HAWKING THE COMMUNITY

Published in the National League South game v St Albans City Saturday 31^st August 2019 We drew 1-1 in front of 744

My walk to Whitehawk Football Club has got to be one of the most picturesque. As I stood at the top of Brighton Racecourse I could see the sea and the South Downs, and as i ambled through fields I could spot the flootlights nestled just below the chalk hawk that keeps a watchful eye on the club.

Not so long ago Whitehawks owners wanted to change the name, move the club and get ready for an assualt on the Football League. This didn't go quite to plan and whereas just two seasons ago they were in the National South they are now rubbing shoulders with Sevenoaks, Haywards Heath and East Grinstead Town in the Isthmian League South East.

But this wasn't a league game, but the magic of the FA Cup, switched to a Friday night against their very near neighbours Saltdean United who play a level below. Saltdean is so near you could take another picturesque 4 mile walk and be at their place; the only ground where I have nearly been run over by a tractor. For many years they played each other in the Sussex County League and many of their players and managers have represented both sides.

Whitehawk is one of the poorest estates in the country. It's had more money and health inititatives thrown at it than I care to list, but have they made a difference? With a change in attitude and the appointment of commercial manager Kevin Miller, the club are embracing their local community once again with a groundbreaking partnership with sports, social action and community organisations within Brighton. Hawks In The Community is a unique partnership that includes The Crew Club, Whitehawk’s award winning Youth and Community Centre, businesses and Brighton University, with the aim of creating fun football training sessions for young people, fitness programmes for adults, focussing on diet, healthy lifestyles on budgets, education through sport and much more.

Kevin told me : “I’ve been here just over a year and we’ve done so much to change the perceptions of the club; new badge, new website, new on-line ticketing, attracting a new, younger audience… This club should be getting far more people than it does, and I’ve introduced live bands, vegan options and the boys at Loudshirt Brewery have put together a bespoke ale, ‘Loudshirt ‘Ultra’, which will be on sale in the next couple of week

“The ‘Hawks Heroes’ programme took 20 lads from the Whitehawk community, and put them into a training regime for 10 weeks, playing a couple of games against Montpelier Villa, and culminating in a match here at Whitehawk against their vets team. Over 200 people from the Community turned up, and despite losing 3-2 it was a brilliant project. They lost a collective 8 stone during the course, and one particular dad, who hadn’t exercised for a number of years, was, after the first session feeling tired… His new teammates encouraged him to go to the doctors, and after tests he was diagnosed with Bowel cancer. He would not have known had he not joined the programme, and now is on chemo and hopefully on the road to recovery. He actually played in the final game!”

In the previous extra preliminary round, Saltdean recorded their biggest ever FA Cup result, disposing of Eastbourne United who are in the same league as them 6-1. Some resolute defending was undone with a soft penalty in the second half, a sending off and a wonder goal. 2-0 to the Hawks who go marching on to the 1^st qualifying round. 

An article on Whitehawk can't ever be complete without a mention of the Ultra's. Their non stop singing and fun attitude managed to incorporate songs about Bognor, Eastbourne, Saltdean Lido while playing the Last Post for any injured players and jangling keys at, er key moments along with banging drums, sqeaky toys and bits of scaffolding. Never the best supported in the National South there probably one of the best and definetly the loudest at the level they now find themselves in. It's their unique selling point and rather than trying to compete with Brighton they can offer decent football, with a beer on the terraces and great atmosphere for a tenner.

They must be doing something right with 350 turning up for tonights game and it was the amount of youngsters here that impressed me (free for under 10's is spot on, £5 for under 16's is a bit steep especially when you bring 3 hungry 13 years old along). And I know its not going to stop the Amazon burning but we really need to do an about turn on all these throwaway plastic cups, and chips in polystrene that end up being burnt in Newhaven Incinerator.

As Kevin said “ It’s all about connecting the club back to the City… Generating a new philosophy and celebrating grassroots football.” Whitehawk FC might have taken a bit of a tumble down the pyramid, but they've rediscovered their roots just in time for their 75^th anniversary next year.

 

BURIED

Printed in the National League South game v Hemel Hempstead Town 3rd September 2019. We won 2-0 in front of 713

The harsh reality of our wild west football finances has come home to roost in heart breaking fashion for the fans and employees of Bury FC who've been kicked out of The Football League after 125 years membership.

The expulsion of Bury should come as another warning sign but will anyone from the English Football League (EFL) listen? Bought by Steven Dale for £1 last December, 11 days later he set up two new companies, Bury Heritage and Bury Leisure and started transferring assets to them, including the club’s trophies. Dale said he didn't even realise Bury had a football club, but then this is a man who has had 43 businesses liquidated. He makes his money from buying ailing companies, taking what he can, then closing them down. Bury is just another asset stripping project for him. How the hell was this man allowed to take over a football club? He never even satisfied the league that he had the necessary money to sustain the club, a supposed requirement of EFL rules for new owners before a takeover.

