The Great Army of Fans - by Chairman Mao
It is no exaggeration to say
that without the support from Supporters Direct (SD) eight years ago we would
not have a football club playing in the English pyramid structure. The
organisation had started under Tony Blair’s football task force in 1999 with
the prime motive of encouraging fans to gain a stake in their clubs and to make
fan-ownership a realistic target for fans too. The Supporters Trust model was
born at Northampton Town in 1992 and provided a framework for fans to work
within a not-for-profit business model to ensure good governance and
transparency in club boardrooms.
It was Supporters Direct who
contacted us back in 2004 to invite Merthyr Tydfil fans to form a supporters’
trust. Little did we know that this organisation would resurrect the town’s
football club in 2010 and become the first fan-owned club in Wales.
The late Jacqui Forster was
our first SD caseworker and she travelled to Penydarren Park on a dark winter’s
night in our first year to encourage us to follow the registration procedure
through to its end. Jacqui was an inspiration to everyone on the Trust’s first
working group and fundamental to the early success of Martyrs to the Cause.
Pretty soon we had launched the Soccalot lottery that still helps to fund the
club to this day. A youth team was formed to provide local talent with
opportunities to play and of course we challenged the often chaotic running of
the club itself.
Kevin Rye helped steer us
through FA panels and provided expert support during the public meetings and
once again we could look to SD as an organisation that truly invested in the
good governance of football no matter which level of the game you operated.
So it’s true that our club
owes a debt of gratitude to SD. The idea of fan-owned clubs seemed to work in
the non-league game with many clubs taking the leap into community ownership
but as we know that will provide a glass-ceiling on ambition as we compete with
clubs who speculate wildly on players with no regard to the consequences. SD
looked to level the playing field by lobbying Westminster for special tax
rebates for community owned clubs that operate as a social enterprise. In short
SD looked at the wider governance of the game and how the vision of sustainable
football clubs could be encouraged and maintained.
Funding for Supporters Direct
has always been an issue for the organisation. Membership for each Club or
Trust was minimal so a grant from the football authorities was needed, the
early days of the Tony Blair government were no issue as the principle of
fan-ownership was well-established but as the organisation challenged the
status-quo of the football authorities and also the ideological austerity of
the subsequent Tory regime those funds have been reluctantly confirmed and
always threatened.
The Football Supporters
Federation (FSF) is a mass representative organisation for football fans in
England & Wales. A result of a merger of the antiquated National Federation
of Football Supporters’ Club with the more radical Football Supporters’
Association, the FSF have campaigned, often with great success, over a number
of supporter issues such as Away Fans Matter (including the Twenty’s Plenty
ticket price campaign) and Watching Football Is Not A Crime! The issue for this
fanzine is that the vast majority of these campaigns and therefore the energy
of FSF has been on the professional game with little mention of the issues
covering us in the non-league world.
There’s always been a certain
inevitability that both football fan organisations would merge, one voice for
the fans makes sense but only if it covers the full spectrum of the game, and
we’re proud to confirm that Merthyr Town FC voted against the motion from SD in
July 2018 but the merger with FSF was approved.
The unification of FSF and SD
was finalised on 22nd November and a new Council has been confirmed
at an AGM. Merthyr Town FC has three representatives in principle on this body;
Rob Street (Billericay Town Supporters Society) for the National Game plus both
Neil Le Milliere (Exeter City Supporters Trust) and Tim Hillyer (AFC Wimbledon)
for supporter owned clubs.
The worry for us is that the
new currently un-named organisation will concentrate on the professional game
and will forget the vital fight for good governance throughout the game but in
particular at non-league level.
It will be interesting to see
how FSF-SD develops. We have many friends at SD who have helped our little
crazy club from the top end of the Valleys and we’re sure they will continue to
argue, lobby and campaign for a greater say in the beautiful game and a level
playing field for every club that believes that operating within its means and
preserving a legacy for future generations is more important than short term
success.
Good luck and how can we help?
CHAIRMAN MAO
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