THE ink is now dry, the deed is done, with Newport County AFC now officially a fan owned club having smashed their target of £195,000.

Argus football writer Michael Pearlman caught up with five Trust board members; Gavin Foxall, Gareth Marshman, Tony Pring, Lisa Savage and John Bowkett to discuss plans for the future after a tumultuous couple of months.

The Trust have promised increased transparency going forward and as such, here is the complete transcript of the interview, where no topic was off the table.

MP: Are you surprised at exceeding the total or doing it at all? Newport is a club with a passionate fanbase, but economically, this is not a booming area economically...

GF: It’s an absolutely huge effort. In my mind the surprise is that the majority of money we’ve had in, has been from fans. Your point about the demographic is spot on. We’ve had some money from businesses, but the majority of the money we’ve had has been from ordinary fans who come over to watch the County.

The trust has gone to 1800 in the space of a month, which is fantastic.

MP: Presumably going over the target gives you an opportunity to help out immediately on the field?

GF: As we’ve said, through the due diligence we’ve done, there were two things in essence. Firstly, taking control of the club, which we’ve now done and then it’s about sustainability for the rest of the season. We’ll contribute to that with the money we’ve got now and also the benefits package scheme we are running, which is growing nicely.

The hard work starts today for us, even though it’s been bloody hard work up until now.

MP: I’m going to come back to that question, but let’s carry on about what comes next as that is the subject we are on. Am I right in thinking the Supporters’ Direct mandate now suggests three months before you hold elections?

GF: There is a sequence of events. Hit the target, got the shares from the majority shareholder handed over, all signed and sealed and so the Trust becomes the majority shareholder.

Now we’ll address the Trust members and say “do you want to be a community based club?” and of course they’ll say yes, because that’s the whole reason they wanted to join the Trust in the first place and then we’ll issue the share certificates for them.

We will then present a 90-day plan of what we are proposing to do going forward, and then after 90 days we’ll hold democratic elections for who will be placed on the board. (The process works on a one member, one vote basis).

The stability is the key thing; we’ll do incremental elections to maintain stability.

MP: I reiterate the previous question about money for new players now. You understand why. The mentality of fans will be ‘this is brilliant, but what does it mean for right now?’ You will understand that, because you are all fans.

GF: The fact we are over (the target figure, butby £41,000) means there are monies available, but we have to discuss how it is best spent. Robust control is important for us going forward. We don’t exist as a club otherwise. But if we can make more monies available to help the team then we will.

JB: I think we are going to have some very serious meetings. Unfortunately we’ve inherited something we’ve got to work on immediately with the current performance and position of the team. As supporters, we are more than well aware of the position we are in.

MP: We’ve agreed we will come back to that. You’ll all be aware there has been much said about Howard Greenhaf. I want to cover ground on Les and Howard.

There is a vision of Les as a saviour, rightly to a degree, but I think Howard has been unfairly vilified by a lot of people who say he’s trying to run the club into the ground. What do you think?

JB: Yes and I think first of all we would all agree that it’s not fair, the things that have been said about Howard.

Les and Howard have done their utmost for the club. But it’s well known now, that for whatever reason, Les and Howard have had a massive falling out and we’ve been caught in something, a row, that was nothing to do with us.

But Howard, towards the end, more than did his bit for the club financially and otherwise. We understand he’s getting criticism; it certainly isn’t from us though. As far as we are concerned, we don’t consider there to be a blame game to be played.

LS: And since Howard left the club, he’s not missed a game, he’s joined the Trust, he’s brought shares, he’s part of the business club.

JB: And he has contributed very handsomely to them actually, so he’s brought shares on two fronts.

MP: I wrote what I wrote about the sacking of the board, I thought it was undignified and said so and I know you were unhappy about that. In hindsight, would you agree that it was regrettable for everyone? I can appreciate you were stuck between a rock and a hard place, Jason Turner more than anyone, but I stand by everything I wrote in my column at the time.

