IT has been a summer of upheaval at Newport County AFC.

Chairman Les Scadding has departed the club, standing down from his role and ending any financial support provided in the past.

The club are in the midst of a potential fan takeover, pioneered by Supporters Direct who are helping to facilitate the possibly of Newport County being owned by their Supporters’ Trust.

Changes in personnel have occurred at the club in the board room, dug-out and on the field in the past few months, as well as behind the scenes.

With so much uncertainty and such seismic changes occurring, it is certainly set to be a baptism of fire for new general manager Jason Turner, the man charged with running the day-to-day operations of the club.

Turner has been involved with football for over 20-years, starting at Bath City before spending over a decade as Cardiff City’s club secretary. Latterly, Turner has been general manager and secretary at Plymouth Argyle.

And having worked for the likes of Sam Hammam and Peter Ridsdale at a club competing for Premier League football and appearing in an FA Cup final, perhaps it’s little surprise he is taking everything in his stride at Newport.

Ahead of the new season, he tells Michael Pearlman about life in the hotseat at Rodney Parade.

MP: Why, other than I presume geography, were you attracted to working at Newport County?

JT: Geography was obviously a factor, for coming back to what I call home; while not Welsh it is an area I feel very comfortable in.

It is a club I have actually followed for a long time, when Chris Blight was chairman I often spoke with Chris and after I left Cardiff City as part of the Malaysian takeover, I offered Chris my help at the time.

Unfortunately there weren’t any roles available and I ended up going to Plymouth.

It just ticks a lot of boxes for me. Geography, a club at Football League level where I can offer something, I’ve worked at clubs ranging from the Conference to the top of the Championship, and so I’ve got a good working knowledge of clubs at different levels.

And with it being a club new to the Football League, I have experience I can impart and hopefully help to improve the club off the field. The club has had a meteoric rise on the pitch and it has been hard to keep up off it. We need to get a good infrastructure in place and that is what I will do.

MP: How did you get in to the football industry? I would imagine like myself, you targeted a career in sport? It’s not the sort of industry you can get into accidentally?

JT: I didn’t target it, it is a strange story.

My parents ran pubs all their lives and my dad at the time was a director at Bath City and unfortunately the bar manager had a heart attack one night behind the bar at Twerton Park.

That was on the Tuesday and on the Saturday, Bath were playing Bristol Rovers in an FA Cup match, landlords versus tenants. It was obviously going to be a very busy day and my dad called and asked me to help out.

And I never looked back. I was working at the time in life insurance and I became bars manager at Bath City.

One thing led to another and I worked my way up, to eventually being in a role where I was doing everything from marking the pitch, washing the kits, being commercial manager, finance manager and secretary and that’s the way I fell into it really. But I was bitten by the football bug.

In football, you never know from one minute to the next what will happen. There is always something to do.

MP: You were at Cardiff at an amazing time in their history. And you left during the takeover. But it’s a good grounding for here I would imagine. When you started at Cardiff, they were essentially Newport now, same division, similar sized crowds.

JT: Yes and I have had that conversation and made that observation.

I can see a lot of similarities to when I started at Cardiff in 2000. They’d just been relegated to the fourth division.

I went through 11 seasons there and saw the club growing and have that knowledge and experience of helping a club to build-up with a proper infrastructure in place.

MP: Have you always been a football fan?

JT: Yes. Since childhood, a very young age, I had no choice; I was dragged to Bristol Rovers by my dad from the age of two or three.

We watched football in the afternoon, then chicken and chips in a basket and then greyhound racing in the evening.

When I got a bit older, I also started following Swindon Town, who were on their way to the Premiership with Ossie Ardiles and then Glenn Hoddle as their managers.

So I watched Bristol Rovers and Swindon on alternate weekends. Those were the days I was a football supporter.

Now I support whichever team I am working for. So I am a Newport County fan, end of story!

MP: What are your aims for the job? Both in the short and long term?

Short term is for me personally, undertake a complete and thorough review of everything we do as a club.

See if we can improve and be better in all areas, maybe there are ways that I’ll think ‘that’s a really good idea, why weren’t we doing that?’ but in most areas I think we can probably do better.

I will be looking at everything from commercial, football, ticket office, club shop; there will be a complete review of the whole club.

And then looking at areas where we can be more cost effective and increase revenue, in the short term, they are priorities.

In the longer term, it is working with Terry and his staff and improving what we offer on a match day.

But I think from what we saw in the QPR game, for what Terry has brought into the club, he’s assembled a new team that are certainly young, hungry and workmanlike and I think people are going to be surprised this season, because I think we’ll do ok.