Home of the Lewes FC Fanzine For Lewes FC Men and Lewes FC Women. 14 years writing about Lewes FC Men / Women in Non League and the Women's Championship.
14/4/2024 could well have been a defining moment for Crystal Palace FC. Under the steady if unflattering stewardship of Steve Parish Crystal Place are now an established Premiership club. I believe only the usual top 6 and Everton have berthed in the top flight longer.
It may go down as over a decade of bodged governance bailed out by Wilf Zaha, but the facts are facts we are an established if wavering force, occasionally to be reckoned with! It has not been easy and full credit to Parish who has had a knack of calling the right shots at crucial times. Full credit to him for fessing up to getting rid of Murray as a huge mistake on his behalf, which still irks me. I digress.
The governance agenda has been a bit like our old 80s kick and rush… launch and hope for the best. Try some nice football and if it does not work bring in the tried and tested dinosaurs to bail us out of any relegation mire. Sam At A Price, Pulis, Roy etc, and with Roy, building a club around a lack of ambition. Which worked. A great servant he has been mind you, and someone I very much admire.
But except for a season under Patrick Vieira, aided by the inspirational loan signing Conor Gallagher, that launched his career, it has been gruel interspersed with shots of hope.
Oliver Glasner, I can stick in all the fill and tell Palace fans reading this everything they know already, like Vieira is a more progressive manager. But of a higher pedigree. Okay not fair, higher and a more successful pedigree.
After over a decade we now have a glimmer of something really positive. He knows his stuff and what’s more seems to be a brilliant fit. The feeling was always good when, after an initial start of poor results, the usually fickle Place fans had not turned on him and Parish. A managerial flounce , not bounce, on paper was negated by clear progress and a positive shift in direction that everyone recognised.
A period of the lifting of the doldrums at Selhurst has begun, as someone has finally come in and literally blown the bloody doors off, after years of a misguided culture of accepting mediocrity. As if being Palace is a hindrance and we don’t deserve better, a thinking running through and holding back the club all my life.
The 14th April 2024 may be a defining moment for Crystal Palace FC. Playing away at one of the greatest and best clubs in world football we looked a new team. In one match we manoeuvred up a gear from also rans to competing at the top table. We looked a team that can beat anyone.
So that is why after just one good game I think next season we can get into Europe. Shaking off that normal Palace negativism, Oliver Glasner has come here to get Crystal Place into Europe. He won’t say it as he speaks in humble tones, but why else bother for someone of his ability. Palace forums are always awash with a mixture of negativity ,great debate and also trite. Nobody except the leadership at the Palace know what the plan is, but we have within that leadership the money and skills to mastermind real progress at the club.
People such as our owners have lots of money because they spend and invest money wisely, a fact lost on so many people and I believe they know full well the momentum, gravitas and money getting into Europe will bring to the club.
In practical terms three points here.
Chelsea and Manchester United are a total mess and with rumours of Southgate being lined up for Man U bottom half table football looms for them.
Brighton and Brentford will not be the dominant forces they have recently been.
We will not compete with the other big four, but there is no reason why in the mini league of ten suitors for positions 4-7 we cannot get a top three berth.
We simply have a number of outstanding players and with a proven manager and the indefatigable spirit of Palace anything can happen. I actually think the injuries to Olise this season may end up being a positive thing. I think he and his advisors know he needs a full season to ramp up his consistency and options moving forward. I think Parish would not have landed Glasner without promises of transfer and player stability. Palace are not a selling club anymore (within reason!)
Palace fans moan about the lack of depth of our squad but Glasner is already showing you can negate that by smart management, utilising players in fresh positions as he showed on Sunday. This will give us more room for squad rotation and opportunities for younger players to come through and shine. We can shed this current ridiculous culture of poor player resources planning and invest more wisely.
We have been doing brilliantly in the transfer market and badly, maybe the Glasner way will negate the need to buy dross and we can streamline our policy in the same way (through gritted teeth) like Brighton have, except unlike them hold onto players, rather than become the inevitable bust flush the Seaweed are hurtling towards.
Of course being Palace, the window of opportunity will be next season. Nothing good lasts forever at Selhurst Park, but I think so many things are aligning and 2024/5 maybe our greatest chance of getting into Europe.
Of course, many old timers berate the thought of European football as it is detrimental to league form.
I was standing on the Holmesdale when Lombardo and Padovano ripped a great Liverpool team to pieces before Padovano was injured. We looked like we could take on Europe that day and that will always remain to me the best 45 minutes of league football at Selhurst. It would be great to see some European nights in front of our new main stand. With the Seaweed bubble burst as they head off to the Championship, of course!
Andy Gowland. A Lewes FC board member recently resigned from the board. The story is that he was elected acknowledging that he had never even been to a Lewes game. He was the main board cheerleader for the failed Mercury 13 deal. The deal fell through, Andy Gowland resigned from the board afterwards and now is employed by them. Let me make it clear the fanzine is not accusing Andy of any wrongdoing whatsoever. The matter is being investigated by the board for a possible conflict of interest.
What sucks?
What sucks is how we have no strong fit and proper tests for Board members or code of conduct. The continual toxic view of Lewes FC is to not get involved in helping to run it as it has evolved from a community club into a failed free for all shitshow of smart arsery. At the fanzine we have repeatedly written about how the dire leadership of Lewes FC, for the past few years, have built an isolated and esoteric club. A club unattractive for normal members, Lewesians and fans to get involved with.
What is the board response?
In a rarely seen move by any board over the last 15 years and a really positive action, the board the same day, 2/4/2024 posted a statement. Under previous leaderships the stock response would have been some old clap trap, obfuscation and shite excuse.
‘We are aware of a potential conflict of interest regarding Mercury/13 during the now-ceased investment discussions that took place in 2023.
We have been seeking legal advice on the issue and will not make further statements at this time.
Lewes FC Board of Directors’
So what will happen?
In principle nothing. Andy Gowland as far as I am aware has not broken any rules of the constitution in resigning and taking the job. However, if the board have access to information that there has been an abuse of power maybe they can act. On the face of it though Andy has just grasped an opportunity to enhance his career, them’s the breaks.
What should the board do?
The board need to use this matter as a golden opportunity to stamp their authority on the club. In some areas this already looks like the best board we have had for a very long time. As we previously said in blogs last week, the club needs to detoxify the dreadful perception of potential people who may invest and help run the club that we are a one-dimensional pc/political gimmick motivated experiment.
The board can start by announcing a fit and proper test for board members.
How and why?
How…..This is easy. The board can draw up a new addition to our constitution. A fit and proper test. We can do this. We have changed our constitution before. If the board draw it up and recommend it, it will pass. The board just need to liaise with the FSA on the technicalities and not be put off by any FSA advise to the contrary. It our club and we have done it before.
Can we not all agree at least on these three quick easy ideas moving forward?
1)We only want people on the board who regularly attend games, even if it has been for just for one season.
2)They must be or have been locally based. If none of these they need to have shown real intent and already been a on the ground volunteer.
3) Board members are not allowed to be involved with or associated businesses or companies otherwise involved with Lewes FC during the three-year term of their membership.
There are lots of potential clauses, this is a quick blog but you get the gist? We want people running the club who care about the club and town, not mavericks adding to their cv’s, pursuing goals and aims alien to community ownership and prudent governance. We need to use our constitution to achieve this aim.
This could easily change before the next elections to stop a really unethical, malign and unhealthy trend.
Why…..There are many fantastic aspects to our constitution however there are also some absolute huge failings. Over the last few years the board has evolved into a group of people who are seemingly far more interested in promoting a unsustainable women’s team at the sacrifice of running our club properly and within sound financial parameters.
It has been a long process over the last five or six years but gradually physically we have lost lots of board members whose prime aim was to uphold our constitution and create a self sustained football club for Lewes. They have been replaced by a group of people whose prime aim is the promotion of the Lewes FC women and ignoring the values and the town we are supposed to represent. The rot set in.
As the board has become more and more isolated from the principles of fan ownership and indeed isolated by the local community and businesses so has the number of people decreased wanting us to be a fan owned club standing for the board.
The principle.
Boards at Community clubs are elected on tiny turnouts. With a wafer thin mandate the club should be strengthening democracy at our club in such a way the core values of fan ownership and democracy are protected. We have simply been ignoring proper fan representation and inclusivity. Saying it is a principle we want to adhere do and adhering to it are two things that simply do not align at Lewes FC.
Is this a problem throughout fan-owned clubs?
Yes it really is. The German Bundesliga is rife with successful fan-owned clubs with a strict governance model, yet in this country we cannot even clear the first hurdle of basics. The constitutions and rules for fan-owned governance in the UK is truly pathetic. Fan-ownership works when proper fans run clubs. There is simply no barrier to persons interested in running a club for a ‘hobby’, by getting elected to a board, whatever their agenda to do so, even if they have no previous interest in that club. How can they understand how a local club works to that town or city, what makes the fans and communities tick, the real long-term problems that need to be addressed and the local requirements if you do not know the club. Where is their passion and fire? Local businesses, volunteers and organisations that are crucial to successful governance simply do not want to get involved with local fan-owned clubs unless they are er….proper fan-owned community clubs, not a vehicle for amateur aspiring football club owners with no experience. Exactly as Lewes FC has become, a community football club eschewed by the local community.
In simple language. You, the reader, could be a director of a fan owned community club anywhere if you felt like playing football clubs for a laugh.
There simply needs to be a fit and proper test.
Conclusion.
Lewes FC needs to be attracting fresh blood. We have evolved into an awful free for all where the ambitions and interests of an out of touch board and leadership have overwhelmed what we all understood and were told was the point of fan ownership. It really is akin to the Orwellian disaster Animal Farm where a seemingly idealistic existence is ruined by maligned ambitions, self-interest and discarded principles. It never works. The board can make a start correcting the past by making sure only people wishing to run Lewes FC properly are eligible for the board.
Below are the eight main articles from the Spring 2024, issue 20, of the Lewes FC Fanzine. The Rights of Fans.
A wry commentary on a community club being hoisted by its own petard as the finances crumble, investments fall by the wayside and the fans get pissed off.
A melancholic alcohol fuelled journey over a 20 year span of away day non-league travel! From partying with the Lewes FC faithful, to a dreary sober afternoon a Whitehawk in late middle age.
For nearly 15 years Lewes FC have never really fitted into the community club mould. Too many directors from the outset simply followed a non-conformist independent and commercial directive. The rules of community ownership are enshrined in our constitution and have been neglected. Prior to the launch of Equality FC many directors fought to establish the principles of a community club for Lewes, but since Equality FC the quality of director has declined dramatically, as has any adherence to the principles of our constitution of community ownership. Indeed, so low has the bar sunk that we have seen the arrogance of characters at the helm of our club claiming we are a community club representing the international community and not Lewes. This is because the recent directors have run the club into such financial difficulties that they have had to rebrand to try and associate with the international community, rather than the Lewes community, as it is seen as a better option to raise finances through the membership drive which has already dramatically failed, targeting 3500 new members and getting nowhere near. In a rare mea culpa, even the board admitted the drive had failed.
This explains why two thirds of voting members during the Murky 13 debacle voted to begin the process to break up the principles of fan and community ownership in exchange for outside finance for three years. Frankly why hold onto and cherish something that is not fit for purpose? I get that. Community ownership at Lewes FC has failed and sunk to the depth of lip service and a mere branding commodity vehicle to attract do-gooding investors. Who of course have not come forward,
In brief, here are the main objectives of our constitution:
4.1 Enhancing the social, cultural and economic value of the Club to its Communities and by acting as a responsible custodian of the club for future generations; 4.2 Upholding the mutual ownership of the Club operating democratically, fairly and transparently; 4.3 Ensuring the Club operates with financial responsibility enabling the Club to be run for the long term interest of the Community; 4.4 Providing sporting facilities and opportunities regardless of age, income, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality, religious or moral belief; and 4.5 Playing at the highest level possible, but always operating in a financially responsible and prudent manner.
We currently tick one box out of 5: 4.4, which is the easiest as we already have a football club and facilities. 4.5? The Board got confused – ‘playing at the highest level possible’ was a reason to bring in Murky 13, but it’s 100% clear it must be in a ‘financially responsible manner’. Attempting to flog part of the club off and contradicting 4.3 (‘operated with financial responsibility’) is not by anyone’s definition sticking to the scripture.
Through Bonfire and the associated societies, Lewes is a town with volunteering and participation going through its DNA and a perfect fit for a community club. Sadly, too many people have got involved with the club and used it as a personal vehicle for personal agendas and run it contrary to our constitution. Who sanctions these? Where is the working group of Board and members that reaches out to the supporters to decide who and what we support? Nowhere, because the leadership of Lewes FC has been creating a brand, and brands need consistency of objectives. To rebrand as liberal trailblazers and ha ha ‘disruptors’ means you have to follow a specific pathway of associations. Vegan day is a good example of how out of touch the club are – championing minor issues that 98% of supporters are not interested in.
Launching Equality FC as your prima facie ‘brand’ and dropping it as soon as Mercury 13 come waving a wand, launching the meaningless Equity FC as a foil instead and then presumably realigning back to Equality FC, is just a dictionary definition of desperate, clueless and unprincipled.
But to what end? The leadership must learn lessons, and there are still people who have not learnt on the 2023/4 Board, that to create a thriving successful community club you need to operate like one commensurate with our constitution. Those still chasing the failed path of chasing commercialism over proper ownership are clueless and out of touch. And it is a hard thing to do, but our town at least provides a brilliant foundation to do it with. But such is the paucity of love for the community model not even 2% of the owners attend the online meetings and two thirds voted for the Mercury 13 investment. In fact most members didn’t even bither to vote on the fundamaetal pricilpes of the Murky 13 deal. So, what is the point? To me community ownership has been a fraud.
These seem to be our options moving forward:
1) Oblivion, the current preferred model
2) Rolling up our sleeves and the new 2023/4 Board turning us into a proper community club which will be difficult is as it appears some members of the Board prefer the oblivion option.
3) While we are a well-known entity in women’s football, large gates and a fab stadium, simply sell the club to a private investor on the condition of huge investment as well as fan representation and community engagement.
There is a simple case study here. You do not have to look far. The previous owner with private money took Lewes FC to the heady heights of the National Conference and left a legacy of the fantastic stadium we have now. Oh, and set up the Lewes Ladies, as it was then. Do you prefer the current model to good old capitalism?
So, what to do? As I have said elsewhere the Board need to stop chasing dreams and try to reinvigorate the principle of community ownership. They need a huge campaign to detoxify the mess we have drifted into and signal changes to draw in the talent that Lewes oozes.
Look, the members of the previous Boards were smart people with their own skill sets. But read their CVs and is there anything in any of them that suggests they know how or have any experience of running a football club with a turnover of £1.5 million and 50 or 60 staff? Not just the current Board but many previous directors since we have been fan owned. Would they get a look in if they applied to manage a normal ‘entertainment’ business? They’d be laughed out of the room.
To me we have to face up to the fact that maybe fan ownership does not work. The Board have to accept total responsibility for their decisions, but if nobody has challenged them and fought them, the fans and membership could do better. Chris and I have been the lone voice out of 2,500 members who have constantly challenged the club for 18 years. Who helped us? Nobody. A smattering of dissent over the years has achieved nothing. My fear is the encouraging uproar of dissent over Murky 13 has already faded and we are back to firefighting. The Board need to show leadership but do they have it? Why are they not warning members about the mess we are in. We have been in a financial hole for years but we were only told this to get us on board for potential Mercury 13 investment. We are not children!
