Cod Almighty | Diary

Club or PLC?

5 November 2015

Devon Diary writes: There was some good news earlier this week when Kidderminster Harriers announced that in a non-hostile takeover their Football Development Director Colin Gordon had become the club's majority shareholder and injected cash into the club. I must confess to a bit of a soft spot for Kidderminster; they have a lovely ground with stands on all sides – a rarity in this league – and matchday catering to die for. It's hard to bear a grudge with the Harriers, even if they're one of those teams that Town struggle to beat while everybody else seems to give them a pasting. (File them with Altrincham and Torquay.)

"Essentially [the club] needs to once and for all become self-sufficient, and a servant to its local community," said Gordon. Ambition of that kind is something that all of us supporting lower-league clubs can get behind – and if they were honest with themselves, so could fans of teams at the top of the pile. How many followers of Chelsea, Manchester City, et al are confident that their status would be maintained if their current benefactors get bored and pull the plug?

Another team whose fortunes I've followed for a while – since 1998, to be precise – are Northampton Town. Back in '98, of course, Town beat them in the play-off final at Wembley, a few short weeks after beating Bournemouth. The Cherries sank low in the years after that great day, going through administration and narrowly avoiding going out of business altogether. Their fortunes arguably turned around for the better in the 2008-09 season when, despite a 17-point penalty, they avoided relegation to the Conference by beating Town in their last home game of the season. Six years later they won promotion to the Premier League.

What about Northampton? Well, the Cobblers also sank low, flirting with relegation to the Conference quite recently. But as with many clubs, the biggest threat to their existence is financial. The last few weeks have seen the club issued with a winding-up order over an unpaid tax bill and staff not being paid while a new suitor, Kelvin Thomas, attempts to thrash out a deal to buy the club from David Cardoza. The main stumbling block to a deal is an outstanding loan from the local council of *cough* ten million quid. TEN MILLION ENGLISH POUNDS. Seriously.

You can read more about how Northampton Town managed to end up owing the council this absolutely huge amount of money over at the rather excellent Two Hundred Percent blog. In a nutshell, though, the club (or a business which to all intents and purposes is the club) took a loan to redevelop the Sixfields stadium but all they have to show for it is a building site. A building site and a mess of companies swallowing the cash like a money pit that even Tom Hanks would balk at.

While I am overjoyed to see Kidderminster seemingly turning a financial corner, I can't quite summon up as much enthusiasm when it comes to Northampton and the reason is this: creditors. When a club goes into administration – and many have – in many cases it is the creditors who bear the brunt of the financial meltdown while the clubs' debts are renegotiated, deals are done and debts reduced to a fraction of their real value, allowing the club to continue.

For every club that has gone under, for every club that has been dissolved – Darlington, Chester City, Gretna for example – there are dozens that have wiped out debt and carried on regardless. Rangers, Leicester, Leeds and Portsmouth, to name but a few.

The argument often put forward is that these clubs are part of the community and that the fans need them. But I would argue in return that if the clubs were really part of their communities, would they wipe out the debts so readily? I use the term 'club' in its loosest sense as so often the company structures put in place to hold the ground, the sporting outfit, the merchandising and other business ventures bear little resemblance to a football club as we imagine it. The structures are clearly set up to protect assets in the event of administration. How else do assets as valuable as the grounds remain untouched by administrators? The club is positioned as little more than a brand to make money from its fans and it just happens to be football-based. Do owners even see it as a team or part of its community? I doubt it.

When I hear about Northampton's prospective new owner working on a deal and coming to an agreement about the debt to the council, I wonder who will lose out. The small businesses, self-employed traders, and employees working on reduced wages or maybe not being paid at all. I wonder about the council too. That loan wouldn't have been 'spare money': more likely a reserve fund or capital investment which required repayment. Will fans see that debt to the council favourably? Will they appreciate that money lost by their council is money lost to them? In times of austerity the council will need that money, and if it is renegotiated then the services the council provides will need to be reduced accordingly.

Do all fans appreciate the need for clubs to pay tax? Is it clear that pounds paid to HMRC ultimately fund our infrastructure – health, education, benefits, and the rest? Football clubs must pay their way and not be allowed to continue trading after wiping out their debt.

Northampton's fans are attempting to crowdfund to save their club. But really, what is 'the club'? In their case (and with many other clubs) I would argue that it's their history and their badge; the team's place in the community and the fans themselves. The ground? Nope – they moved there quite recently. Forget about the current squad, their current standing in the league and the company running the club – when it comes to it, the real fans of Northampton Town would support their team in whatever league they found themselves, whether at Sixfields or elsewhere.

Would crowdfunding even help a club struggling with such massive debts? Anything raised is likely to be no more than a drop in the ocean, and maybe fans and supporters' trusts need to look at those clubs starting afresh like AFC Wimbledon, Hereford FC and FC United of Manchester. Look at them and understand that maybe starting again wouldn't be so bad; that it might be a chance to reconnect with what they really loved about their club when they first started supporting it.

Thankfully, Town have avoided relegation and administration – but by God, we must have come close, hanging in there only because of the generosity of Fenty and others. If that support were to go; if JF decided that enough is enough and a new investor wasn't forthcoming; if the unthinkable happened and Town went under, would we still be there for the Mariners? Of course we would. Players come and go but this club, this team is a part of the town and we support it whether we live down the road or we're exiled wherever. Let's hope it doesn't ever come to that.

And so... St Albans City. Did you know that St Albans once conceded eight in an FA Cup tie? That was before the cup was sponsored by whichever faceless, corporate entity sumps up the cash – 1922, in fact – and the Saints scored seven in reply. They've also got an 11-1 win under their belts, but that was some time ago too. I'm not going to predict anything after last weekend; I think it's safer that way. 

Up the Mariners!