EXCITING plans are afoot to keep Town just as progressive off the field as they are on it.

A busy summer of behind-the-scenes activity has followed the club's play-off success in Cardiff.

And chief executive Andrew Watson believes the club are now solidly on track to achieve their ambition of another promotion before Town's centenary in 2008.

"We set a target 12 months ago of becoming a `top 30' club in the country by 2008 and we will be busting a gut to beat that if possible," he said.

"It has to be done sensibly, though, with a flourishing Academy and proper infrastructures in every department of the club.

"It means working to a sound financial model, and we are doing that.

"There will be no waffle about speculating here and speculating there. The club will be run properly.

"I think the fans are right behind us in that after what happened to the club two seasons ago and it does make sense.

"As everyone knows, there is now a 10-point penalty for going into administration and, on top of that, any club which breaches the salary cap - which we have to follow in our division - will have a transfer embargo slapped on them.

"It all means it's especially important to run the club properly and we as a board believe that's only right.

"It's only a couple of years ago that this club wasn't even able to pay its wages, and that's a debt which has been inherited, but we are now a club which honours its debts and one which intends to keep on doing so."

Season-ticket sales topping 8,000 have provided Town with a strong platform to build for further progress in Coca-Cola League I.

"Every aspect of the club is continuing to grow on the corporate side and I, personally, make at least 50 telephone calls a week to the business community to try and get people more involved," said Watson.

"It's something which myself and our excellent commercial sales manager,Tracy Nelson, have been doing throughout the last 12 months and it has needed to be done.

"When I arrived here, the club had only 110 businesses from its 1,000-strong data base actually spending money with the club.

"As a result of our work, sales of executive boxes and advertising boards have gone up and other commercial areas have also grown, but everything in the garden certainly isn't rosy. We have a lot more work to do and need the support of the business community to achieve our objectives."

The Stadium Superstore, understandably, has boomed on the back of the play-off victory.

"It's amazing how fans have snapped up souvenirs and sales in the Superstore have been phenomenal," added Watson.

"Support has been such that we are now looking at opening a store in the town centre to take us out into the community as it were, and hopefully that will be open before Christmas.

"Play-off merchandise, as you might expect, sold like hot cakes and and DVDs and videos which we've produced to mark the season as a whole (Keep the Faith) and the play-off final (Shoot-Out in Cardiff ) have sold literally in their thousands. Demand has been incredible."

Town are also hoping to get a further boost for the Academy from their On The Move lottery and by expanding the Blue and White Foundation.

"When we came into the club, the lotteries had been frachised out and had done very poorly indeed," said Watson, who previously worked at Burnley, Everton and at Leeds Rugby League.

"We inherited about 1,000 members of the lottery, but thanks to the work of Pauline Howard and her team that number has now trebled.

"Lots of hard work is now being put in to try and improve the numbers still further.

"It's the same in the Blue and White Foundation.

"We have around 1,200 members, which means all the costs are covered, so everyone who joins now is giving direct profit to the football club and that means directly backing our Academy system.

"Danny Beaumont is now in charge of marketing and promoting the Blue and White Foundation and the incentives for our supporters are many, so we would encourage people to get involved for just £2 a week."

Much of Town's commercial activity provides direct support for the Academy, which last year provided 15 players for senior duty.

"I suppose the perfect objective would be to produce a whole first team of home-grown players, but everyone has seen and enjoyed the fruits of our excellent Academy over the past 12 months," said Watson.

"We have had a flood of talent coming through recently and there are certainly three or four more young lads who could make the breakthrough this season, so it's a very healthy picture indeed.

"There are some very good players coming through the younger age group teams in the club, too, but the facts of the matter are that the Academy costs us around £500,000 per year to run and we need to keep financial support coming in.

"This has worked well so far through the Development Association, who oversee all the money coming in from supporters' organisations, and we want to keep on building.

"Plans are already afoot to spread our net of centres, so that lads can be attracted from a much wider catchment area, and we also want to expand our activities at schoolboy level - perhaps taking lads to compete in overseas tournaments to broaden their horizons.

"It's all a matter of trying to expand and improve, much the same as we are doing in our excellent Community programme under Paul France.

"We already have three area managers in place and the next one will be in the Dewsbury and Batley areas, where we are also pushing for people to get involved in the On The Move lottery.

"Each of the Community programme area managers will spend their lives in the schools, building contacts, coaching the youngsters and hopefully attracting our support of the future."

On he season ahead, Watson is full of enthusiasm.

"Everyone is excited because Peter and the whole football staff have done a fantastic job," he said.

"We have kept our talented players on board and added to the squad - and everyone is working their socks off.

"It would be wonderful to be a top 30 club by 2008 and that is our aim, but the major target really is to keep building strongly and solidly and that will bring us the success we want.

"We will be relentless in working towards improvement at this club."