The former owner Steve Day mortaged the club to its eyeballs before fleeing; fleecing people with car parking scams and jerry built student homes, that have made Bury such a financial mess no one wants to touch it.

Meanwhile Bolton are back from the brink after an eleventh hour take-over. In 2005, Ken Anderson was banned from being a UK company director for eight years after 8 of his companies went bust. That still wasn’t enough to fail the EFL's fit and proper test, because anything goes in the gangster capitalism football jungle.

In the past decade, a quarter of EFL clubs have faced liquidation so none of this should really come as a surprise. The EFL do not insist on their member clubs having accounts audited, do not insist on member clubs publishing full accounts for fan scrutiny, do not punish clubs for late publication of accounts. We could deduce from all this that the EFL do not have a clue and are not fit and proper to run a piss up in a brewery let alone 72 member clubs (now 71).

Football clubs aren't just any sort of business. You wouldn't go and clean Tescos for free if they put out a plea on social media. Yet 400 people turned up at Bury to clean the place in the forlorn hope that they might have a future.

The problem is that we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I helped breathe new life into The Bevy, a housing estate pub which was closed for five years and which on any spreadsheet is financially unviable. But what if that isn't the only way to measure life? What about measuring social impact? Once a pub has gone its gone. With a loneliness epidemic we need more places for people to meet not less and I have seen the community grow, friendships form and the Bevy be a lifeline for many people to get the support they need when everything else has been cut to the bone.

Slough struck gold with our former chairman Steve Easterbrook, but that's more good luck than anything. We were homeless and on our knees, not even the council wanted to know. But now look. However to be certain for the future I reckon its time for the club to be run by supporters. To be a club that publishes its matchday takings, its expediture and has regular meetings with fans. There are now over 200 supporters trusts in the UK and 50 of those have full ownership under the Community Benefit Society model that sees clubs run democratically and not for profit.

Just like Aldershot, Maidstone, Dartford, Accrington Stanley, Newport and others, Bury will rise again. After the heartache, a new club will no doubt start life back in the lower leagues having a lot of fun on the way while ironically their supporters will help clubs lower down the pyramid pecking order with increased gates and exposure.

But it should never have come to this. Football clubs just like schools, youth clubs, libraries and pubs are community assets; part of the glue that binds those communities together. But as Bury have shown they need proper protection to stop them from being stripped by vultures and they need those that value them in charge. It's time we started to measure things for what they really mean to people.

UP THE SWANNY

Printed in the National League South game v Bath City Saturday 24^th August 2019  We won our first game of the season 3-2 in front of 735.

It's fair to say that Swanage Town and Herston Football Club Day's Park ground has seen better days. The terraces are overgrown, the paint peeling, the old toilet block smashed up, while most of the wooden stand is taped off. At half time I took my life into my hands drinking a coffee in the last bit open while eyeing the creaking floorboards nervously.

It’s also fair to say that their opening league game of the season v Shaftesbury Town Reserves in the Dorset Premier League hadn’t set the town alight as I sat alone in the bar half an hour before the game. There was no programme, understandable really when they were no more than 20 people watching the game.

It hasn’t always been so. In 1986 a local scrap metal dealer upgraded the ground, installed floodlights and they were promoted to the new Wessex League but when he left the clubs fortunes nosedived. What they need now is the shot in the arm and in the bar was just that laying out exciting plans to demolish and totally revamp the ground. A new 3G artificial pitch, new spectator stands, a new community sports and social centre with not just football, but a gym, badminton courts, fitness suites, performance space, soft play, cafe and meeting rooms. Facilities for the whole community, with all youth teams and other clubs based at the ground funded by a multitude of agencies starting with Sports England.
I was half hoping to catch one of the extra preliminary round games of the FA Cup but Swanage are too low down the pyramid pecking order to enter. Watching Bournemouth Poppies would have been too much of a trek with the Sandbanks chainlink ferry being out of order. If you wanted to sum up the crumbling overpriced transport infrastructure in this country then this was it. Out of action until October throughout the whole summer season, a delay that would make even Southern Railway blush. This old chainlink ferry isn’t just a quirky tourist ride but saves driving time for locals wanting to cross, but the owners seem to be using it as a cash cow to prop up their other businesses. The most expensive crossing in the country they have promised a new ferry but keep postponing the date while demanding an increase in fares. It’s time to take it off them.
So while the Shaftesbury Town first team FA Cup dreams were being ended with a 4-1 defeat at home to Knaphill, I was being entertained with a seven goal thriller. Shaftesbury were quick out the blocks and their forwards were running the Swanage defence ragged. 3-0 down in 13 minutes. This was going to be a thumping until the hosts got a fortuitous goal. In the second half the tables turned a bit and it ended 4-3 and Swanage should have had an unlikely equaliser if it wasn’t for some great goalkeeping. Sin Bins have also been introduced to this level but the ref didn’t resort to them, letting the game flow and using words rather than cards for some of the meatier challenges and language.
I think Swanage is a big enough place to be playing a least a league higher, certainty Shaftesbury first team rather than their reserves.
Volunteers have breathed life back into Swanage Pier and Swanage Railway so why not the football club. Let's hope so. 