My hope is that the new post-election Board take their responsibility to maintain the ethos of our fantastic constitution to heart and follow rigidly the guidelines within, rather than do just exactly whatever they want to do and continue to pick the parts that suit their own agenda whilst picking the club apart. Before it’s too late.
The Board, having repeatedly painted a rosy and healthy club – even so far as to repeatedly saying how healthy our finances were – changed tact with the Murky13 proposal and it was made perfectly clear we are in huge financial problems. Yet I see so little being done to meet these challenges from the leadership and the members. Is the glass of endeavour simply empty?
I will be candid here. Previous Boards have laid down a challenge to a large section of fans and members. It has been ‘a hybrid of private and fan ownership’ or ‘no way’. The section of members supporting the ideology of fan ownership need to raise their game from keyboard warriors to a tangible force to challenge the leadership and force a change of direction and proper community ownership model at Lewes FC. The future is bleak. Two-thirds of voting owners have preferred a fistful of dollars to pure fan ownership and unless the remaining third kick up a racket, just forget about the whole thing. I have researched various fan owned clubs and some work really well, but the ones, like Lewes FC, where the membership are seemingly unbothered, they do not.
At the end of the season or thereabouts the Board will sit down to discuss funding the club for next season, 2024/5. If, as we suggest elsewhere in the fanzine, many of those previous income streams we have previously enjoyed are gone, reality will kick in and the club will steadily decline. Too little has been done to address the huge challenges and we will decline into where we were ten years ago trying to make ends meet, but now without the benefactors to balance the books. The benefactors are currently due to end benefacting at the end of this season. Possible bankruptcy or realigning in the county league looms large, so would it not just be sensible to put the club up for sale whilst we can still call the shots? Selling a club in terminal decline is a case of taking what you are given. Doing it now might mean we are able to choose a more suitable bedfellow.
The recent failed move towards commercialism has left us in financial free-fall and a disenfranchised support base. As the finances unravel and supporters drift away, as budgets are slashed and the tools for the branding and razzmatazz are blunted by lack of resources we will embark on a new era. The board are making hopeful noises that the principles of proper fan ownership will replace the hybrid fan-owned/private model that has just capitulated, as the fanzine always predicted, but to rebuild the trust of so many hardcore fans and Lewesians will be the key to getting the club back on it’s feet and bringing the huge financial, intellectual, volunteering and experience that the club has on it’s doorstep back into the fold.
Without further ado, let’s take a layman’s view of the finances!
*Why a layperson?
A layperson is a person without professional or specialized knowledge in a particular subject:
A layperson’s view is often the best way to take a view on these things because generally when it is left for people within finances to explain finances there is a lot of presumption that you will know what they’re talking about. On the whole we don’t.
Also, for years prior to Mercury 13, when the board finally fessed up to us being in the financial shit, shall we say politely, the club interpreted the figures in a positive way contrary to the reality.
I have run my own business since I was 18 so I have a basic grasp on the finances.
*Meaning?
This is the fanzines beginners guide to the Lewes FC finances written be a beginner with a pretty good grasp of figures but please grant me absolution for approximations and being slightly out on some of the figures, I am just trying to impression as to what is going on.
*In a nutshell?
In a nutshell the club turns over nearly £1.5 million per season.
We can approximate break this down to
£600,000 from directors/former directors
£350,000 in donations.
£450,000 from club income.
£1.4 million total.
*That’s simple?
As I say this is laypersons view and figures gleaned from the 2021-22 accounts as the 2022-23 accounts are not as transparent as 21/22 and I have found the club unhelpful re the accounts. Matchday and commercial income is £235,967 which is obviously included in the £450,000 club income but I know not where specifically where sponsorship and tv money is attributed.’ presumably here.
*Transparent?
The club should be telling the accountants to break income down to specifics for instance income should be broken down into gate receipts, bar and concessions, 3g, sponsorship, tv money, other commercial etc. Pluming it all under club income is disingenuous and insulting to the membership who should have access to a clear view of the finances.
*So how will things change when the generous donations from Ed Ramsden stop?
I understand they already have, A lady or gentleman accountant posted on the forum that at the start of the season the club had a £450,000 cash reserve from past donations and the endowment fund. Again, I am unsure of the specifics. But there was nearly half a million in the bank. I understand this is known as ‘legacy’ money. But Ed’s contributions have stopped, and we are existing this season on this legacy money that will be blown by the end of the season.
*So, is this right for next season?
£000,000 from directors/former directors
£350,000 in donations.
£450,000 from club income.
£800,000 total
Not necessarily, that is a worst-case scenario. But as things stand yes. Who is to say whether other people will stump up some dosh. There have been other contributions from people and business of £100k a pop so there are people out there still. But there no guarantees or commitments.
*As most of the donations are tied to the Lewes FC Women i.e. FA grants, if the women get relegated is this right?
£000,000 from directors/former directors
£000,000 in donations.
£450,000 from club income.
£450,000 total
I can’t be sure, but I think this money, the £350,000 is attributable to the women’s involvement in the Championship and from the licence arrangements. So, if we go down, I would imagine much of it will be lost. With club income set to decrease dramatically and other clubs in the Championship indicating investment investment investment, it is hard to see if we stay up this season, which I think we will, how on earth we can compete next season. We can’t and staying up this season while we can still afford a decent squad is a mere stay of execution.
*But club income will stay at about £450,000?
Let’s face it, who will want to watch the women outside the highly commercial and publicised top two flights and the men also in a badly funded team scrapping for relegation.
Gates will decline.
Income from the bar and concessions will wilt.
Membership will drop without all of the razzmatazz.
Will Lyle and Scott want to pay a shed load of money annually with the crown jewels a failed project? Probably not.
It is not unreasonable to see income decline to £300,000 maybe.
*So, you are saying the worst case scenario is going from –
£600,000 from directors/former directors
£350,000 in donations.
£450,000 from club income.
£1.4 million total.
To
£000,000 from directors/former directors
£000,000 in donations.
£300,000 from club income.
£300,000 total?
Yes, unlikely but certainly not inconceivable.
*How will we make up the shortfall if the women stay up without the £600,000 from Ed Ramsden?
The board have already indicated there will be tough financial choices to be made next season. The board will have to make financial sense of a puzzle. Our playing budgets are £600,000 per annum and Ed is taking away his £600,000 per annum contribution.
*So, we’re buggered?
Not necessarily, but more than likely.
*Not necessarily?
Budgets will need to be cut, most of the paid non-playing employees can be made redundant and we can bring the catering back in-house. This will bring in significant revenue. We can stop frittering vast sums of money on wasteful exhibition tournaments and cut down on the general unnecessary waste such as paying for training facilities when we have our own. There are large cuts that can be made.
There fortunately many other considerations. As I have alluded to above there is nothing that says that there will not be further personal donations. OK, certainly they will not be on the level of those from Ed Ramsden. There is certainly nothing that says if the board finally gets its act together to reach out to local businesses that we cannot get a nice sponsorship income in from the town. And as I mention in the corresponding blog to this, we are currently a very attractive option for people wanting to invest and take over the running of a high profile but small football club.
*Interesting but worrying times?
The legacy of the leadership of Lewes FC over recent years was always going to be dire. I for one will be delighted to see some of the characters and what they have brought to the club fizzle out and disappear, there undying support er…. dying. Mark my words you won’t hardly see many of the people in the leadership of the last five years, you are accustomed to seeing piggy backing around the Pan on the back of Ed Ramsden’s generous donations. Sure, the club will need surgery but that will not necessarily be a bad thing if it is built up again as a proper community football club for men, women and Lewes.
We are at a tipping point. The failed Mercury13 bid has shown us three things. Firstly, two thirds of the members voting on the proposal are happy to compromise the purity of our fan owned model for a fistful of dollars. This essentially questions whether the widespread fan base of Lewes FC are actually bothered about fan ownership. Especially as it seems the club leadership is not. This is not a criticism of those supporters, just a fact. Secondly, the fan owned model precludes any serious investment in the club (well let’s face it any suitors to the Lewes FC Women) as serious investors will want proper ownership to protect their investment. This is important. Just weeks after the collapse of the Mercury 13 proposal US businesswoman Michele Kang acquired rivals of a similar stature to the Lewes FC Women, the Lionesses, and is projected to invest large sums of money. Our leadership would die for that sort of investment. Michele would want autonomy. Thirdly, we are in the financial quagmire. This according to the 2022-23 Board of Directors.
The days of generosity from Ed Ramsden, the main advocate and funder of the Lewes FC Women, are signalled to end. Ed has generously and significantly covered the costs of both the men and women’s teams for the last couple of years. This comes at a time when the Lewes FC Women are facing two terminal challenges. Other teams with established funds, gravitas and large club infrastructures in the Championship are chasing the golden goose and are investing more and more money annually so that we cannot aim to compete with them, chasing us to the brink of relegation. The new arrangements of the WSL and Championship licences will effectively preclude the Lewes FC Women ever getting into the WSL. You can see why Mercury13 lost interest weeks before the licence announcement. We are a bust flush. We are being left behind. We have significantly less draw and kudos to potential investors than a year ago and this is a terminal decline.
Things have spun out of control chasing false dreams. Read later in the fanzine how the brilliant recommendations of the Tracy Crouch report, let’s put this diplomatically, are at ‘odds’ with the pathway the Lewes FC leadership have been following in recent years. Nobody on the Board has applied the brakes but have got sucked into a vacuum of vanity and ‘big club complex’ and followed a dream that will, and always was, going to end in disappointment. Elsewhere in the fanzine we will be questioning whether we should actually continue with the fan owned model. Most members aren’t bothered it would appear, especially as we lay very poor claim to being a decent fan owned club anyway, with the core aims of our constitution sidelined in pursuit of precarious glory. Why bother? Really, why even bother?
The 2022/23 Board, and the few before, in the opinion of the fanzine, have behaved in a breathtaking cavalier manner towards safeguarding the integrity and finances of Lewes FC, trying to create a platform for investors that they have not considered attractive enough to invest in. Bigging us up to be a game changing club and the ridiculous claim of ‘disruptors’ when in fact we are just a badly run non-league club – clueless, rudderless and crucially… bankrolled.
Coming in at the high level we have in the women’s game was only ever going to be short term, before other larger clubs pushed us out. The leadership at Lewes FC exist in a bubble where they think bigging us up makes us big. In reality, women’s WSL football at club level is as popular as Conference football, unless games are played at the main stadiums and our Championship has the same draw of Conference North and South. The fact is that whilst women’s international football is gaining mass interest, national football is not. Just like rugby union, a massive international game but little interest at national club level. Can you name a team in rugby union’s second tier? The Board have failed to read the room.
It was originally suggested from the offset of Equality FC that if the funding had not appeared within three years, it would be pulled. This was a sensible way forward taking a punt to see if sponsors and investors would be interested in. But as usual the leadership overestimated the potential interest and after three years the board should have just said we tried but the interest was not sustainable.
We have a new elected Board, some with good experience and manifestos. Sadly, some in their election addresses were continuing the party line of business as usual and working in tandem with existing directors who also seem oblivious to the possibility of the ruination of Lewes FC. The future is bleak, and I would advise you to enjoy the current bankrolled squads.
Below I will picture a worst-case scenario. Obviously other positive things can come along but do not write this off.
The countdown to financial disaster goes thus. A very rough approximation of our income is thus.
Turnover: £1,500,000.
Donations from benefactors: £600,000.
Sponsorship, FA money and TV money: £500,000.
Membership, gate attendances and concessions: £500,000.
2024/5. As far as I am aware funding is in place for the rest of the 2023/4 season, but next season the benefactors who have funded around £600,000 per annum, have said they will withdraw their financial support. There may be a change of heart, but you do not run a business hoping for a change of heart.
2023/4 or 2024/5. If the women are not relegated this season, they will be next season as there will be no budget available. We will then almost certainly lose our sponsors, for a season or two they may be contracted to continue sponsorship, but long term they are here because of the women and Lewes FC being a relatively high-profile club. They will go as the stock of the Lewes FC Women rapidly diminishes. Another £500k gone.
2024/5. Assume we can bank on receiving the £500k from attendance, membership and catering? Think again and half that because if you think when meltdown brings supporters and members are going to hang around out of the goodness of their heart? It isn’t going to happen, as we saw last time the club hit the skids, and they will be found missing in action. Attendances, membership and therefore catering income will haemorrhage.
We could rapidly go from a £1.5million income to £500k and that is being generous. When we joined the Championship, and the fanzine predicted the enormous costs involved we were ridiculed. But in time we have been proved absolutely right and the club leadership is out of touch with our finances. These are broadly sketched figures and excuses may be provided, but they may well prove in the right ballpark.
The Board have two choices, bury their head in the sand or realise the party is over and we need to significantly change direction. Great that a new working group has been set up to try and source local business support. But this is 14 years too late and merely scrapes the surface of the mess we are in. Having been ignored for all those years why would they want to come in and bail out a club that has seen them as surplus to requirements? And how do you sell it? We are desperately trying to get major sponsorship deals to keep the show on the road, but we will grant you permission to help out. You can’t swing it both ways. The Board have tried to get significant funding for the Lewes FC Women for six years and failed miserably and now the project is reaching its denouement we are even less attractive a prospect than before so all change please for a common-sense approach. Eschewing the local community and businesses is a long-term blight on the club and will take enormous endeavour to turn around.
The biggest challenge for the Board is not just the reaching out to change but to change the perception local people and businesses have of Lewes FC, and indeed change the perception of many fans that the club is toxic and in it for reasons other than being a community football club for the town of Lewes. Too many former Board members over the years have told me they realise the club has lost the town. The 2023/4 Board need to begin to turn that around. They will not do that and begin a common-sense approach to if they are still crossing their fingers a knight on his charger will appear and make it all alright. This approach never works in business. Dithering is a turn off.
The first thing they must do is to create a pathway to end the elitist running of the club. The ‘working group’ is a great way to bring really interested and smart people into participating in idea formation as a stepping stone for getting these sorts of people involved. A Board member on each group can feed the ideas and the strength of feeling into the Boardroom and really create a true and proper bridge between a previously out of touch succession of Boards, thus giving the fans a proper voice in forming the club’s direction. The appalling turnouts to elect Board members is not a proper democratic solution to fan ownership. Reaching out and really getting fans and members involved is proper fan ownership and trust me when fans feel they are not simply fed the party line, but are actually creating the party line the strength and participation at the club will improve dramatically.
But if the normal half arsed condescension and lip service to community ownership continues, people who can help out will not. There is no paid role in the club bureaucracy that couldn’t and shouldn’t be carried out by volunteers instead but unless the Board are serious about real significant change by their very nature the people who can help are not stupid and their involvement will be watching Lewes FC and not helping run Lewes FC. Working groups on sponsorship, membership growth, fund raising, community links, diversity and inclusion, match day experience, catering etc will help the club become a true leader in community ownership rather than a club entrenched in the misguided hyperbole spouted in the ridiculous ‘club strategy.’
We need actions to build a community club not beautifully presented pointless nonsense that is papering over the cracks of our slide into penury. If the Board chooses to do business as usual because they love the relative high profile of the club, we were there last time the funding went and most of the fan base simply walked. We became a basket case. Will the Board want to hang around? Some will. But the Board have a moral responsibility to make sure that when the fun stops and realism kicks in, the club is in a fit state. Simply hoping something comes along is not an option but is seemingly the preferred one? I will say in mitigation, most of the Board are recently elected and they have inherited a right old pickle, one of which I believe is a bridge too far for a group of people volunteering whilst also holding down real jobs.
