FOOTBALL FAIRYTALES

Published in the National League South game v Maidstone United Saturday 7^th November 2020. Lucky we are elite and can keep on playing!  We lost 3-2

Amidst all the covid chaos there is still one certainty when it comes to football – when the shit hits the fan, supporters will always be there to pick up the pieces.

To warm the cockles I watched the BBC documentary ‘Bury: Bringing Football Home’ about a group of supporters who got together and formed Bury AFC after the demise of their old club.

It’s the usual tale of the useless FA doing nothing, while a serial assist stripper bought the club for a pound. Within a year they had been expelled from the Football League. Now he’s all dressed up but with nowhere to go; owning the ground, but with no team and no league to play in. Meanwhile supporters rallied round to form a phoenix club, sort funding, a ground, deal with splits in support and a pandemic for good measure. As their new chairman said ‘one minute you’re on the terraces commenting on how you would run the football club, to actually running one!’ So its minor miracle they started this season in the North West Counties League playing at Radcliffe with ever growing support.

Macclesfield Town had been teetering on the brink for a few years until they were relegated from the Football League after a points deduction, wound up at the High Court, then expelled from the National League. Things looked even bleaker a couple of weeks later when their Moss Rose ground was put up for sale on Rightmove. But then a miracle happened. A local businessman, bought the club including the leasehold and all its assets. Former player and occasional caretaker-manager Danny Whitaker, who signed for Town again as a player the day before they folded, is their new manager, while Robbie Savage is on the new club’s board and Head of Football Operations. Hopefully next season they will be joining Bury AFC in the North West Counties. 

London is littered with clubs losing their grounds to property vultures and the oldest senior football ground in the City the Old Spotted Dog, dilapidated with miniscule crowds and an owner who didn’t care, looked certain to be added to the list. Then a few years back, fans from various league clubs, fed up of being ripped off and mucked around, starting turning up to support Clapton. Crowds soared but the new fans were not happy how Clapton were being run and eventually set up a breakaway club. They have now gained ownership of the ground and are slowly knocking the place back into shape ready to return.

MK Doughnuts have always been the football plague ship, a franchised club stealing a place in the league that was never there's. So when the football authorities told Wimbledon fans that a new club was ‘not in the wider interests of football’ the Wombles dug deep.  Starting at the bottom of the pyramid it took six promotions but now they are in the same league as their nemesis. Even more astonishing is that thirty years after having to leave Plough Lane they are back in Wimbledon, a few feet from their old ground. Graham Stacey from the Dons Trust said "It hasn't been an easy thing, building a stadium, let alone in Wimbledon which isn't a cheap area. We could have stayed in Kingston or wherever after we were pretty much sentenced to death by the FA, but we were always about representing Wimbledon and being Wimbledon's football club."  

At one point the Trust considered selling shares to private investors, but a hugely successful bond set up by fans raised over £5 million since January, ensuring that the club’s supporter-led structure has remained intact. Stacey added: “I can’t wait to see my dad’s face when he gets to walk in for the first time; he’s been a fan for 50 years and he hasn’t seen us truly play at home for 30 of those. There are thousands of people like him. Sometimes you have to wait for the best things in life but 30 years is quite an ask.” 

In such dark times we need these people-powered football fairytales to keep our spirits up.