BST: Doing nothing isn't an option

Are you one of the 12,000 season-ticket holders who enjoyed that “best trip ever” in the Premier League season?

Could you be one of the thousands who has decided not to set foot inside Bloomfield Road again until the Oystons have left the club?

Perhaps you are one of the hundreds of hotel/guesthouse owners, pub/club owners or local shop-keepers who saw your trade rise with the rising fortunes of the football team in 2010/11 and then fall away so dramatically.

Maybe you are among the 3,000 who still go and cheer the team on each week, hoping against hope that things will get better.

Blackpool Supporters’ Trust would like all of you to come into Blackpool on the morning of April 30 and add your voice and presence to the planned Community Protest March and Rally before the last home game of the season against Wigan.

If you don’t like the idea of demonstrating, think of it as remonstrating publicly with the owners about the way they have allowed the club, our club, to fall apart so spectacularly, with the knock-on effect that has had on the town.

If you then want to go in and watch the game, that’s entirely your choice.

BST will always respect the rights of supporters to make their own decisions on such matters – but please lend your support to the March and Rally first.

And for those not going in to the game, there will be a party in the carpark to mark what, for many, will be the end of an era.

The club has just announced that “in the interests of crowd safety” (whatever that means), they are bringing the kick-off forward to 12.30pm.

BST has since liaised with the police and council and the Community Protest March will now begin at 10.30am instead of 1pm, arriving at the stadium by mid-day. Full details are on the new website www.

blackpoolsupporterstrust.com and on www.fansunited.org.uk

It is also believed that the club’s owners are intent on pursuing more fans through the courts.

If true, this is a regrettable state of affairs.

In order to be help meet the legal costs of those football fans who are being unreasonably targeted by such legal action, the committee of BST will be going on a 13k sponsored walk from Bloomfield Road to Fleetwood Town’s Highfield Stadium on April 23, (the day of Fleetwood Town v Blackpool game) to raise funds for Justice4Fans.

Anyone who wishes to sponsor the committee can do so via crowdfunder at https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/BSTJ4F

BST committee members will have a visible presence outside Bloomfield Road as usual before the Colchester game tomorrow.

If you’re going to the match, come and talk to any of us about how you feel about the current predicament at the club.

We are genuinely interested in the views of all supporters as we look for a way to change the downward trend.

Change is urgently required at our football club and that change has got to be more fundamental than papering over some huge cracks.

Whether as football supporters or members of the town community – or both – we can all be influential in shaping the future of the club we love for the better.

Doing nothing really isn’t an option.