It is time to grow up. For too long the club has been run with the luxury of somebody picking up the shortfall with absolutely no credible plan B. There is a short period still for Lewes FC to plan for the rocky road ahead. But I see the garbage in the weekly email and I see absolutely nothing akin to the necessary concern needed to plan for a crisis or raising the alarm. But don’t worry we are having a vegan day!
The last time the club hit the skids 18 years ago the men’s budget dropped from £400,000 per annum to £60,000 in two years. This is the reality of running a football club with the gay abandon we do at Lewes so expect the same soon.
Tired of reading boring football interviews we decided to interview ourselves! With our first fanzine in seven years for sale outside the ground tomorrow here is some info for new fans who have never heard of us.
1. When did you start the Lewes fc fanzine and is it your own creation?
We started the fanzine season 2007/8 when we were in the National Conference and financial freefall. Other Chris and I met at a Supporters Trust meeting and thought sod it, let’s give it a go. It was supposed to be short-term but is now 17 years old. We originally started to wind up the then comedic manager Kevin Keehan.
2. It is fair to say your output is inconsistent?
The fanzine is a hobby. We’ve done 20 issues, the next one is the first for seven years and in one season we did 6, so yes inconsistent in absolutely fair.
3. What is your understanding of a fanzine and why do you publish one?
A fanzine is there to be loved and loathed. It is like a very low grade “Have I Got News For You”. Ruffle some feathers, highlight inconsistencies and hypocrisy in a satirical and humorous way. When we became community owned, shall we say we wished to highlight how our principles of community ownership, ratified in our constitution, disagreed with those of the leadership
4. Do people like it?
It is a dictionary definition of Marmite. Some fans love it and we are delighted they do. Some do not, and certainly the club leadership do not, but do we care?
5. If there is one article in the upcoming fanzine fans should read, what one is it?
Oh definitely ‘Crouching Tiger’. The Tracey Crouch reports basically says what the fanzine has always said, that Lewes FC is very badly run and totally vindicates our stance for the last 17 years. The article evolved from a blog I wrote and although it has not translated to the fanzine aesthetically very well, the points it makes are so important.
6. There are some quirky characters in past and present fanzines – where do they come from?
Mainly from the Kings Head, Southover, after a large number of beers and a lot of unintelligible discussions. All revealed the next day, as we write them down at the time before they drift off in an alcoholic haze.
7. Do you frequently watch home and away matches for both the men and women’s team?
Ha ha. Very rarely. Look I was a regular supporter long before 95% of the current leadership even went to the Pan and I will be a regular supporter again long after many fans and leadership lose interest and bugger off, as they did last time when the club ran out of money. Football is a passion and mine is struggling at the moment. It’s not a boycott, I still go occasionally but attendance is sadly not a priority these days. I write a lot of the fanzine so I still care. I went to Selhurst Park to nearly every home game for 15 years, but one in the last 20 years, but still avidly follow what goes on at the Palace. I’m Palace and Lewes until I die.
8. What are the best and worst parts of Lewes fc in your mind?
Best parts of the club will always be the fans. Lewes FC has always had brilliant fans. I have to say I am incredibly impressed with the Supporters Club.
Worst parts, where to start. Let us just say the failure of successive boards to grasp the basics of fan and community ownership in a town where the community and volunteers are capable of staging one of the greatest festivals in the world, Bonfire, and couldn’t be a better match for community ownership. Not utilising that resource and the affluence of the town is just reckless stupidity. It is like choosing between good and bad, and choosing bad. It is as simple as that.
9. You are quite critical of the football club in your fanzines, is this a fair statement?
When the fanzine is not critical it will be because we are being run properly. Can’t wait for that. We really enjoy doing the fanzine but we literally do it just to let the leadership know we have got our eye on them and will hold them to account. In many ways I feel we hold the club to account on behalf of the town.
10. Would you ever join the board?
The board works on the principle of collective responsibility so the majority view wins. I could never work with people who do not do things properly in the interests of fan and community ownership; over the last 15 years, especially the last few, there have been too many on the board who are simply not qualified to safely protect the club for the town of Lewes and have no idea what it is all about. If the board was full of people devoted to building the club as was always intended through the ideology of our constitution I’d consider joining. I have offered to give up substantial time to help the club in the past.
11. If you had one message for the Board for the remainder of the 2023/2024 season, what would it be?
Simple, prepare for the forthcoming financial meltdown by embracing the true principles of fan and community ownership set out in our constitution and embracing the town, supporters and membership. Are you getting where I am coming from here? Begin operating within our own means and let the Lewes family grow the club. Embrace the spirit of Lewes and Bonfire, and the funding and volunteers will queue up.
12. Favourite moment?
Football match-Apologies for inaccuracies, nearly 20 years ago we played Dagenham or Redbridge or Dagenham and Redbridge. We went 0-4 down but grabbed a consolation before half time. We went ballistic when our fifth went in and won 5-4. It wasn’t so much the score but that we all had a feeling when we got our consolation goal before half time that at 1-4 we would go on to win. It was a bit of a collective magic karma, really eerie and unforgettable.
General- Lewes V Bognor nearly 20 years ago as well. Lewes players squared up to a small section of racist Bognor fans and Wattsy (Steve Watts) steaming down the Philcox to break it up. It was comedic, brave and helped stop a really ugly escalation of the situation into violence. By the way, loads of Bognor fans were keen to disassociate themselves from a handful of morons.
13. Is the fanzine woke?
We are left wing, feminists and awake to the heart breaking struggles of young people navigating social media and modern life. Woke? no.. Sympathetic? Yes.
14. Thing you have enjoyed the most.
The fanzine being praised by one of the top football writers in Britain of the last 25 years meant a lot.
Other Chris was 15 when we started the fanzine and watching him grow up and become a lifelong friend was not something I expected when we sat in the pub 17 years ago and thought on a whim that a fanzine might be a good idea. Chris and I are a great team.
15. Do Fan/Community owned clubs work?
On the whole no. As I alluded to above, Lewes CFC should. The problem is communicty owned clubs are not regulated properly, and they rely on goodwill. At the moment they are like the Wild West and very primitive, and a wasted opportunity in the case of Lewes, with the leadership doing what the leadership wants to do irrespective of our guiding principles. What Lewes FC have been doing has bugger all to do with community ownership for Lewes. A regulatory body needs to set up to make community boards enact the principles of their constitution which is basically a brilliant business plan for a successful community club. The current set up simply allows for unaccountable poor practices and bad financial management.
16. Aren’t paper fanzines old hat?
They are, yes, but they are traditional and as with all modern media, a mix of the old and new has the best cut through. During the last 7 years of inactivity we have been writing blogs and the Right of Fans blogs are sometimes read by more that ten times the number of people who attend the Lewes FC Town Hall Meetings as the content is fresh, genuine and interesting. So our cut through is actually pretty impressive. Even if I say so myself.
17. Is it all doom and gloom?
Not at all, the opposite in fact. The forthcoming collapse in various income streams can be used to build the club on proper foundations. It will mean steps backwards but we need to bring the huge talent and resources Lewes offers in from the cold and drop all ridiculous posturing and get back to basics. However, make no mistake, handled badly the club is in deep trouble unless the board step up and embrace change. You know there are lots of highly talented people that will come in and help the club when the current circus moves on. They stay clear as why devote time and energy to something that is not fit for purpose
On the eve of releasing a fanzine, slightly guilty thoughts go to some of the people who run Lewes FC. Feedback is a gift though, but you still feel slight apprehension. It is Friday 26.1.2024 and we are releasing the first fanzine in 7 years tomorrow. Thanks to yesterday, any apprehension or misgivings have evaporated. Another day of nonsensical uselessness at the helm of Lewes FC reminds me why we bother writing a fanzine.
The club is facing a dire financial future and desperately needs to reach out to the local community and businesses for when the inevitable drying up of the finances happens next season.
What better time to engage non-members, those who might attend matches, those might be interested in becoming Lewes FC member and maybe getting involved in the struggle ahead, than at one of our online Town Hall meetings. These should be a showcasing events designed to draw new members and existing members into the cogs of the club, to get them interested in joining the fight. Encouraging people to engage with our community football club.
But as the club mantra says ‘at Lewes FC we like to do things differently.’
Our ‘Town Hall’ meetings are a farce. Not necessarily the dialogue but with a membership of 2500 and an average attendance of 40 it really is a borderline farce and pointless. Of the 40 how many are intrinsically involved with the club? Probably a bewildering 1% of members are interested in updates and pertinent issues about Lewes FC. This represents a club without a clue, who cannot lead or engage with supporters. Can anyone possibly say otherwise and keep a straight face? Usual sycophants exempted of course.
It therefore beggars belief that a paid spokesperson of the club and a Director are actively dissuading fans from engaging. Blimey, if ever something needed a kind helping hand it is the Town Hall meetings.
It was suggested these meeting should be for members only as they pay for membership and it is a ‘benefit’ only available to owners. Really.
We are supposed to be an ‘inclusive’ club. The leadership, boorishly banging on about how great and inclusive we are, have clearly taken a hypocrite pill. Inclusive- not excluding any of the parties or groups involved in something. Are the leadership that stupid they don’t get this.
Yes, let’s make Lewes FC a club that favours the members. Yeah great idea. We will favour all these members whose contribution to Lewes FC might only be paying £60 a year who do not go to games or take an interest in the running of the club like attending Town Hall meetings, over the hundreds of non-members who turn up to all the games and with concessions etc spend £500 a year. Yeah lets reward the people who likely signed up because it is cool, over the people who might really care. Lewes FC 2024 in a nutshell. A Town Hall is a Town Hall – it is info sharing, updates and news – no voting takes place at a Town Hall, no secret info which might be shared at an AGM – heaven forbid someone comes to a Town Hall and then actually wants to play more of a role in the club.
An analogy would be a pub that is in financial problems and in need of more customers, support and bums on seats, putting a note on the door saying ‘Regulars Only.’ Don’t read this and think ‘well it’s not really like that, that would be cretinous.’ IT IS EXACTLY LIKE THAT.
Successful fan clubs thrive on fan involvement and fans integrating with the running of the club. Just stick up any blocks to this especially over something as petty as whether you are a member or not is just ridiculous. The subject last night was sustainability. My wife has reached out to Lewes football club and the local council about, amongst other things, the despicable use of single use plastic glasses within the Dripping Pan and for a very short time the club made tiny efforts to encourage reusable plastic glasses instead of hundreds of disposable ones. I doubt any one kicked off about this more than she has. She is not an owner, but she cares. There is a football equivalent of apartheid happening at the club – you can only get involved and share ideas, hear the news and listen to updates if you are a paid owner/member – what about the hundreds of people who are not owners but still could add value, get involved, turn up week after week and could even be future members?
It is disgustingly elitist, condescending, clueless, short-sighted, counterproductive etc etc
The new fanzine is highly critical of the leadership at Lewes football club and really hoped that after the Mercury 13 debacle, lessons may be learned on the proper stewardship of our club. It is back to school time, the subject common sense.
With the membership approval of the Mercury 13 investment approved we find ourselves in a weird period of unnecessary uncertainty, bemused by the identity of Mercury 13 and their backers, whether the investment will even go ahead, the real ramifications for the club, the women’s team locked in a downward spiral of results and at a time when the Kings Speech embraces the Tracey Crouch report, a report which suggests this is the sort of scenario football clubs must be moving away from.
Now it just might be I end up with egg all over my face with the club and Mercury 13 any second now about to officially announce the deal as signed off, with Mercury 13 letting us know what is going on and what they are all about in relation to specifically Lewes FC. But I am already feeling a bit queasy about them.
Paramount to the whole ethos of fan and community ownership is accountability, disclosure and transparency. Asked to comment on a television piece prior to the investment vote Mercury 13 announced no comment, they were in a period of due diligence and subsequently since the vote the board have reiterated this is still the current state of play. I don’t think this is on.
The uncertainty over the future of the women’s team runs commensurate with a dire run of form that sees the Lewes FC Women rooted to the bottom of the league. It is obvious this decline in form is going to continue until there is some resolution. During the next two Sundays we have two games before a month long break that we desperately need something from. Lose them and the teams above us win, we are going to really struggle to stay up this season. Speculation is brewing that Mercury 13 are possibly getting the jitters over the takeover. Lewes looked a safe bet?
The Lewes FC Women have consistently been a mid-table team for the last five years and I don’t think for one moment Mercury 13 thought there would be a risk of us being relegated. On a three-year project to potentially get into the women’s Premiership, kick starting that from tier 3 clearly was not a scenario in their minds. I can understand that and why they would potentially pull out, but it certainly should have been. Announcing to the squad of the Lewes FC Women at the start of the season that essentially, they were going to be improved would surely suggest that those players that the new ownership thought them maybe not quite fit for purpose, let us face it that is not exactly fantastic for confidence. This is leading to idle speculation that maybe they will not proceed. The club have stated that the players are all behind the deal and I’m not suggesting that they are not, but it is perfectly natural to also feel a bit peeved about it and perform a few percent under your full capabilities. Those percentages are crucial in a tight league.
It is fair to say that after the Mercury13 initial announcement of a huge investment into various global women’s football teams the silence has been deafening. The Tracey Crouch report takes a withering view of football club supporters being kept in the dark. I absolutely understand that investments etc carry certain elements of privacy, but the wall of silence here is not acceptable. We are supposed to be a transparent fan owned club and to steam in with a huge pot of investment of money and a wall of silence is not acceptable.
I am not for one moment suggesting that they will walk away, although certainly not writing off that conclusion. Every lost game during this period of uncertainty continues at the moment to look like a nail in the coffin for the women’s team. Don’t get me wrong, I am more than happy for Mercury 13 not to get involved and for the Lewes FC Women to play in tiers 3 and 4 of the women’s pyramid at a sustainable level for us. However, 68% of the membership and a lot of fans are expecting a lot from this deal and having supported Mercury 13 deserve more transparency, even just a ‘we appreciate the confidence of the membership’.
I’m sure this will be resolved but my concern with how things have been conducted so far is that Mercury 13 are going to be a very large part of Lewes football club but also a very private part, and I don’t think that is acceptable. I don’t know what’s happened during the negotiations, but I would really hope the board of directors rammed home to them the points about our constitution and in particular the part about transparency.
Could be I am worrying about nothing, Mercury 13 are starting with a blank canvas but at the moment we do not know the artists style, medium or competency.
During the course of the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, a whopping 25% of voters switched allegiance. With many people unsure of what the ramifications of a yes/no vote were, everything was to play for; unlike a general election where pre-determined alliances are strong and there is usually very little swing in opinion during the length of a campaign.
If the Lewes FC board cared for Lewes and respected out town’s history, where the Battle of Lewes was the foundation of our modern day Parliament and with the impact of Thomas Paine being an advocate of people power, they would have approached the election to discard fan ownership in a different and more democratic manner. Maybe if more than one boardmember actually came from Lewes, when they started negotiations with Mercury 13 the first thing that would have sprung to mind was that the membership must have a vote. Until I see evidence to the contrary I do not believe, neither do most of the club, that an election was ever on the agenda at the start of the Mercury 13 deal – I don’t recall seeing anything in the original email from the board announcing that the membership would vote.