JB: That was all due to the fall out between Les and Howard, that’s all that was, and we took advice from Supporters’ Direct who felt in the circumstances it was better for us to be involved with the club than not.

GF: That evening, we were put in a very untenable position, to my mind. We were working to a mandate and a plan and had a cordial meeting with the board set up, and 15 minutes before that had an email from the owner saying he wanted the board to step down. The Wolves Capital One Cup game was the next day.

We were then asked to step up, and we felt we had no option but to do that. And as I explain in the match programme for Saturday, when that happened Tony Pring had to become chairman, as he was the only person who has passed the Football League test. When I told him he’d have to do it, he said ‘I need a whiskey’. But we had to step up; we had very little time to consider what to do.

JB: But we did consult with Supporters’ Direct and the Football League which we felt was important to do. It was a shock to everyone, what happened that night.

MP: Les’ legacy for this club is going to be enormous. He’s essentially written off over £1.5 million. But would you agree the row has become a huge issue?

GF: It’s been really difficult for everyone in the Trust, at times. For a variety of reasons, at times, we’ve been dealing in a very toxic situation.

That said it’s not about whose fault it is, it’s a collection of reasons and there really isn’t any point focussing on the history. We had a multi-millionaire come into the club and plough a load of money in, and it’s quite evident we never maximised that situation.

We now need to make the best of the situation we have, which is 1800 people wanting to push us forward. The rest is gone. But I don’t want it to be about blaming Les or blaming Howard. It’s pointless.

MP: One final point has to be addressed though. There is a view with some fans of ‘why are we paying a multi-millionaire, and a guy who is unpopular in Howard, a load of money? Why are we paying them anything at all?’ GF: They are loans that both made to the club. We’ve been given proof that they are loans by the people who have seen the books and given us legal advice, so it’s not a subject of debate. We legally are obligated to pay them back.

Unless of course, they were good enough to decide, no, we don’t need that money, you can keep it. And you can print that. If Les or Howard wants to say we can keep the money, that’d be really helpful! I suspect they won’t though! But we can only re-iterate that they are loans we have to pay back.

MP: I presume now you also turn attention to swelling the Trust?

GF: Membership will now close for a short period of time, although we will still take donations and then with Supporters’ Direct advising us, we will look at what sort of structure we will put in place.

We want as many members as possible, but we want help as well. It’s not about just us. There is lots of expertise out there that we want to tap into. John Bowkett has already been talking to lots of businesses. We want to be very integrated into the local business community.

MP: And it’s a clean slate? For everyone and anyone who wants to be involved? People from the past? People who have deeper pockets? Surely everyone is now welcomed and it’s all inclusive? No more factions?

GF: We want everyone together. It’s a supporters’ owned club. One or two or three individuals can never dominate again. It’s one person, one vote.

If someone wants to come in and put in £50,000, there will be rules in place, and the masses will speak and decide if that’s where they want the club to go.

As we go forward, nothing will be decided by a handful of people and we want to bring everyone together.

MP: We’ve agreed what I’ll ask at the end, so anything else to get out there while we have this opportunity?

JB: I think it’s important we make clear there has been a tremendous amount of work that has gone into this, from far more than just the five of us sat here now. It’s been a monumental effort GF: We also want to put some respect back into the club, which we think has been a bit lacking in recent times. We will be writing to all the volunteers at the club. Simply to say thank you to them for all they do. That’s the kind of tone we want to set.

We want to make coming to Newport County an experience again; we want people to see a noticeable difference.

We have a great community side to our club, we are now a community club and we want to enhance that.

LS: And it’s listening to the fans. Because they are telling us, going to the games isn’t an experience.

JB: We should also say we’ve had support from all the fan groups, they’ve all been great. From the Smile Council...

MP: I won’t make you list all the fan groups. There are about 18 of them!

JB: But they all backed us.

GF: We’ve got a lot of fan groups, but they are slowly coming together and together, we will be a lot stronger. We want to get people involved and hopefully that turns into money and we can put that on the pitch.