The club are delighted to welcome Darren Browne and Julian Furne to the club as Commercial Director and Operations Director, respectively. Darren and Julian are new Chairman Robert Edwards’ first appointment to the Board and will join current serving Non-Executive Directors David Hughes and Robert Davies.

Darren has a strong commercial background having worked in the Corporate sector as well as innovative start-ups for more than 30 years. He started his business career with Hays plc, going on to be Managing Director of its IT division, managing staff across three continents.

He then established his own public sector outsourcing company that was listed on the London Stock Exchange, where he served as Chief Executive. For the following 10 years, Darren invested in start- ups working with Artificial Intelligence, financial technologies, and digital currencies.

Darren is now the Commercial Director for the University of Reading, Henley Business School and Thames Valley Science Park, and acts on Boards of charities and social enterprises.

Julian has a well-rounded background in leadership roles for businesses such as General Electric, Apple Financial Services, Office Depot, and Academia Group. He is commercially minded with strong experience in project management and strategic consultancy.

He is also a passionate football person, having spent many years in coaching, scouting, and more recently part of a successful academy development strategy at Hastings United in Tier 7 in the English system.

The club will be looking to make further announcements regarding board additions over the coming weeks and will start an application process to appoint a fan representative to the Board. More will follow on this in due course.