The decision to introduce Equality FC a few years without a members vote, went through with little real opposition, it was a decision by the board, members liked it and it didn’t fundamentally change the make up of the club. I think the board were caught off guard with the opposition to the Mercury 13 deal and naively thought they could march this one through as well; believing that a measure which would effectively change our fan owned model into a fan owned/private investment hybrid was okay.
There was uproar from members and supporters and the fan owned club governing body, the Football Supporters Association, called for a vote. The confused and tentative announcement from the board announcing there would be a vote, was the board bowing to pressure and hedging its bets on democracy.
In the first few weeks of members being taken by surprise about the Mercury 13 proposal, there was a push for the board to publish a detailed alternative to the Mercury 13 option. This never happened. Eventually the board agreed that a No campaign could publish something to owners – but by this time the Board (and Mercury 13) had had effectively 6 weeks of campaigning with no opposition.
From the announcement of Mercury 13 before the August bank holiday and an impromptu brain storming session on the 8th October from a makeshift NO group, a No ‘manifesto’ was published 2 days later by the board along with more information on Mercury 13, there was essentially no official proper NO campaign. For six weeks members were told one side of the story which was firmly embedded as the route forward. The board were never prepared to put forward two clear articulate and well thought out options for ‘saving the club’ – they had their predetermined and only desire from day one.
Having to rush a No campaign, headed superbly by Miranda Kemp, the focus was on maintaining the principles of fan ownership, our independence and saving the club for the town. There simply was not the time or information to build an economic argument or counter the points of the nuances of the financial arrangements, in essence how the deal was a big pie in the sky. In two weeks, what channels were available were bombarded with a NO message, the ground was leafletted and Miranda appeared on local TV and radio. Eight ex-Directors wrote a letter with their support for a No Vote. For a small group driving an opposition campaign with no time or resources, it was an impressive effort.
Had the NO campaign had another 6 weeks and were able to co-prepare presentations, hustings and Town Halls, as the Yes campaign did, and having had the time to arrange a more robust social media campaign the outcome could be very different.
But how different? One off campaigns like this are prone, as we saw in the EU Brexit referendum, to huge swings as voters get a grasp on an alien topic. Unlike a general election where voters generally have a lifelong allegiance to a political party, with a de facto referendum it is all to play for. It is won or lost on fresh arguments from sides able to get their message across on equal terms.
When one side has eight weeks and the other only two, it is a shameful kick in the teeth to democracy. The YES vote are likely to win, but unless it is by a huge figure the result will never be a fair result. If it is 75/25 in favour, I think you can probably reasonably say another six weeks of campaigning for a NO vote wouldn’t have made a difference. If it is 60/40 in favour, it will be a travesty of epic proportions as a large swing could have happened with a fairer democracy.
I always thought and said from the start, that a yes vote would likely win. It does not need to win ugly though. The smaller NO vote is largely made up of long standing fans and locals. The people who were behind rescuing the club all those years ago and backing the start of a community football club in 2010. These people have been the most outspoken and vociferous group over the years, and essentially alienating a deep rooted heart of your club is a very stupid thing to do.
We will never know if it is a cynical agenda or incompetency that has led to such an unfair election, but the ramifications will leave Lewes FC a permanently divided club, and a club where the support base who once on the whole tootled along regardless are now empowered and pretty angry. The board have been given oodles of slack over recent years and an easy ride. From this perspective I think they know the party is over and that they need to shape up, as they will most certainly be under the microscope more after this debacle.
Winning an election unfairly is one thing, but I suspect like Brexit where the claims of the YES campaign have been proven to be totally false, the board will have the impossible job of proving everything they promised to members on the back of M13’s investment, will radically transform the club. It won’t do. Mercury 13 is a sticking plaster not a practical , long term solution. The board will have to prove us doubters wrong, and I do not believe for one moment they will be able to do so and it will all sadly unravel and go downhill from now.
Sorry, rushed this out, started it this morning and took longer than I thought. I’m heading out and not checked it properly, so apologies for poor grammar etc
INTRO.
A change in direction – an alternative to Mercury 13.
This is just a prod at a Plan B. There are loads of brilliant ideas from lots of clever people who follow Lewes FC, these are some of mine. You don’t actively hear about these other ideas, but I do because I am receptive to possibilities and the board are not. There are ideas out there and there are lots of them. These are just some of mine in an attempt to present a fresh approach and alternative to the current investment proposal. The leadership of Lewes FC during this bungled consultation and voting process are either ill equipped to present a fresh plan B or unwilling to let go of the Mercury 13 co-model which is marked “Break Up Club” by accepting the sale of part of our club.
My approach focusses on a return to the tough work of building a proper community football club for Lewes and jettisoning the arrogant model we have adopted, where social media likes, photo ops and publicity grabs are king – and playing above our station in the women’s game has cost us financially. Our recent operating model tragically shown for what it is, us spiralling financially and requiring handouts, or more latterly investment but at what cost?
As a preface, this proposal is based on themes from a fanzine I wrote 6 years ago, entitled Plan B (18 pages of it!). I had a lot of positive responses back then, even positive support from previous and current board member of the time. This is not a gimmick or pie in the sky, it is achievable but it is hardwork.
Plan A, Mercury 13 deal, from the board is currently unproven, has no concrete plans, no financial figures, no coherent business strategy. It seems odd that the board continue to say it is the only way forward, when this Plan B offers answers to many of the questions. What is beyond any doubt, is that the Board over the last 13 years, have never really reached out to its members for strategic ideas believing branding and their sometimes hilarious ‘smart ideas’ will drag in sponsors. The board do not always know what they are doing and on occasion have failed spectacularly.
My plan involves utilising the assets of our great club, stadium, town and fans to rebuild the club and refocus on the Lewes community and surrounding areas and ultimately detoxifying the club.
STRATEGY
Reconfigure the club back to basics. Adhere to our brilliant constitution, reconnect with Lewes and the surrounding environs, local business and the local population. Redefine community back to Sussex and not the ‘worldwide’ community – absolutely nothing personal against our less local owners and the contribution they have made, but my preference is to bring the club back to home roots and build on these; people who are able to attend matches, able to spend hard earned pounds behind the bar, able to buy merchandise, attend in person meetings etc.
The leadership WORKING with the owners and fans not dictating to them. Make no mistake, despite leading us to the precipice of financial collapse, the board have done some brilliant things to be built on. Great to bring in new members and bigger crowds albeit at vast expense, but with this large ownership and fan base at their disposal they are either clueless on how to utilise it or simply think they know best and don’t want to. Hence the financial mess we are in and having to effectively sell out 51% of our women’s team asset.
Here goes and remember this is not a blueprint for changing the club it is a cradle of ideas to reflect on, add to, ignore, dismiss or embrace.
SELF-SUSTAINIBILITY ACCOUNTABILITY DEMOCRACY TRANSPARENCY TENACITY DEVELOPMENT #REALLEWES
Lewes has all the above ingredients to be a flag bearer and a role model for community clubs. We already have the largest network of community volunteering assets and expertise in Britain through Bonfire. We need to tap into this the volunteering make up and resource of this great town.
This plan can lead the men’s team into the National Conference and maintain the Lewes FC Women in tiers 3 and 4 of the women’s pyramid at an affordable level.
GOVERNANCE
All paid employees doing work outside of the core football teams, CEO etc would need to be released. The club should be volunteer and Lewes driven. We need to redefine how to run the club properly and prudently, calling on expertise of the people. Any redundancies can be paid for by selling the £40,000 staff car. A symbolic gesture of intent.
No board member should serve more than 2 x 3 year terms.
Being on the board needs to be an aspiration and a privilege, not an entitlement. Individuals should want to stand as a board member – their involvement welcomed and applauded.
A democracy working group will be set up to advance the participation in board elections and to raise interest in the nuts and bolts of running the club and improve democracy.
There should be a limit on directors’ (ex and current) donations for day to day running of the club, however can remain unlimited should donations be specifically awarded to physical club infrastructure ie. Long term benefit to the club.
We need at least a twelve-person board. Including co-opting members from the local council and somebody from the Bonfire Council. Bonfire is symbolic of the Lewes community and have great successes in driving volunteering initiatives; why do they not want anything to do with Lewes FC?
Directors’ standards will need to be set – all directors should have been to the Pan at least 50 times (or a sensible number to be agreed). Directors need to understand the club, town and need to have interacted with other fans to understand what Lewes and the club is all about. It is no wonder the club has lost the town if directors don’t have a real connection with it.
Decision makers must not tamper with the organic nature of club debate forums and social media. These should be for fans to let of steam and throw ideas around without interference. They must be moderated properly though. Club managed social media should be used to share all news and interest about the club.
8 Directors will have responsibility for sub working groups with volunteering fans, to be overseen by the board. The recent working group ideas were great. Shame it has taken 13 years for the first one! There are an enormous number of people like myself keen to put in hours to build the club, but steer clear feeling unwanted or not completely aligned with the current objective of the board. All of these people embracing the opportunity of participation and the club to embrace them.
These board members will act like a government department and apply for resources. Too much money has been unnecessarily squandered; funds haven’t perhaps had any real worth as someone has just written a cheque to make up financial shortfalls in recent years.
Possible working groups could include –
Playing squads.
Match Days.
Catering.
Other catering etc (see catering)
Volunteer taskforce.
Democracy and elections.
Membership.
Community interaction.
Reconnecting with the town.
And whatever else or mix and match.
FINANCE.
Where is fresh finance to come from the board ask? Er….from the town.
50/500 will be a strategy to focus on sourcing new owners, locally. Owners from the ‘international community’ spend £50 per annum. Local owners will go to games, spend at the concessions and more importantly bring friends and new potential owners to games, maybe spending £500 a year. I went to a few games thirty years ago and have maybe spent at least £10,000, maybe £20,000 at the club over the years. I have introduced some people who now often go. Why are we focussing on international ownership when there are quality owners on our own doorstep. Where will the new owners come from? Naturally as we will be a proper community club, enticing the vast swathe of non-owners who go to games via an ownership outlet and help centre in the Pan, a huge recruitment drive via the Volunteer Taskforce (see later). Convert those fans who come and watch games into long term owners. Get local owners who pay their £50/pa to come to the games and spend more money!
RECONNECTING I know from a previous regime, Steve White, the commercial manager, picked up the phone at the start of the season and called all the huge quantity of local businesses that used to sponsor the club to check they would keep sponsoring and income was already secured straight away. Local business interest in Lewes FC is on the same scale and level as Lewes FC’s interest in local business . Virtually zero. It is important to remember we were regarded far more as a community club when we were privately owned that actually as a community club.
CATERING When I was on the original Lewes FC Supporters Trust I was asked to write a paper on how to convert the catering from a pain in the neck to a vital income stream.
My experience, I have part owned and managed a catering facility with a bank of one hundred staff. A seasonal business so used to huge pits and troughs in business rather er….like a football club. So am well equipped to recommend the below and how to set up.
The catering would be brought in house.
The largest footfall in Lewes for business would be the one passing the Pan everyday to the schools, colleges, leisure centre and tip. Dog walkers, tourists going to the Priory. I would open the big wooden gates and expand and increase the catering options and open them all day. It would make a fortune and is easy to do. With the Pan becoming a week round social hub other minor events, fairs, markets etc can be held around the ground perimeter. More and more the club would become a destination especially in the summer and hey guess what, a superb recruitment opportunity for the membership drive and curious customers getting the vibe and wanting to come to a match.
Look at the large posters around the town from the two Lewes micro-breweries with vast numbers of minor events, entertainment and guest food outlets. They have created a vibrant community with far inferior resources to the Dripping Pan.
One of my best friends is a top sound engineer and does a lot of festivals so we have had a long chat. As many of you know Mumford and Sons packed 20,000 people in for a festival in the Convent Field.
His view was securing three to five decent name acts you could get 10,000 punters relatively easily. By that he means well known, has been acts. They are cheap. Including tickets, concessions etc the turnover could be as much as £500,000 a day. As he said, make it three days, your costs per day go down and your profit up. Potentially a three day festival could realise in excess £1,000,000. Of course, you can scale up the acts and scale up attendance. This would all be professionally licenced and staged and don’t worry not for us to do. It is in our doorstep and been done Christ’s sake.
We have the venue, the attraction of Lewes and the train station nearby.
Oh, and we are a community club, think of the tills of local businesses and accommodation.
Would I put a figure on the above. Yes £1,000,000 at least. I’d say 1.5 depending on how it all clicked. Okay let us make this clear. I am not stupid I have run a business all my life, have studied the club accounts and my forecasts have generally all been right. I said we couldn’t afford Equality FC. The board said shup up Harris. I was right, they were wrong.
COMMUNITY
This is what it is all about. This is why I wrote all those fanzines and now blogs. I have traded in and from Lewes since I was 18. I love this town. I have been going to the Pan for 30 years and the beef I have with the current and previous board is their reluctance to engage with the town. The Lewes FC reliance on marketing punchlines, headline grabbing modern messaging is out of control and has not grown the ownership model sufficiently, nor has it helped the club achieve financial sustainability.
We need to get back to basics, and get out and bring in the town and local areas.
Why during elections in this country do parties send foot troops out campaigning etc. Because it is a proven and successful method. We should set up a Volunteer Taskforce. The task is to leaflet all of Lewes, local villages and maybe Uckfield, Seaford, Newhaven and Peacehaven. It would be overseen and orchestrated by a three-person team. We would aim at 2-3 leaflet drops a year to every built-up area. Much of this is easy as many volunteers would just have a set number of nearby streets to where they live and then allocated a number of roving destinations. If we could get 25-30 to sign up and I already have 5 who would, the only cost is in the printing.
We would for the first year apologise for ignoring local households, beg for membership and advertise offers and discounts. Leaflets all paid for by sponsorship/advertising from local business.
We would need a Commercial Workforce, maybe the same people, to forensically approach every business locally from Harveys and the supermarkets to little units in repurposed farm buildings, the lot. The emphasis must be on we are sorry we have ignored you, please can you help us.
BONFIRE.
We would need to reach out to all of the bonfire societies, say sorry we ignore you and get them onside. Tap into all that experience and savvy and make a real connection with them. They are key to help rebuilding, they are Lewes and they will help. It is their football club. No point in bragging about 2500 worldwide members when Lewes Bonfire societies have far more than that just locally.
A SORT OF CONCLUSION.
As the club becomes ‘Lewes friendly’ so will the finances roll in and the interest. Every minor event and initiative no matter how small starts to form a momentum of interest in the club. When lots of the town’s activities are based around the football club so will the town’s focus. It is scandalous; is there another non-league football club so physically entrenched in an enviable and beautiful town, so close to the station and infrastructures? and these assets just blindly ignored. We want talk around the town to be what the club is up to, what the next event is and we will have lots of new visitors and wallets. Even if it is a yoga evening, pub quiz, teenage youth club, holiday club, community kitchen, these begin to build a community feeling. Lewes is a get involved community and get things done community. The paradox of the community club years is an out of touch board, obsessed with doing things differently and seeking to win awards, and getting in the national press – in doing so, they have lost the key, charm and connection of community. It is possible to run a successful, financially self-sustaining community club, playing good football at sustainable levels – to do so though is about returning to the community model, embracing it, growing it and celebrating it rather than selling out and going down a co-ownership model with an investment firm and giving up on our owners, fans and town.
