Stand Our Ground - Update

There’s been a lot going on behind the scenes at OASF since the end of the 2021/22 season, the season which saw our club relegated from the EFL for the very first time in our history.

The Fans Forum was a huge success, the OEC was sold out, many hundreds watched the event online and we raised in the region of £2,000 on the night, plus an additional £5,000 for the 1895 Fund in the immediate aftermath of the event. Thank you to everyone who volunteered, attended, participated, donated and watched. The passion in the room was obvious - we’ve all had enough of this calamitous regime.

The big takeaway from the night for many was that responsibility for spreading awareness of our perilous situation and raising the money we need to help secure the future of the club is OURS and OURS alone.

Since the event many fans have taken the initiative to get out there and organise; we’ve seen fundraising events like Dry June, Just Giving Pages, auctions, a gig at Whittles scheduled for August, a bucket collection and even fans from other clubs asking us what they can do to help. We’re absolutely delighted with this response and encourage you to keep it up - there’s lots of work left to do!

Stand Our Ground

This is the name given to the campaign we are currently driving. It has two critically important aims to help secure the future of Oldham Athletic:

• Starve the incumbent regime of finances until they are forced to lower their asking price and sell the club

• Raise in excess of £6,000,000 to purchase and improve facilities at Boundary Park

The message is clear - WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH AND WE WILL STAND OUR GROUND!

Owner Adballah Lemsagam and club lawyer and director Adam Morallee have permitted the daily running of the club to Mo Lemsagam, Barry Owen and Steven Brown. These three individuals would rather ban you from attending matches than listen to your grievances. They DO NOT CARE that you are at your wits end and fear for the future security of your club. They have brought a level of toxicity to Oldham Athletic that, if continually funded, will only cause more harm. Do NOT fund them any more! Instead, please put whatever you can afford into the 1895 Fund.

1895 Fund

This is the name of the fund we’re building to ensure that fans will have much more of a say in the future decision making at Oldham Athletic. Money talks, if we want to be at the table, we need a significant amount.

Primarily, the fund is there to do two things

• Buy Boundary Park

• Provide a safety net should the club face administration or liquidation as a result of the Lemsagam regime

The fund is managed by the 1895 Committee, which includes financial professionals and can only be spent once they have all signed and a vote to the OASF membership and fund contributors has been conducted, depending on the most critical need at the time.

Due to the unpredictability of the situation that lies ahead, we have to be prepared for a number of outcomes, so we have made some changes to our website.

• For ease, the website domain has been changed to www.oasf.co.uk and shortly all associated emails will be @oasf.co.uk too

• We have changed the wording on the single and month contributions to “donations” due to the following amendment

• We’ve created a “pledge” option for larger amounts - you will commit to pay 5% of your pledge immediately and agree to pay the rest once the desired spend purpose has been agreed by vote as per above

Should we need your money to “save” OAFC in case of administration or liquidation, you may wish to fulfill your pledge. Additionally, you may decide to fulfill your pledge in order to purchase Boundary Park or if we reach a specific target. This offers flexibility to supporters whilst demonstrating to potential partners our strength and intent as a fan base. We are currently researching the options available to us to help secure the stadium, identify investors and explore funding streams. The mayor of Manchester, Andy Burham, has committed to help us with this.

We hope that this information will make some of you more at ease with the idea of pledging larger amounts. From now on we’ll have two totals - the amount actually in the bank and the amount pledged. It is our hope that both these totals will push each other to rise as we double our efforts to fund raise, Stand Our Ground and take back OAFC!

The Big Match

Finally for now there’s the small issue of the upcoming Fans Vs Legends match! We’ve been working hard to bring together former Latics legends to play in an auction match against fans to help us raise money. So far it is proving a huge success, both financially and in terms of the quality line up of players who have agreed to take part - this would have been a hell of a squad in its day!

The event is at Avro FC on Sunday 26th June and is pay on the day with tickets also available here in advance.

Stay Strong

It is only through strength in numbers, cooperation, organisation, sacrifice and hard work that we will win this fight to rid our club of the current board of directors. Their actions are proving more and more that they have no intention to sell and funding them only encourages them to stay. We know it’s hard. We know you want to back Shez and the lads next season at Boundary Park, we all do, but please, whatever it is, be it a season ticket, a home pre-season friendly or a replica shirt - DON’T BUY IT until they’re gone!

OASF