 

HUNGER GAMES

Printed in the National League South game v Weymouth Tuesday 13^th August 2019  We drew 1-1 in front of 776

 

As the season unfolds and you look back on games that stand out, a one nil loss to Hungerford Town in the pouring rain on a Tuesday night would not usually be one of them. But when I eventually crawled into bed at 2am I knew i'd been at a game to remember.

I'd never been to Bulpit Lane but with a population of just 6,000 Hungerford are seriously punching above their weight, this being their fourth season in the National League South. As I left the train station and the rain came down, I took a wrong turn and ended up in a small pub on the edge of a common. One man at the bar gave me a taxi number, while another reeled off the list of shut pubs across the local villages and said he'd given up his Chelsea season ticket after 21 years thanks to TV mucking around with the fixtures. Another rang up to find out when the bar was open for me and it seemed fitting that my taxi driver was also the Hungerford kitman! This is a football club that has woven themselves into the fabric of the town.

As Slough fans poured into the clubhouse, I paid my £1 deposit on the reinforced plastic glasses which can be used again and again rather than the single use plastic crap that's suffocating our planet. I was also looking forward to the usherettes who promised to deliver drinks around the ground, but they must have got washed away in the downpours. Their splendid new seated stand behind the goal was put up by volunteers who first moved the old one to behind the dugouts. I'm all for recycling but I reckon they should change the name of the dugouts that have come from Basingstoke, a club who are currently homeless and broke, but whose website is still emblazoned across them!

As the rain lashed down an uncharacteristic mistake from Super Jack Turner and Hungerford were 1-0 up. Worst was to follow, with injuries meaning Slough had to make three defensive changes before half time. As Slough fans congregated en-masse in the new stand behind the far goal, Jon Underwood came over and said the team really needed our support. Slough peppered the Hungerford goal including 16 corners but couldn't find a way through. It would have been easy to show our frustration and get on our players backs but instead Slough fans unleashed a cacophony of songs throughout the second half. You make noise like that it not only encourages our players but also more away fans. I reckon next step is bringing along mini sound systems to bang out the tunes.

I don't like to criticise Arbour Park but the stands behind the goals aren't conducive to noise, as fans are strung out, and with the shallow terracing and being vertically challenged my view is often obscured.

So after two games, thats nil points and no goals but i'm not panicking. Yet! Unlike so many football clubs, Slough have a sustainable model where our income covers the costs. Unfortunately too many football fans want the earth, with one Brentford supporter saying he wanted a new chairman. A chairman who has established the club as a Championship one with a new ground around the corner. 'I don't care about a business model, I care about on pitch success' he bleated, as if the two don't go hand in hand. He wants Brentford to be the new Manchester City, just like a whole host of other clubs drowning themselves in debt trying to do so.

Football authorities are quick to punish clubs financial mismanagement but its always after the horse has bolted. They allowed Gateshead to be taken over by charlatans then punish them with forced relegation when it inevitably goes wrong. They put AFC Wimbledon on the naughty step for being disrespectful to MK Franchise, while letting clubs flog off their grounds to get round financial fair play rules. Unfortunately, the football authorities have shown time and again they ain't fit for purpose.

And when it goes wrong, who picks up the pieces? As Bury teeter on oblivion, one fan went down to Gigg Lane on what should have been the opening game of the season. Bury have fielded a team through every Football League campaign since 1894 but have been suspended because the league don't think they have enough cash to pay wages. A measure nobody can recall happening before. “To be honest it was pretty upsetting as I walked across the car park, deathly quiet in the sunshine. Just had to go and stand at the gates for a bit, touch the badge you know. Then some old bloke shuffled up to me, 'son don't worry, it will be ok, we are Bury me and you.' We just stood, exchanged memories; where we sit, who we go with, where we live, first game, that sort of stuff. After that I dropped him at his local social club. As he got out the car he thanked me for the lift and said 'you are the future of this club, don't you ever give up on her whatever happens. I'm nearly 80 now and won't be here long so they will need you.' That was it. That broke me. I had five minutes parked then came home. With all the crap that's happened since March after that hour I will never give up thinking/hoping/willing that something better for Bury FC is just around the corner. I have an 80 year old mate called Eric, to thank for that. Cheers Eric, I needed that.'

As teams like Hungerford show, football clubs are not some business to be shut at whim but part of what binds communities and people together. In a world in turmoil that is something that should be celebrated from the rooftops. 

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