On Friday, the board released the long-awaited Q&A document with a little more detail on the Mercury 13 proposal of the investment group to take over 51% of the Lewes FC. In at least two questions the board are asked about the licence arrangements and the criteria to compete at the Dripping Pan. The answers (and questions are below) were an unequivocal non-commitment to the Lewes FC Women remaining at the Pan indefinitely. They do not say in any of the answers to the questions, or subsequent questions from me, that no way will that happen.
It has always been my thoughts that when Mercury 13 came in with their ambition and claims that women’s football will be a billion pound industry, it simply did not stack up with that being conducive to staying at the Dripping Pan. Glitz, glamour, money and the Dripping Pan are simply not commensurate bedfellows.
The FA have form for allowing relocation and let us face it, this is a real probable outcome if the aspiration of WSL is the reason why Mercury 13 want in with Lewes, and why the Board are keen to succumb.
Absolutely nobody in women’s football know how moving forward and progress will be reflected in the Women’s Premiership/Super League licence arrangements; not just with relation to minimum capacities allowed but they may also dictate that all stadiums must be all seater.
I am not suggesting this very likely relocation outcome is on the agenda or been discussed by either party, but it does seem an inevitability to me if Lewes Women’s compete at a higher level.
There are other possible reasons why any Lewes FC team may have to leave the Dripping Pan e.g. the Council doesn’t renew a lease, but these are very unlikely and definitely not an inevitability! The rise of Women’s football and our women’s team leaving The Pan is a red line the board have said they are prepared to cross.
Is now the time to ask the board to ensure a legal commitment by Mercury 13 to never move one of our teams from our ground? As contractual terms are under discussion, this red line should be in CAPS, in bold and underlined.
I am not suggesting in any way there is an agenda from any party to leave the Dripping Pan. I am saying it may well be the denouement of the deal unless proper checks are placed in the agreement.
Board responses to Q&A.
Please confirm both men’s and women’s teams will continue to play at The Pan.
Both sides will continue to call the Dripping Pan home, although some redevelopment work will be required to comply with the ground grading conditions for higher leagues. It should be noted though that the club has no control over conditions placed on being members of certain leagues in the future – whilst today the ground would be able and allowed to host games at a higher level, there could be changes to the ground grading and requirements in the future.
What happens if new licences demand a ground capacity, suppose 10,000 for the top two flights or leagues commensurate with the existing Premiership and Championship?
We can only address the known requirements at the present time, which would not prove a major issue for the club. In any future scenario where significant changes or criteria would need to be met, there will be a joint responsibility for the investing partners and Lewes FC to approach the best way to fulfil any new license requirements set by the FA together, including but not limited to minimum stadium capacity and infrastructure requirements.
In this guest blog Tony examines a nuclear option for the parlous Lewes FC Women funding crisis. But is it nuclear or actually a much needed dose of common sense and a brilliant way forward for the club with the best of both worlds?
In 2010 Lewes fc became a ‘community owned entity’. If the disposal of 51% of the women’s team to Mercury 13 proceeds, the club would no longer be a ‘community owned entity’, not wholly, and not in any meaningful sense (at least not to the people of Sussex and to matchday supporters). The club are justifying the disposal on the basis that it will achieve one of the five pillars in the club strategy (high performance football), but what of two other pillars, fan and community engagement, when having been negotiating with Mercury 13 for a year they gave members just five days to respond, and then held a Town hall where no other views were given a platform, and of course the most important pillar of them all, full financial sustainability. The intention of the new ‘community owned entity’ in 2010 was for a three year transition into ‘financial self-sustainability’. The club was largely self sufficient for one year only, 2012/13. Since then two directors have donated over £1.4 million to ‘assist cash flows’, and it is possible that since the last set of accounts were published even more has been donated. Hardly financial self-sustainability! With sound management, the part-time men’s team ought to be entirely sustainable. With average attendances of over 800, plus membership subscriptions, our income is greater than many teams in the Isthmian Premier or National League South. It is not the men’s team that is causing the club financial stress. Most of the donated money has been in the last few years (for example £600,000 in 2021/22) and much of it has gone to support the women’s team. To conform to a Tier 2 Championship Licence, the club has to have a Head Coach (UEFA A Licence holder); Assistant Coach (UEFA B Licence holder); Goalkeeping Coach (FA Level 2); General Manager dedicated to women’s team (minimum salary of £35k pa); Qualified Physiotherapist or Sports Therapist (full time); Qualified Strengthening & Conditioning Coach (full time); a doctor at matches and all contact training sessions; plus part time marketing and safeguarding posts, and of course, twenty or so professional women footballers. The total cost of this, at absolute minimum, including National Insurance and pension contributions, must be around £700,000 per year. And that would treble or perhaps quadruple if we ever reached the WSL. For a club like Lewes, it is fantasy. Let’s be honest, ultimately Mercury 13 will want a return on their investment, and that will probably mean 100% ownership. They will have sharp solicitors and deep pockets and a business acumen that quite frankly, our directors will not be able to match. The Dripping Pan will soon become too small to accommodate the growth of women’s football at WSL or Championship level (in any case a minimum stadium size might become a Tier 2 Licence requirement), so if Mercury 13 want a return on their investment, how will they achieve it? Their options would appear be twofold: to move their franchise away from the Dripping Pan (remember Wimbledon/Milton Keynes) or to sell their share of the club at a profit. We might then find the women’s team majority owned or wholly owned by a regime or individual unpalatable to Lewes fans, or by another club (there are numerous examples in women’s football of clubs being absorbed into other clubs – remember the controversial Charlton Athletic takeover of top-flight Croydon). There are other reasons why the Mercury 13 proposal is dangerous. They could incur huge financial commitments for which Lewes fc is 49% responsible. Or they could incentivize their global fan base to buy shares and take control of the whole club. What then for our men’s team. Tenants at the Dripping Pan? Perhaps even evicted? It could never happen? Ask
fans of Kingstonian. It seems, even having discussions with Mercury 13 has exposed us to danger. With sufficient membership numbers they could pursue a takeover driven by members who are not local to Sussex, who know nothing about the history of the club, and are not matchday supporters. If the town turns against Lewes fc, what then for a community football club? So here’s my suggestion. We SELL the women’s team 100% to Mercury 13. They would then be required to keep the Lewes name, pay rent for our training facilities, and to hire the Dripping Pan for home games (all at twelve months notice, should they wish to change anything). Then we start a new women’s team, Lewes Women, much further down the football pyramid (County League or SECWFL or perhaps even the L&SERWFL) and share the brilliant moments and memories as they forge their way triumphantly back up through the divisions. Very few girls from our Development Team have been given first team opportunities in recent years (and then only in the Continental Cup) so we would actually be providing more of a service to aspiring young footballers than we do at present. ALL ROUND WINS. Mercury 13 get their Championship team (with all the costs involved), we continue (in the short term at least) to enjoy women’s Championship football without bankrupting our club, we have our own community women’s team as well, and not least, we would be safeguarding the financial future of our men’s team. And if Mercury 13 don’t want to buy our women’s team at a reasonable price, we close down the negotiations with them, and have a club-wide discussion about how to move forward. This discussion should not just involve directors, who have overseen years of lax financial management, but should be club-wide (a Supporters Trust perhaps, certainly a Shadow Board) and should focus on how we might attract further sponsorship, or indeed, whether we could ever attract sufficient sponsorship to meet our women’s teams costs, and if not, whether there are there other suitors who might buy the women’s team, or whether we should we drop down into the National League where the costs are lower (but still a good quality of football – Ipswich Town, Portsmouth, Oxford Utd, Plymouth Argyle, Cardiff City etc). The problem we have, is articulating any alternative view to members, The Board are the only ones with members email details, and they are unlikely to put forward proposals which do not accord with their single-minded approach. So how on earth do we combat that, and give members to give a more balanced range of views. Pamphleting outside of games will only reach a percentage of members, but it might be worth a try. Raising the ante, we could hold a meeting, elect an interim Shadow Board (membership, constitution, and formal elections can all come later) and demand that as a Shadow Board we have the right to send our own briefing paper to members. With the right media coverage, that could be a ballistic option. One final comment, what now for Equality fc when our own Board have said ‘Equality does not always mean treating men and women the same.’ Tony Streeter. t.streeter702@btinternet.com Happy to have email discussion about any of the points raised here (or a group discussion in the Lansdown, Gardeners, Arms, Oak etc).
Lewes FC have been in negotiations with an investment consortium, Mercury13, who wish to take control of 51% of the Lewes FC Women. Although I have said for years, to the denial by people at the top of the club to the contrary, that we are in a financial mess, this proves we are.
The board have been negotiating this deal seemingly for a year and yet the owners are given 6 days to fire in some questions in a ‘consultation.’ It is almost as if the actual owners are an afterthought. Importantly, as of now, no vote has been sanctioned for the members to decide whether to accept effectively busting the club up. At the moment nobody is clear on the ramifications of the investment or what the club get in return. Not only a disgraceful presentational disaster but a contemptuous way to treat owners and fans.
There are so few tangible positives. The only definitive outcome will be the customary endgame of any alien organisation puncturing the nucleus of an organic entity, at any level. The ties are broken and that’s all folks. This is the beginning of the end. Ignore the sugar-coated garbage from the hierarchy.
A club spokesperson has said ‘You suggested it was a done deal. I’ve responded and said it’s not. In terms of the vote I’ve said in reply to a number of threads that we will consider the next steps as part of the feedback from the consultation process.’
As a former board member has stated, to not hold a vote on such a fundamental change to the club is ‘outrageous.’
But the Board have a big problem. We are a fan owned club and to water down fan ownership for the convenience of a large investor is essentially a massive change to the whole ethos of the club. The club brag about the 2500 members we have, but appears does not want to give those members/owners a democratic vote on those changes. Usual cryptical messaging from the club who have not emphatically said we are to have a vote or not. This smacks of weak management.
Apparently, the club have been in discussion with Mercury 13 for a year and it has not yet occurred to them whether or not it is fit to carry out the democracy aspect enshrined in our constitution on the outcome of those discussions. Really? Long protracted discussions and the board have not decided whether they should let the club owners vote on the club structure. Dictionary definition of incompetency or hedging bets?
The spokesperson added ‘if only a small minority are calling for a vote, should there be one? What should the threshold be to make it a meaningful vote? Or, what is the vote actually for (straight yes/no, % owned etc). I’d encourage every owner to provide their views via the consultation form’
This amazes me, the board of one of the top women’s teams in Britain saying a small minority are calling for a vote, yet reality is pretty much everyone who has voiced an opinion think we should, whether for or against. It is so amateur and unprofessional. The board are supposed to represent us but are potentially sticking their two fingers up at the membership, the ambivalence is astounding. You should not need to ask. You should recognise the gravity of the issue and the democracy of the club, and it should be a matter of course a vote should be held.
My thoughts are that the Board are waiting to see how the proposals go down with the fans and owners. Like a ton of bricks so far. I have been impressed by the volatile anti-Mercury 13 initiative by practically all of the owners in the debate. I ignore the usual sycophants, they are more henchmen than credible. I am one of the few people still waiting for more information before deciding. Although my views here on the democracy on the proposal very much decided!
I think this has backfired on the board and they will not have a vote. The problem they have is through all the spin and marketing over the years they have built the image in the owner’s head of what a magnificent club we are and how we should protect our amazing selves. This is a view I have vehemently, for the last 13 years, had no truck with. I have researched so many things about the club, accounts, constitution, women’s licence agreements etc and have reached a conclusion contrary to the public image of the club. In my view in reality, we are a mere pastiche of a fan owned community club and the board have been very much hoisted by their own petard by creating an unrealistic public image of community ownership, perfection that of course owners and fans want to protect. Then drop in at their convenience. They assumed many of the owners, who just follow the women for instance, would go crazy over a huge cash injection into the squad. But many are saying they would sooner drop a division or two and maintain the ethics of the club rather than sell out to investors. I do not think the Board were expecting that. Treating people like they are stupid is never a sensible thing.
The reality is that they have shown themselves to be clueless. They would almost certainly win a vote. There are huge feelings against this proposed investment by people ‘active’ on the socials and forum. Ultimately though a lot of members do not really have a clue how the club is run and will go along with board recommendations which will be to accept the proposal.
Moving forward is where no vote will get dicey. Actively pursuing new members as the board have been for years and when push comes to shove eschewing the viewpoint of those members signals a breakdown in trust and shows what I have said for years. The Board at Lewes FC is weak. This will possibly be the beginning of the end for the club in the current form. Lose the trust of your owners you are finished. All cracks expand and eventually fall to pieces. We already have a really lightweight board lacking gravitas. You only had to watch last years AGM to see bar Stuart Fuller, who sadly and worryingly is leaving in October, the characters running the club are not up to scratch running a club our size. Indeed even more lightweight after today as a member of the board has just been suspended.
This will unravel and become apparent over this process if Mercury13 come in undemocratically. These are people actually of gravitas and will almost certainly essentially do what they want and have the wherewithal to get what they want. Don’t give me the ‘red lines’ they cannot cross contractually, everyone knows this is unrealistic surely? This will cause almighty difficulties within the club. Our board of ill-equipped amateurs making many decisions alongside a wealthy organisation of smooth operators with ten times the guile experience. That is obvious, but when the owners see the inevitable rising dominance of Mercury 13 all of the current claptrap bullshit excuses for the investors by the board will be seen for exactly what they are and the club will be finished.
The heart of the community club is its nucleus and the solidarity of the owners. A board seen to ignore the wishes of the owners will forever mean the board will stand accused of dumping on the membership and will be seen as law unto itself, not representative and therefore not fit for purpose.
It boils down to this. If Mercury13 is a disaster and they have been installed undemocratically, the current club is finished. Mercury 13 is a disaster but has been approved by the fans, nobody has a right to moan or blame the board. Simple as that. Why the procrastination? Announce a vote.
I wrote this blog in December 2022, pretty much foreseeing the current debacle.
Please when reading consider in your thoughts, seven months later, 5 days ago, Lewes FC have announced they want new investors to pump money into the club, with scant explanation and to date refusing to offer a vote to the owners.
There is no greater damnation of the governance of Lewes FC than the Tracey Crouch Fan Led Review.
It is galling how so many points of poor governance are relevant to the Lewes FC Board of Directors apparent mishandling and negligence of proper governance and unaccountability.
People close to the club are all aware of the plethora of excuses and the occasional ‘we know we make mistakes.’ But the Crouch Review sums up the poor governance far more than the odd ‘mistake.’
What the club cannot argue against is the absolute clarity and authority of the Crouch Review. The most in depth look at poor governance in British football ever.
Approved by the Lewes FC Board of Directors has been a huge private investment in chasing glory for the Lewes FC Women. Our tiny club was bankrolled last season by £600,000. Nearly 50% of it’s turnover.
Crouch Review-
‘The Review concluded that English football’s fragility is the result of three main factors-
1)— misaligned incentives to ‘chase success’’
Yes, that is investing vast sums of money you do not have chasing success. We do that textbook. Tick
2) Slating- ‘Club corporate structures that lack governance’ Yes that is us, a Board sanctioning this unsustainable investment, approving private endowment fund contributions in contravention of the stated core aim of our constitution to become self-sustained. As a community club carrying this out without consulting supporters and explaining costs is disgraceful.
3) Not taking ‘sufficient account of supporters failing to scrutinise decision making’ When did the supporters and 2700 owners say it was okay to put the club in possible financial peril?
