robson and Claire Winder.

Voting starts this weekend and the result will be announced at our Annual General Meeting which will take place in Foxy’s Restaurant on Sunday, December 3 from 1pm (doors open 12.30pm). The meeting will also be streamed.

It costs £10 for an adult to join CUOSC for one year and £5 for seniors and under-18s. You can sign up via our website at www.cuosc.org.uk