Cod Almighty | Diary

Short-termism is good for us in the long term

24 March 2016

Devon Diary writes: When Town go up into the Football League next season (note the use of when not if), what will it mean to the club financially?

I've been wondering about this for a while now as I see calls from fans to award players longer contracts; three years rather than one, to ensure that we would be paid a fee if a player leaves for a bigger club. It's been a while since Town received a payment for a player, of course, but the goalscoring exploits of Podge lead us to question the lack of a contract tying him to Blundell Park longer than this season.

Very few of our players are on longer contract terms than this, the only exceptions being Bogez, Harry Clifton, Josh Gowling and Shaun Pearson. Even our manager is on a short-term, rolling contract. It's not just Podge who could walk out the door in the summer.

I understand the worry around Podge; I'm worried about losing him as he could, and probably will, walk away for a bigger contract. Note that by 'big' I mean a contract of a decent length, offering security to the player, not simply better pay. Look at Conor Townsend for instance; he loved playing for us but we couldn't offer him the 30 months that Scunthorpe could. Bigger clubs can offer bigger contracts and right now, regardless of fans turning up on a Saturday, we have to consider Scunny a bigger club. It hurts but it's true.

Come this May and Podge will have offers on the table – including one from us, I would hope, but he will have to take the best offer available to him at this point in his career. We all would, wouldn't we? As much as he might love playing for us, would any player plump for a single-season contract rather than job security?

I also totally understand why the club doesn't offer many long-term contracts. After the ITV Digital fiasco one of the club's biggest problems for some years was releasing managers and players from contracts. It crippled us. Hence the short-termism. We didn't know Podge would turn out this good, did we? Did anyone? (I'm including the man himself and the gaffer in this.) If we'd signed him up for three years last summer and it hadn't worked out, would we have been asking ourselves why we were saddled with such a duffer?

In a way, this short-termism makes more sense in the long term as it is an important step to financial viability. We need to live within our means, and part of that means we can't commit to expenditure without being sure we can cover it. I hate thinking of the club as a business when it is part of the community, part of our lives growing up, but we have to be honest – it's all about the balance sheet and we can't expect our board to keep shovelling cash in.

So what might stepping up a league mean in terms of the bottom line?

What about sponsorship? I like to see a local employer sponsoring the club but there is surely a philanthropic angle to it; just how many extra fish pies do they sell when we go on a cup run?

Under the current Sky deal, a fourth division club gets about £250,000 a year. The new TV deal is 71 per cent bigger than the current one, so it's not out of the question to think the fourth division share will go up proportionally. Except the Premier League is nothing if not greedy (and I'm not getting started on the inequalities of modern football today). Let's say from next year that clubs in the League's basement division will get about £350k each.

What about sponsorship? I just can't see this changing. Are fourth-tier gates much bigger than those at the fifth? I don't think there's that much in it, so what's the real benefit to a sponsor? Maybe the cost of splashing your brand on our shirts will go up, but it can't really go up too much. I like to see a local employer sponsoring the club but there is surely a philanthropic angle to it; just how many extra fish pies do they sell when we go on a cup run?

Then there are receipts from cup competitions. Football League sides have a better chance of scoring a game with a big club, with all of the associated gate receipts and TV money if you're chosen to be televised. We could be next year's Exeter!

Totting it all up, then, although we will be in a better position, would it be a substantially better position from an accountant's point of view? Would it to be to the point where we can pay much higher wages and award longer contracts? It would be a risk to overstretch without first consolidating our position in the League.

It's not all doom and gloom though. I look at our current squad and how Hursts has wheeled and dealed to build it, and I do think we would be successful in the Football League. I'm not saying we'd secure successive promotions but I think our style of play would be more successful against higher-division teams: teams that try to play football rather than park the bus.

What I think will be the crucial factor in us not just consolidating but succeeding and having a tilt at a second promotion is the backing of the fans. Can the club win back the fans who only turn out for Wembley and for big cup ties? Can the club win back the fans who drifted away when the club crashed out of the League? Will the offer of League football entice them back?

There's a lot in a name, in the 'brand'. For every fan who is actually loving the Conference, the camaraderie and the success we're enjoying right now, there will be at least another who doesn't want to pay nearly 20 quid to watch non-League football. Because it's 'non-League'. The very name suggests it's worse than League football. What would League football mean to our gates though? Would our average go up by a thousand? What would that mean to the club in terms of spending power?

Of course it's too early to think about it; we haven't won promotion yet. But we will. We will go up, this year or next. I want to see the gaffer smiling at Wembley and I want to see Podge, Dizza and the lads have something to show for what they've put in this year. It was emotional back in '98 but after this season I think it will be even more so. We need to go up soon, or Skinner and Baddiel will release a record about us.

Now we have potentially 14 games to go, including the play-offs and two finals, and at the end of that we might find ourselves a League club again with a trophy to boot. And the boys could be this generation's heroes. The next three games, all against former League teams, feel huge: Wrexham, the Macc Lads and then away to those jammy bastards Cheltenham.

Wishing you all a happy Easter – enjoy your bank holidays and I'll see you next week at the World of Smile stadium. Up the Mariners!