Crouch Review-
‘tick box’ approach to supporter engagement from many clubs, often leading to a significant gap between club and supporter perception of the provision of fan engagement’
Make no mistake over this. This is damning stuff of the Lewes Football Club Board of Directors who have sanctioned a dramatic sustainably funded quest for glory in breach of our constitution hiding behind the utterly farcical ‘democratic’ set-up that approves it which is basically irrelevant as it is not fit for purpose. Owner engagement in the recent AGM and Director hustings was about 5%.
I will go into depth in my next string of blogs the club shortcomings. 12 blogs in I am bored and unenthused so need a recharge!
The Crouch Review would suggest Lewes FC has an immediate remedy.
We need an immediate addition to our constitution to rid us of some of these dreadful board members by establishing Director’s Tests
Crouch report
‘Directors tests
demonstrate that they have the necessary professional qualifications, and/or transferable skills, and/or relevant experience to run the club.
pass an integrity test in the same manner as prospective owners.’
This would weed out the weak individuals simply ‘going with the flow’ in decision making chasing the quest for glory within the board. For a community club to have at least three board members who had hardly even been to the town let alone a game is an unmitigated disgrace. But the Board seem to be happy proudly displaying the new members who should not be anywhere near a board of a community club. I mean it is so bloody basic.
To hold the board PROPERLY to account the Crouch Review suggests establishing a second fan Shadow Board, a de facto House of Lords. This would contain proper fans set up properly, not the current poor selection of board members with no history with the town or club. It would be like the Lewes FC Supporters Trust that pre-dated the Community Club, a group of long-term proper fans, smart and very protective of the club and representative of the supporters with no personal agenda.
It is just such a joke that a Community Club Board needs an advisory board to stop it possibly bankrupting the club.
Crouch Review-
‘Supporter advisory/Shadow Board
This is a ‘board’ of a number of diverse supporter representatives which would discuss the business and strategy of the club in more detail than other forms of engagement.
consist of 5 – 12 members appointed according to a democratic process
have a Chair appointed from among its members on an seasonal basis
have reserved seats for representatives from key supporter groups including: representatives of the body holding the Golden Share, equality, diversity and inclusion representatives, youth supporters and international supporters (if relevant)
members should be subject to retirement by rotation, ensuring both that there is a regular turnover of members but also that at any one time there will be a number of experienced members on the Shadow Board
hold at least quarterly meetings with club executives, with guaranteed attendance from the club CEO or equivalent twice per year’
Here is my opinion. The Lewes FC Board of Directors would not dream to sanction anything like the recommendations above because it is too basically incompetent and I think Tracey Crouch would agree with that great football classic, ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’
The review delights me as it agrees with much of my general gist and criticisms of the club.
I will from the New Year start looking further into the ramifications of the Crouch Report.
This has to be read in the context that any shortcomings in information is not through my not trying to obtain it from the Chief Executive, Maggie Murphy. I will for my next series of blogs be including an open letter I sent to Maggie which will explain further. I am more than open to be corrected and remove incorrect points of fact not interpretation by Maggie
‘Now, how can we mess this up?’
My most read blog from years ago was the same title but with ‘a piss up in one.’ We briefly examine how we now cannot ‘a piss up with one.’
Our ‘hospitality partner’ is Only With Love.’ Lewes FC are superb at pretentious titles if not anything else. They are a brewery based in Uckfield set up and owned by former Lewes FC directors Roger Warner and Steve Keegan, Bare in mind to take a view on this fact when reading below.
Obviously Lewes hosts the great Harvey’s Brewery. It also now has a couple of amazing micro-breweries. Lewes FC board have decided they are too disinterested in plugging our vast financial trading losses by sorting the catering out themselves. Just like every other football club would. Instead, getting a trading partner to do it would be simpler. Jaw-dropping textbook example of kicking the can down the road and wasting money.
There are an obvious choice of two micro-breweries that tick the box of Lewes FC going into partnership with.
THE CHOICES-
Abyss Brewery, based in Lewes, 4 star rating, have an existing experienced permanent outside catering structure and events strategy.
Beak Brewery, based in Lewes, 4 star rating, have an existing experienced permanent outside catering structure and events strategy
The third far less obvious option-
Only With Love, based 8 miles away in Uckfield, a reduced 3.5 rating and NO EXISTING PERMANENT OUTSIDE CATERING STRUCTURE
Of course 100/100 people given the choice would choose one of the two Lewes firms. Better qualified and from Lewes it would seem?
Er….
Apparently not, the Lewes FC board of course choose the less accomplished one from out of town, Uckfield. Yes folks, but why on earth would the board of Lewes COMMUNITY football club eschew the two better choices from Lewes and choose one 8 miles away, you can ask, well maybe there is a good reason for that?
I had a short dialogue with Maggie Murphy the CEO of Lewes FC who seemingly proposed the arrangement to the board to approve, I assume.
It appears that because Only With Love, from Uckfield already had a shoe-in on matchdays through a reasonable arrangement during the previous season with a club director. That was seemingly the driver of the arrangement, they were simply gifted the set-up at Lewes FC on a plate based on being in situ in a lesser capacity. I pressed Murphy on whether the club performed due diligence and spoke to the other two Lewes breweries and was not told otherwise. Make no mistake, I am not criticising Only With Love but I have drawn blanks on trying to find out why they were appointed over the two logical choices. I have just been told were the best, but until I am corrected would suggest really the easiest. Happy for Maggie to correct me if I am wrong and let me know in depth the real thinking behind the arrangement other than ease.
This appears to be a totally unacceptable procedural disaster. No due diligence or sound financial practice has been adopted here seemingly, just the easiest option. The catering at Lewes FC done properly is a lucrative income stream. To simply dish it out to someone without even talking to Abyss or Beak is disgraceful.
Both are from Lewes, more experienced at catering, are rated higher and will bring more local business and tick the boxes of our constitution we are supposed to adhere to.
I have no idea if the other two breweries would be interested incidentally. But to not even ask is simply incompetent.
We apparently have a MOU with them, not a contract but a memorandum of understanding. Yes not even a proper contract. A MoU can be a tough arrangement or a weak alignment of ideas with no true terms and conditions. Although Murphy was in dialogue with me about possibly helping to bring the catering in-house for the sole benefit of the club I was refused access to the MOU. Akin to going in blindfolded if you cannot see the existing arrangement at the transparent Lewes FC.
With our vast gates for two teams, catering should be in-house at Lewes FC. If it is lazily farmed out it should at least be done properly.
As anyone knows, the bottom line is the queues for a beer are still horrific. I seriously would question the validity of the club claim of what a success the arrangement has been. My personal experience is long queues for a beer. At a recent game when 6 drunk yobs spent half a game of football hurling disgusting abuse at the opposition goalkeeper the bar staff of Only With Love should have refused to serve them further. Instead they illegally tanked them up by further with repeated pint top ups. It is illegal to serve beer to drunks. When I questioned the two staff they said they did not know that. By the way there is no need for the club to get hot bothered with me over this. Instead they need to crack down on illegally selling beer to drunks that could see our alcohol licence withdrawn. The club told me the queues are reducing and the staff are trained well. Perchance queues are dwindling because the gates have been smaller recently because the games I have been to this season I have had to wait for the second half before getting a drink. To give Only With Love their due, they brew great beer and I am in no way criticising them for grabbing an opportunity.
One of the evils of having your club bankrolled and cheques written to cover operating losses is that you don’t bother exercising financial prudence and proper operating etiquette.
I trust due diligence will be preformed next year, actually I don’t trust that at all.
Squirrelled away in the 2021/22 ewes FC Cub Strategy is this.
Actions-Invest in building new toilet blocks.
Bearing in mind the diatribe throughout the verbose strategy you would have thought such an improvement in such a basic would get more priority.
The Indicator of Success- New toilet blocks, with disability access to increase toilets/fan ratio.
That is correct, that is Lewes FC indicating that we do not have nearly enough toilet facilities.
So, what has happened. Nothing. A source at the club told me, yes, it’s happening.
Results of application searches at Lewes District Council suggest no application as yet has been received. 18 months on from the process being announced.
I know a bit about planning and it is a month to get plans drawn up and the planning process six weeks. I went through the process in the summer, it is one of those rare British processes that still works.
Anyone who goes to the Pan knows the toilets are archaic and disgusting, a revolting ramshackle collection of converted Portakabins and building site cubicles.
Any process to build new blocks is also dependent on a grant. Whether that is from the FA or the club submits a grant application to the guy who bankrolls the club I do not know.
No grant no bogs.
What is amazing is how the club are making no effort to fundraise as a back-up. Presumably apart from a back-up plan for construction, anyone giving the money is more likely to if they see you have made an effort to raise funds yourself without just a giveaway.
This has to be observed in the context of the massive club spending on playing staff, backroom staff and management. The accounts show little Lewes FC has staff wages of £1,000,000.
So badly is Lewes FC run though it has managed to find £40,000 to buy a member of staff a club car. But it’s okay we were told at the AGM that Lewes FC are so amazing the new car has not depreciated in value. Factcheck- it is an electric car and they depreciate 49% over three years. But don’t get the facts interfere with a good yarn.
To use the new club buzzword, it is an ‘indicator’ of just how out of touch the club board are sanctioning such an expense whilst acknowledging out toilets are simply not good enough. Also acknowledging they can only be replaced if someone else spunks up the money. But going out buying brand new cars with our own money. It’s okay though folks it is electric and ‘aligns with our values.’
I have to say I have no idea who the club have bought the car for, if it is for who I think it is, it really does not represent good value for money either.
Thing is, I don’t really bother any more. The last paper fanzine was 5 years ago. Chris and Gareth who helped drifted away from the club as most of our friends had already done so.
When I picked up the fanzine bug again all that remained was the blog. I have always been intrigued with social media and been shit at it. So I spent the £240 necessary with Word Press to upgrade the blog so I can start discovering more about plugins, working the site and how to build it up. In time for Christmas as I thought I would put the fortnight of Christmas boredom into good use and teach myself to understand blogging more.
The 12 blogs at Christmas is a thorough health check of the club.
But yes folks, I am writing 12 blogs really to teach myself how to understand to blog better! I am having a new ecommerce site built next year for one of my businesses, the one I enjoy and doing so will help teach me to work it more effectively.
Like most of my old friends who regularly supported the club my interest has significantly waned and any latterly musings have been very sporadic. But as I rediscovered the world of amateur writing, I got really absorbed into it more than I had hoped and started researching club accounts, social media feeds, the Crouch Fan Led Review.
A constant theme, historically, throughout the fanzine was espousing new ideas and criticising current ones. This is how a community club should work and it has always amazed me how so many people involved with the club simply do not understand what it is all about. As a paper fanzine with the other Chris, who knew how to format and produce a paper fanzine, it was easy to use humour to make a really powerful point. Now it takes an article. I am lucky, the maniacal workings of my mind mean I can write a blog in twenty minutes, A blog to me is a quick narrative to get a point across, not some piece of outstanding writing. ‘Just as well’ I hear you say!
Some of my blogs are read in up to 12 different countries by people that frankly the number of reads blows my mind. The statistics sometimes disappoints of course. Interesting that the three blogs in this series on women’s football, despite the high profile of our women’s team, are the least read and engaged with. It is an irony how now the fanzine has been in decline our readership has essentially broadened and shot up.
Blogging means we will never have the enjoyment of seeing one of the best football writers of our generation, Paul Hayward, queueing to get into the Pan engrossed in one of our issues. I doubt he surfs the internet to read this blog. Maybe he does….hello Paul!
I have been involved in the Lewes community for 40 years. I love the place and people and I always feel that Lewes FC has failed them dramatically and the ‘community’ project. I know writing what I do has been a revelation at the club governance to some people and these thoughts get passed around. Obviously, I would not do this if nobody listened. I do get some wonderful feedback form new supporters and from older ones who have frankly slated me now agree with me. I have found this so heartening.
In reality though, I am simply not really interested any more. These 12 blogs are a representation of what drives me away. I cannot change how the club is run, but I can educate people and I know sooner rather than later the whole strange circus dysfunctional thing Lewes FC has become will implode and we can get some proper people running it with no agenda other than running two decent teams for the town of Lewes running the club and myself and all my old buddies can return.
I still go to matches as at the end of the day Lewes and the Palace are my teams for life, but I have to balance that with the fact I don’t agree with how the club is run and don’t want to invest my passions into it like I used to. Even up to five years ago missing a home game was unthinkable. For the 15 years up to then my social life and friendship circles revolved around Lewes FC, big pre-match and after-match sessions in the local Kings Head and some fantastic away games which morphed into fab parties! It is an indication of the dysfunction I mention that the current leadership has seen I calculate 45 of the 50 fans who I would know well enough to have a drink with simply do not go. Loads of Lewes FC fans on my Facebook, only 3 still go.
Football clubs have to earn your unadulterated support as Lewes have done for so long for me, but I simply don’t really care, occasionally attend, occasionally comment on social media and write the odd blog. It’s the best I can do. I have a busy life and Lewes FC is down the list now.
I know how to grow an audience, I no longer interact with comments and messages from morons but also fantastic people who care, I have other writers wanting to write for the blog, many very good and two national magazines want me to write some articles. I can give out leaflets to massively lift the awareness of the blog, post it on other blogs sites rather than just Twitter. But that would require an effort, as I alluded to earlier, that I’ll save for something else I really care about.
It is sad when a club’s governance leaves you detached from it. I started supporting Lewes as a football lover and met loads of great people and we all had such fun. Nearly all of them have deserted the club. They are Lewes and football fans, and this club now is a really poor imitation of them both. Football ownership and clubs is a cyclical thing and when the club becomes a decent non-league club for our wonderful town again, we will all be back. When some of the pillocks who are involved realise they are not getting what they want from it bugger off en masse we can resume the party. Interesting how some board members who joined living and breathing Lewes FC are nowhere to be seen once Lewes FC has served it’s purpose.
I think without the fanzine I would not go at all. A boycott of the dreadful club governance and some of the characters involved would be good as so many of my friends have. But occasional blogs and attendance keep a feint pulse going, Some strategic posting on social media platforms can stir a lot of interest on wayward governance and seems to really really wind up some people and that is always worthwhile!
So, it was interesting to see the club 21/22 strategy when it was published opening itself up to scrutiny by setting a number of aims, mainly in figures, and publishing whether they are achieved when the strategy period ended.
One of the interesting traits of Lewes FC over the years is the sometimes odd interpretation of figures. Too many times I have seen criticism of the club brushed by the club, with an explanation of the lines of the figures are good and ‘we will be doing this’. But interpreting the figures to shed a good light on the club rather than a realistic one. For instance, I was roundly rubbished for predicting the vast costs of the Lewes FC Women and was rubbished. But I was spot on. Because it is so easy using figures to explain current problems that will wash away and nobody able to examine what the club has said until over a year later in the accounts.
So, it was interesting to see the club 21/22 strategy when it was published opening itself up to scrutiny by setting a number of aims, mainly in figures, and publishing whether they are achieved when the strategy period ended.
To me so many of the aims were inconsequential and frankly easy to achieve. But I acknowledge it is a healthy change to see Lewes FC for once utilising, the ’transparency’ part of their contract with the club owners, the supporters. I am really pleased the club did this and thank them.
To me the most important ‘aim’ was to get 3500 new owners. As the club says on the document-
‘We seek to create a club that is fully sustainable, with a vision that one day we will not rely on external sponsors or investors for survival but thrive through our own ownership base.’
The club wished to be self-sustained through the membership. An honourable aim and very much coordinated with the club constitution.
