Carlisle United Managing Director John Nixon talked to BBC Radio Cumbria on Friday evening as he spoke about what has been happening in and around Brunton Park over the summer, Nixon also chatting about the arrangements for the big pre-season friendly clash with Newcastle tomorrow :
" There is no parking tomorrow because the Environment Agency are still working on the flood bank, of course that work started towards the end of April. It won't be completed, although the vast majority is completed, until the middle of August for our League season starting. That meant that we had to move things around, we lost our training pitch and we've had to build a new training pitch in what was the car-park and we've moved the old car-park into what was the training pitch.
" Thanks to Harrison and Hetherington's we have alternative parking at their Auction Mart tomorrow. So we're hoping to divert everyone really who is coming over across the A69, or even Carlisle supporters as well, to come off at Junction 43 and straight into that car-park at Harrison and Hetherington's.
" We've had a very busy week this week, we were a little bit surprised because we knew we would have a good crowd but we didn't think we'd have such a big crowd. We've been busy every single day, tonight, it's difficult really doing an accurate figure because we're not sure exactly how many Newcastle have sold. They were on the phone at about 4 'o' clock though and I would estimate tonight that with their sales that we have got something in the region of 9,350 tickets sold already.
" We introduced a new ticketing system and it has gone very well actually, any problems that we have had this week haven't been due to the ticketing system. They have been due to getting credit card authorisations, i.e. using telephone lines and getting information going backwards and forwards. The ticketing system has held up pretty well, one or two teething problems which you would expect but it has gone really, really well, better than I expected.
" We had about 30 channels coming into us and what happened on Monday was that literally there was so many people ringing in that the information we were trying to get out was not getting out. So credit card authorisations weren't coming back to us and we had queues building up. We had to, by 11am that morning, switch off some of the 30 lines coming in and get four going out, that relieved the pressure. Then it was just literally a case of the volume of people coming down that slowed it down, not any of the systems themselves.
" There was a slight delay at the very beginning with the new strips, as you are aware our main club sponsor is Stobarts and getting the name across the front of the shirt caused some difficulty in the early days. They wanted it with a red outline and that did cause difficulty, but infact the team strip is here now and is at the club so they are ready to go.
" On Sunday, the day after tomorrow, the boat docks and we have all the strips that are obviously coming from the Far East, that is where they are made nowadays. They will be us then and we have hope to have them on sale on about the 2nd, 3rd or 4th of August. The team will be playing in the new strip as well. "
" Tickets for tomorrow's game are available tomorrow, Newcastle have about 3,600 tickets and they are returning 700-ish. Newcastle supporters will be able to buy tickets tomorrow and from our own point of view there will still be some more seats left tomorrow. Literally though the vast majority of tickets left tomorrow are going to be in the Paddock and the Warwick Road End, but there are plenty left for tomorrow, we still have a good five or six thousand tickets made up.
" Season tickets have gone, at the time that we cut off from the early buy, we were literally within 50 or 60 of last year. So we were very pleased with that because you do get one or two drop-offs after we'd got that surge up through two leagues. We're really in a very, very similar situation this year to last year and we tend to have a take up of more, infact somebody was in today trying to buy a season ticket as well as tickets for the game tomorrow.
" We do get more season tickets sold just before the beginning of the season and then we get another little surge towards Christmas. I expect at the end of the year that we'll be in a very, very similar position to last season.
" Neil McDonald indicated late this afternoon that we were ending our interest in Reggie Faria, he went to the club website and they put that on the website. It's been pretty usual, not extra difficult, persuading players to come up here is not always easy because you are obviously out on a limb. We've gone through the negotiation stage with one or two players though and it hasn't worked out. That's what you'd expect, I think that for every one we get we probably have one or two that we don't manage to get. We're working at that all the time but it's pretty normal.
" The court case is a huge distraction for a start, we can do without it. In very simple terms it's about the transfer of lands to John Courtenay, which was in compensation really for the amount of work that he put in for the club. He got the club out of administration, he invested a lot of his own money and he waived a lot of debt when he moved on and left the club. This 106 acres or so is in compensation for that, and it was gone through in the correct way from a business and legal point of view.
" We had a Directors meeting and the majority voted it through, the Trust member didn't vote it through but the majority voted it through, We had an EGM, we had a shareholders' meeting and the shareholders voted it through and the transaction should take place. Of course though the Trust now are suing the club, Holdings (1921) and I think Fred Story as well to stop us transferring that land across, it's flood plain land down by the river.
" I'd really encourage people tomorrow, particularly there will be a lot of people walking up Warwick Road from that car-park, to get in there early, 1.30pm-2pm. Enjoy the day because it is going to be a great day, the crowd, the ground is going to look and feel as though it is very, very full. The pitch is looking absolutely magnificent, it's going to be a good day and I hope the game goes off in a friendly manner, the way it should be."