One can argue the aim was pointless in that 3500 new members would equate to an extra £150,000 to £200,000 in income. But the 21/22 accounts saw the additional trading losses for the year covering the strategy well surpassing that figure. I digress.
In the end, the club gained 900 of the 3500. Not a bad figure to say the least, but paltry in comparison to the number needed to make an impact on the club’s desire to get the membership to help self-sustain the club. Factor in too the time and money gone into marketing to get the extra membership.
The conclusion of the club in the review of the review is that it is an ongoing process. Although it was acknowledged at the AGM it was not a great success and Lewes FC will be concentrating its membership drive to the UK. The focus was bizarrely to get the new membership for Lewes Community FC from around the world.
How on earth did Lewes FC really think they would get so many new members and why was it delivered as a worldwide recruitment.
Because Lewes FC believes its own press. The onus of the writing of the strategy read more like a propaganda exercise. We read that we are fully sustained and elsewhere that we want to aim to be self-sustained! Reading it is a classic textbook exercise in self-aggrandizement. The disruptors! No we are not. We are changing values in football and how football clubs are run, no we are not. We are chucking a shit load of money at the Lewes FC Women as a punt at fame and fortune.
It is however a very persuasive document and maybe one more meant for punting for large sponsorship deals more of a manifesto that a practical document.
Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of good in the strategy and it’s existence although disappointing that the 22/23 one is still nowhere to be seen. Every week it remains in the ether diminishes the authority of the current one.
I don’t know how it was marketed or how much was spent marketing it but 900 out of 3500 is a fail.
Because actually nobody is that interested. Interest in Lewes FC it seems to be lost on the club strategist is mainly based in Sussex and that is where you should concentrate your efforts. Instead the club decided the world would be so interested in everything we do who would not want to be an owner?
The world less 900 people.
It is almost breathtakingly stupid to concentrate your membership drive to the world and not locally. As the fail, of the project shows. I mean why would you prioritise you r efforts on worldwide members when local ones are SO MUCH MORE VALUABLE. They will come to games, bring friends, catering and merchandising and the greatest asset of all that Lewes FC fails to recognise, word of mouth.
The leadership of Lewes FC as usual think they are great ‘game changers’ and why wouldn’t people want to know all about them and join them? Because they are not interested. The greatest problem at Lewes is the self-belief that ‘doing things differently’ is smart and clever, when actually doing things sensibly, chipping away, learning on the job, trial and error will always lead you to the strongest outcome. You simply cannot busk the system.
I am writing this article about how and whether Lewes FC Women can continue to compete at Championship level. Please note new readers it will deal with this issue but not answer the question of whether we should be even attempting to do so as is in contradiction to our status as a community club attempting to be self-sustained which I will address in a later blog. The Crouch review would be highly critical of the huge sums of money we are throwing at the Lewes FDC Women in what it describes as ‘misaligned incentives to ‘chase success”
Reading the Crouch Review into women’s football it is interesting to see how it contradicts much of the current thought about the game, chasing money and instead focuses on creating more ‘value’ to the game, not just pitching for more investment but creating a game where you don’t need to be doing that but which will grow organically through strong governance. Then the money will come in at its own pace and can be used to grow the game, not just a race to the top where clubs like Lewes will be forced to the wayside.
Money coming into the game is already beginning to hinder the development of clubs in the leagues below Lewes who do not have our already set-up semi-pro structure. In the Northern Division below us for instance, Boldmere St Michaels are competing with Wolves and Nottingham Forest. In the Southern Division, Bridgwater competing with Portsmouth and Ipswich. Essentially, we got involved in the nick of time. Make no mistake though these bigger clubs and others are now breathing down our necks as the payback for a successful women’s team becomes obvious.
We have already seen at our tiny club how membership and costs of involvement in the Women’s Championship are spiralling and how involvement is getting harder and harder as annually financial pressures will continue to spiral.
At least two dozen established league clubs will soon be catching up with the Lewes FC Women. There is now a fresh thinking within these clubs that the success of a woman’s team is actually vastly cheaper to achieve than that of a men’s team. As the profile of the game increases so does the ambition of clubs that are giants compared to Lewes FC. I’m a Palace fan, for instance, there will come a point when more Palace fans takes the view we could win things in the women’s game paying our star player £150,000 per annum paying £15 to get in and not tread a path of mediocrity paying Wilf £6 million per annum paying £50 to get in for a pointless season trying to stay in the Premiership.
Lewes FC Women compete because we scraped into the inaugural Women’s Championship membership process and have been developed very well, albeit bankrolled with generous local private funding way outside our trading means. Not that difficult in an embryonic niche sport.
Make no mistake though the wolves are on our backs, pardon the pun.
A visit to the Dripping Pan, our wonderful little ground and you have to ask yourself, ‘really?’
We crammed 2300 fans in for the match versus Liverpool last season smashing a lot of Women’s Premiership attendances last season. But that is as far as we can go. We can currently compete. But women’s football is growing and vast affiliated clubs are investing more and more money. We cannot possibly compete much longer. It is difficult to see in 5 years’ time how we can still be competing. Currently we are mid-table in the Championship, a striker away from challenging from the top flight. Our set-up is quality and exceedingly well run and this goes along way to be standing still as other around us grow.
The singular reason we won a license was our Equality FC initiative, we failed many general criteria for involvement. However, the Women’s FA told me an allowance was made to let us in because we ticked other right boxes. But isn’t this now going to strangle the life out of the women’s set-up? Suppose a new TV deal and all the clubs in our division have £500,000 to invest in playing staff, we have to give half of that to the men’s team. Trust me a lot of the Lewes men’s team supporters will be chuffed but how long can the PR value of Equality FC be maintained before it becomes a hindrance to maintaining our semi-pro status in the women’s game. Integrity over progress. Would we have received the £750.000 FA grant for our new state of the art pitch if we had dropped Equality FC? Are we just juggling and hanging on in?
Is shit or bust our future strategy? The 2021/22 club strategy suggests a club continuing to invest time and money technically improving many facets of the club, tinkering at the edges. This is important. Maybe we have a better internal structure than our competitors, I have no idea, but as we all know if our competitors have crap women’s structures but invest heavily in player budget we are blown away.
Our escape route is surely to blag our way into the Premiership. What teams with money cannot do is buy spirit. Emulating Wimbledon FC who went from non-league to being a tiny established top flight team. The Crazy Gang. Football was more of an equal playing field then and certainly Lewes FC Women can do a Wimbledon. In the top flight there is ironically more of an equal playing field in that clubs get similar funding from league sponsorship and TV deals. For Lewes the plucky club encompassing trending social values it could be move that sparks the sponsorship rush for us. The English love an underdog and I believe we could possibly compete at this level in the Premiership but perversely not in the league below where we are. I know not how long but I think it our best bet.
The club have never held back at the desire to achieve Premiership status and a look at the league table shows it is possible. Mid table, a great defence and it is clear had we converted some of the long string of initial draws earlier in the season we would be challenging. But we do not score goals and strikers are expensive commodities and do good ones want to come a play for a minnow club? That is for the club to grapple with. To risk further invitation of criticism that we are pandering to the oldest evil in football throwing money chasing success and risking the future of the club?
Either way the forces of football reality are beginning to kick in. I believe without large further investment, the Lewes FC Women will be really struggling in three years’ time and will be overwhelmed. I think the investment is around the club in the hands of benefactors but is the leap of faith there?
In a later 12 blogs at Christmas blog we will be examining whether we should even be chasing glory and possibly financially crippling the club and how the growth of the women’s team is destroying the last vestibules of credibility of being the community football club of the town of Lewes.
Lewes FC runs at an enormous financial loss. 2021/21 accounts show £600,000 was needed to balance the books. It is unlikely any other club our size matches our losses. The losses for the season 21/22 have generously been covered by former director Ed Ramsden.
We have gone from having one of the best women’s teams in the UK costing us about £100,000 p/a due to the excellent Equality FC initiative, to having one of the best women’s teams in the UK costing and estimated £750,000-£1m.
Shortly after the creation of Equality FC, we were unexpectedly granted a licence into the Women’s Championship. This promoted us from tier 3 to 2. Impressive, from the top 30 in women’s football to the top 20. We existed on that £100,000 or so in tier 3, but with the new Championship licence came enormous financial conditions through the necessary payment of players and a huge backroom support team. This lifted our commitments exponentially.
It has taken us from being a nearly self-sustained football club to one racking up such huge losses that an endowment fund of huge donations to bankroll the club has had to be set up. The club needs to be privately financed which utterly compromises the values of our constitution. But the Lewes FC Women has totally transformed the club and established us as one of the best-known lower league clubs in Britain. Is it a price worth paying? We will look at the ramifications in later general blogs.
Make no mistake here. The brilliant Crouch Fan Led Review holds no punches about what Lewes FC are doing when it condemns clubs with ‘misaligned incentives to ‘chase success’’
The continued huge financing remains necessary if the Lewes FC Women are to continue moving forward, membership of the Championship is dependent on a polished, slick and highly professional set-up, the terms and conditions for inclusion dictated by the Women’s FA.
Essentially we now have two clubs and the club have acceded, two different sets of fans in the recent Fans Survey. Of course, there are supporters of both teams, I am one. We have a traditional non-league men’s team and a traditional support but a newer growing women’s team with a more diverse and less local support. Hence the men’s team is far better supported.
The attendances at the women’s games has at times been astounding, inconsistent, but I have to say more fun to attend.
Extra sponsorship, membership and increased gate receipts have helped cover some costs but not nearly enough.
Why the huge losses? Simple, women’s football believed it’s own press over reality of the hype around women’s football that it believed everyone else would want to pay to be a part of it, the money has not come into the game. This isn’t actually a criticism as this has been a general problem with women’s football. Poor leadership and belief incommensurate with reality.
Proponents’ of women’s football told us until they were blue in the face of the riches coming into the game after the last two international tournaments. I could have told them no chance.
The fact is even before the Tories and Truss flat-lined the economy there has simply not been an appetite to invest in women’s football which is getting, financing it is getting harder and harder to achieve. We have have picked up more sponsorship recently but last year again the staff numbers rose enormously, we seem to spend as fast as we get it.
What is interesting is how in many ways it has compromised and ruined the previous effort to become a self-sustained community club. It has seen the club go from focussing on the terms of our constitution to being wannabe ‘major drivers for social change.’ Again, we will examine in a later blog how even that seems to be a very much an all mouth and n o trousers effort.
Three huge questions arise that need to be asked.
Lewes FC is utterly limited within it’s archaic tiny structure and there ain’t nothing we can do about it. We may sit pretty at the moment but massive internationally recognised and huge household names in English football are on the rise. Newcastle United for instance below us in the National League are now investing huge amounts in there women’s teaml Over the next few years will the growth of women’s football simply blast us financially out of the running. The Crouch Review alludes to how clubs not affiliated to large clubs are at a distinct disadvantage.
Can Lewes FC go that extra mile and get into the Premiership where riches are not aplenty but the opportunities for huge sponsorship can see us compete. Like Wimbledon FC did in the top flight before they imploded and dissolved? This is probably our only real option. Or do we go the opposite way, resign from the Championship, drop a league and drop the huge costs but also the professional set-up that has been established.
Back to the beginning, is the initial offering of Equality past it’s sell by date. How important is it to our brand when money from the likes of Championship sponsorship and TV deals which other clubs may invest in their squads but we have to lose 50% to the men’s squad. Again the Crouch Review already noted the spiralling wage bills to the top of the women’s game.
The Crouch Fan Led Review, I am glad to say recognises a number of the shortcomings in the women’s game. I have long identified these myself and get slaughtered and accused sometimes either of misogyny.
I wonder how many of these still detractors have the autograph of Emily Pankhurst ion their wall. Women’s football is like the leadership at Lewes FC, prickly about criticism and unable to recognise the best things in life are created by different opinions.
The report agrees with what I always say which is that women’s football really need to question whether it wishes to follow the men’s model. Leadership in women’s football is keen to simply do this so I am glad the report questions this.
I will argue below the greatest leap forward for women’s football, as is, is for all league games to be played in the men’s affiliated main stadiums. , I must stress this si my point of view based on the current structure, like the report alludes to I believe it needs serious restructuring,
The report notes-
‘It was also heard that some linked clubs struggle to access the facilities of the men’s club. There is no reason this continues to persist.’
Surely the greatest facility is the club’s main stadium? The report is quite right to stress the parity of access to facilities but stops short of the big ‘taboo.’ Utilising all clubs’ main stadiums.
Interestingly the review drew no main conclusins other than to seemingly kick the can down the road-
‘The future of women’s football should receive its own dedicated review.’
The BBC recently preened to itself, as it has to through it’s contract been forced to rightly promote the woman’s game that it had helped women’s Premiership attendances rise by 200%. It is worth noting that much of this is because the ‘big clubs’ have deigned to allow their women’s team play in the main club stadiums.
A quick breakdown of facts sourced from the internet.
The average home attendances of Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City and Arsenal is approximately 3,750. Not a 200% rise.
But each club has played a single game in their main stadium, Arsenal two and the average attendance is over 40,000.
The simplest conclusion in football is drawn. Women’s football is being held back from a great leap forward by the Premiership clubs, bar I believe Leicester City, not being allowed to play in the club’s main stadiums.
Why such a difference. Anyone local to Lewes where Brighton and Hove Albion are a few miles away can vouch for the allure of travelling all the way up the M23 to the ageing Crawley stadium or tottering down the road to the (hate to say this as a Palace fan) the amazing Amex stadium.
Football is an entertainment, big stadiums provide glamour, better facilities, a feeling of belonging, associations, focal points, a real day out so of course attendances are huge. Any drawbacks. With ten home games a season and less impact from the slower women’s game modern pitches are unaffected by extra use.
So why on earth is the leadership of the women’s clubs, influential journalists, Members of Parliament not DEMANDING, all Women’s Premiership games are not played in clubs main stadiums?
An interesting poll I have seen suggests nearly 70% of football supporters believe women’s football should be receiving considerably more support so it is not as if you are fighting old fashioned values.
If you think about it, it is outrageous. I have read one article in the Guardian where the author suggested it is time for this move to happen. But even then the scribe was almost apologetic in the wish which should have been a demand.
The leadership of women’s football all moan how not enough investment, sponsorship or TV money comes into the game to help it grow expecting it to trickle down the magic money tree and scratch their heads how the last two hugely popular international tournaments but cannot be bothered to follow up with league football. It is the simplest sum in the financial arithmetic of football.
Play all your games in the main stadiums, average attendances will soar and so will investment, sponsorship, and TV money.
As long as we have the ridiculous and perplexing stand-off of the FA, Women’s FA and leadership of women’s football accepting crumbs I guess you get what you deserve. But these people are letting women down and the development of the game for existing players and supporters and youngsters discovering the game whose ambition can only be to play and watch football in second rate stadiums, what a travesty.
For the last 10 years years former club directors and part creators of the Lewes FC Community model Mr Ramsden and Mr Dobres, latterly his wife too, were the only people to donate large sums of money to Lewes FC.
A trawl through 12 years of accounts show they have donated nearly two million pounds to the club, mainly over the last few years to finance the growth of the women’s team and budget parity. Now they are off the Board after their 4 three year terms have ended although they can stand again after a three year ‘cooling off period’ after recent changes to our constitution.
At the recent club AGM it was announced these large donations will no longer happen and instead an ‘endowment fund’ has been set up.
This club announcement is pivotal to our future finances.
Lewes FC…..’Many owners will be aware that the two resigning directors have made significant financial contributions to the club over the years, and that the club, for now, still typically runs at a financial deficit. In order to minimise the club’s financial risk, Dobres and Ramsden have created an “endowment fund” for the club on their departure from the Board, which is to be used by the ongoing Board, and future Boards, to backstop any financial shortfalls and increase financial sustainability. The Board have been aware of this endowment fund since February, and it is now integral to the club’s financial planning. For clarity, the club remains completely debt free.’
For clarity also let us emphasise Lewes FC trades at an enormous loss, but is debt free as the bankrolled loans are written off.
How do endowment funds work?
Simply an investor will plonk funds into the fund. These funds cannot be touched, but the return on the fund rather than going back to the investor will essentially go to Lewes FC.
I did a spot of research and the returns mooted seem to vary between 3.75 to 12%.
Returns seem to vary according to risk. The higher the risk of a good return one year, the higher that conditions may mean there is no return the next year or a lower risk strategy may mean a lower return but a consistent amount.
Hypothetically then, had the £2 million or so Mr Ramsden and Dobres been invested in an endowment fund 12 years ago, that £2 million would still be in the fund but the annual return may have of between £50-150,000 annually to go into the club.
Essentially in layman terms, the original investment cannot be touched but the return skimmed off the top for the club.
Makes sense except to cover our huge trading losses the fund will need to maybe be worth up to £8,000,000.
What it will do therefore is provide a permanent income stream of money through the returns.
This was not how we expected our club to be financed but I guess it scrapes in at the bottom of the barrel in the self-sustained class. However, it may or may not make us self-sustained through the fund but the purity ethos of a community club being self-sustained is that the club activities self-sustain the club not rich people paying into an endowment fund. This is not what we were told was on the agenda.
However long-term it may well be possibly ticking a box towards one of our core aims. To be self-sustained. But it makes a compete mockery of another core aim, that of transparency.
The crux of this is that the current transparency of who is bankrolling the club will now disappear. It won’t be the people we know and know about and in the case of Mr Ramsden and Dobres we all understand their personal endeavours, commitment, and genuine love of the club. The donations must remain anonymous.
Part of the importance and a key aim of all fan-owned community clubs is accountability and transparency. A healthy thing about Lewes FC over other clubs that are routinely bailed out is that fans are not left to second guess where the money has come from. As Directors donating to the club previously, I can only suggest that the 12 years of donations were transparent via the accounts as Mr Ramsden and Mr Dobres as they had to declare the donations being on the board as ‘related party transactions.’ Although I am not suggesting they would not have possibly made their contribution known otherwise.
I have questioned the club about transparency and whether at least we reach some conclusion of the number and value of donations but not the contributor names so we can at least get a feel for the money chain, but no chance
Are we going a step forward to achieving one of our core aims of self- sustainability with the endowment fund but sacrificing that at the altar of transparency. It feels like another enormous shift in principle from community ownership to private ownership. Reading the Fan Led Review by Tracey Crouch MP and you’ll be left in no doubt that this is not healthy governance.
My understanding however, is that technically the fund can be compromised and in reality be made pointless by investments being withdrawn or the club model being changed. I stress that I am not sure of this but am luckily seeing my dad over Christmas who as luck would have it has written two books on financial planning, albeit a long time ago, so I shall update.
Lewes FC in the 2021/22 Club Strategy made clear they were in the market for seeking other rather charmingly named ‘persons of high personal worth.’ A lousy terminology for our sort of club don’t you think? Really sorry the rest of us are so inadequate!
The crux of this is that the current transparency of who is bankrolling the club will now disappear. It won’t be the people we know and know about and in the case of Mr Ramsden and Dobres we all understand their personal endeavours, commitment, and genuine love of the club. The investors must remain anonymous.
What we know so far is that there have been three contributors, whether that is Mr Ramsden and Mr and Mrs Dobres we will never know and that is not healthy.
Diplomatically I will say there have always been industrial ‘inaccuracies’ doing the rounds about the circumstances of the financing and end of the reign of the previous owner Martin Elliott.
What we do know for a fact is that between 2005 and 2008, according to figures on the current Lewes FC website Finances – Lewes Community Football Club (lewesfc.com) is that the club where Martin Elliott the was the chief benefactor, was bankrolled over a three year period to the tune of £675,000. Remember the figure and remember for the last three years as a community club similar benefactors have now bankrolled the club to the tune of £1,100,000, according to the accounts. These figures are based on the section Total Annual Deficit (Met By Donations)
Over this period and before he also donated huge sums of his own money to create the amazing non-league stadium we enjoy today.
Over these three years Martin took the club to the crazy heights of the National Conference, tier 5 of the national football pyramid, and established the Lewes Ladies in tier 3, one below where we are now and under manager Steve King produced the greatest and most attractive non-league football team in Sussex history.
Just as we hit the Conference Martin’s business was crippled by the Crash.
For two years 2008-10 crippled financially we struggled and were relegated from the Conference in 2009 but miraculously on a county football budget of £60,000 Martin and the amazing manager Steve Ibbotson kept Lewes in Conference South season 2009/10.
Martin then passed the ownership over to the new Community ownership board who replaced Ibbo and on a similar budget got us immediately relegated.
But all was supposedly okay according to the new board okay we were now financially safe. The new community board wagged the naughty finger at Martin Elliott and decried the very idea of being in charge of a football club and Lewes FC must never again be bankrolled at the whim of benefactors. Odd then that the community board’s benefactors have over the last three years bankrolled the club at nearly twice the rate Martin did at his most generous.
But that does not stop the drip drip of ‘inaccuracies’ that Lewes FC was nearly wiped out of existence. All financial figures can be interpreted in different ways, just watch the politicians use the same figures and manipulate them to particular differing agendas and conclusions.
I was on the Lewes FC Supporters Trust during the upheavals and change of ownership. Martin allowed the then club sponsor Magicman, who he worked with to save the club, to keep the Trust informed of the financial situation. I know four things for sure.
1)Martin could have SOLD the club during this period but felt the possible new owners were ‘not the right fit.’ These people went off and invested huge amounts of money at another Sussex club. Is this close to desperately going out of existence?
2)Martin told Magicman, we all doubted it, that there was nothing critical to worry about and no chance we would go to the wall. He was in hindsight dead right.
3)He happily gave the club away when he could have received aa fee for it.
4)During what was a thoroughly miserable experience for him Martin Elliott steered the club along with Ibbo to safety at a canter. Yes there was a winding up order with HMRC but this is a customary cog when an organisation hits rocky times and we were not wound up.
5)Lewes FC were never in any danger of going into liquidation as suggested elsewhere by people who simply do not have a clue. None of these people were a party to what was really going on.
From 2010-17 the community board tried, struggled but nonetheless did not get too far from their vision of being self-sustained. It failed to get ingrained in the wealthy local community, gain significant local sponsorship and get a grip of football club’s customary income streams such as catering, rather pursuing an agenda of off the cuff ‘smart ideas’ with ‘varied’ results, but the club operated with a very manageable £50-80,000 top up.
So we follow the money to 2019-22.
Not spending the sort of money Elliott did before the crash left us in a moribund state of existence struggling to make ends meet. Until the 2017 budget equality initiative ‘Equality FC’.
The instigators were club Directors Ed Ramsden and Charlie Dobres who had been on the board from the start, 2010.
Despite being two of the people warning against the evil of benefactors bank rolling football clubs, they have collectively bankrolled the club to the £1.1 million over the last three years through donations. Nearly twice what Martin Elliott did at his prime.
Essentially this is to fund the amazing Lewes FC Women. Certainly the opposite of everything they preached and against the core principles of community ownership but nonetheless a staggering achievement.
But are we now a mere mish mash of community and private ownership. Functioning under the auspices of a community constitution in reality privately bankrolled. Under the terms of our constitution in principle of course we are fan owned but the reality is nobody really cares about where the money comes from but they will care when it runs out. We all blindly followed Lewes FC into the Conference National only for the money to disappear and only then did anyone start asking questions.
Read the previous and forthcoming blogs here which will update daily.
An examination of how one of the largest volunteer led experiences in Britain, Lewes Bonfire, has attracted the talent needed to make Lewes FC Community Club work and led to it’s failure as a community entity.
Identifying why Lewes FC Community Club has been allowed to go off on such an uncompromising and unchecked tangent and is so dysfunctional as a community club you need only investigate that very community.
Below I will explain how Lewes Bonfire has absorbed all of the sort of talent that could have made Lewes Community Football Club successful.
I am the biggest disruptor to Lewes FC through the fanzine. An influential Director told me once in anger, almost as a condemnation, I am one of the reasons he wanted to quit the club, which I of course merely wear as a badge of honour. But there are loads of other equally gnarly cantankerous bastards with a good brain like me in Lewes. The difference between a lot of us actively involved in Bonfire or Lewes FC is that I don’t do Bonfire at all so my energy is directed at the football club and I seem to be the only one, everyone else involved in Bonfire eschewing the football club. As a caveat I will mention as well as offering mild criticism I have previously offered significant time and expertise to help the club, seemingly rejected for reasons of upsetting the status quo which is actually a vital part of a functioning democratic community football club. See later blogs. So my input is not just the fanzine but I have offered practical help and time. Many people have acceded to the fact that a lot of my ideas in the fanzine have been bloody good and would have steered Lewes towards Community Club success.
There must be dozens of others like me in Lewes who would have collectively made Lewes FC a roaring success, but they have chosen instead, on a far larger scale than the football club, to create success for the Town via Bonfire.
If there was no Bonfire a significant few other roll your sleeves up types would undoubtedly have helped steer Lewes financially successfully into the heart of the Lewes community.
Let us delve in further.
Let me tell you about Mr Clueless. I shall not mention his name, I don’t point score. On Bonfire Night I posted a thought-provoking blog on Lewes Bonfire, a huge organisation that defines the town and the relationship with Lewes FC. An integral part of any community club is the sum of its parts. ‘Priorities’ was the singular thought-provoking contribution of Mr Clueless of the Board. We had drawn 2-2 with Brighlingsea. Mr Clueless thinks an innocuous draw takes priority over trying to understand a relationship that is maybe a key to the financial carnage at Lewes FC. He or she doubtless marvelled at his wit and drollery seemingly oblivious of the silliness of his embarrassing remark. Someone who should not be near the boardroom. I banned him.
Let me tell you about Keith. Keith Austen was known in the town as Mr Bonfire. He was the most pivotal figure in Bonfire for decades. When he died for two weeks in succession the Sussex Express gave over their entire front page to Keith. The town was briefly closed for his ‘state’ procession as his coffin was wheeled through the town followed by a huge entourage. Keith was one of my best friends and I was one of the few who stood by him through his sad decline. Keith spent his last Christmas Day at my house.
Keith was right and I was wrong. We had numerous discussions in the Kings Head about Bonfire and Lewes Football Club. Many have faded in a cloud of Stella induced memory loss. But one thing we always argued about that sticks, as Keith tended to argue about the same things repatedly with old age, was he always maintained a community club would not work in Lewes.
The reason very simple. Every town has a small number of people who are the sort that dedicate themselves to things like community clubs and events. They are people historically entrenched in the town and it’s culture with an unerring ability to get things done. Unfortunately, Lewes has possibly the largest community organised event after Carnival and Pride in the UK and with up to 80,000 visitors and based around fire. It requires huge organisational skills and talents to pull this off logistically and of course pay for it. Those perfect pieces necessary to make community football club project function successfully are already part of the jigsaw that is Lewes Bonfire.
Keith always said if there was no Bonfire and he was younger he would stand for the Board and everyone knows he would be a shoe in. Keith was a stickler and Keith knew if you wanted things done effectively you did them properly. The constitution would have been his handbook and no doubt other doers with hypothetically no Bonfire and of Keith’s disposition would have got involved. That is a given. It is our lack of adherence to our constitution that has seen us move despairingly away from the core values of our constitution which is infuriatingly so perfect for a town like Lewes and seen us fail as a community club.
It is a limited resource any town has, principled, hard-working, organisers who get things done and Lewes Bonfire has taken them all.
Instead, we have had a procession of second rate pretenders such as Mr Clueless. Only five of the ever-changing Board set up I am aware of, maybe 30 members over 13 years since the inception, have serious history prior to the community club with Lewes. Nearly all newbies. Most have zero historical connection to the town. We have even currently ended up in a farcical situation where a new board member in 2022 member thinks it appropriate on election to the board of a town community club to tell us “I initially found out about the club a year-and-a-half ago in 2021, around the time of International Women’s Day.’ Tell me would you entrust with your football club to Keith or someone who has no experience, understanding, history and empathy with your town club and I understand, even been to a game. Not poor, farcical.
Make no mistake most of the people on the community Board have given a lot of time and many have done some outstanding things for Lewes FC. They have also led us down a path where they once decried the previous owner for huge trading losses only to rack up huger losses in pursuit of an agenda that is fascinating and in many ways worthwhile, but has pretty much nothing to do with the constitution or the community it serves. A sell out.
And that folks is why the club has failed. The weak leadership we have now in a town where pretty much anyone active in a society etc is active in Bonfire and we are left with the also rans from outside the town. Anybody who understands what the town is about and our fierce history can tell you if there was no Bonfire the Board at Lewes FC would be experienced Lewes people voted onto the Board with a healthy turnout, not the poor outsiders voted in on a pittance of turnover. Our Chairman Stuart Fuller has been the one good person at the helm of the club, and he is from London so I am not saying that you have to come from Lewes. But it does help if there is a heavy presence.
Witness the world class organisational skills of Lewes inhabitants on Bonfire night and compare to the vast queues to get simply get a beer at the Dripping Pan when the Lewes FC board are left in charge.
I will argue in a later blog why Lewes FC need to adopt a fit and proper test for Board candidates and why we need a shadow board to hold some of the craziness at the helm of the club to account.
Next Blog is tentatively titled ‘Follow The Money’, where we look at where the money has come from for the last 20 years.
The 12 blogs will all be published here over the next 12 days
Over the next 12 days we will be producing a blog a day. Thoughts on the good the bad and the ugly at the club and the governance thereof. We will try and create a narrative
When the Community Club was set up 13 years ago it was with a fantastic constitution. Adherence to that constitution would see Lewes FC as a formidable football club fit for the town. The fanzine has always believed the constitution has been wilfully ignored by the various board members over the years for no other reason than some thought they knew better and therefore the constitution did not apply to us. This string of blogs will examine and hopefully illuminate further.
How the landscape has changed at Lewes FC. In the next 12 blogs we will be identifying the stark changes at the club, where we are going wrong and right, how we can improve and other fresh ideas.
The last time we wrote a fanzine the club was still grappling with a number of issues, foremost achieving the nadir of being self-sustained. We will identify how and why this bastion of importance has simply been jettisoned to the degree some one had to write a cheque, metaphorically speaking, for £600,000 to bail out the finances 2021/22 season. We will examine why everybody outside Lewes FC, even some running the club, believe we are an example of financial prudence when we are the opposite.
As we have seen any attempt to uphold the core principles of community ownership is disappearing fast. Why? Simply because Lewes FC have shed many of these principles for the incredible rise of the Lewes FC Women. The other side of the coin is a perusal of our website and the total lack of any strong community initiatives other than wearing yellow laces to bring gambling to it’s knees!
This issue will contain some caustic criticism but will also acknowledge the positives, but I hope what will come through are the tough choices ahead and how we are sleepwalking into danger and the way out.
I believe the longest thread in the Lewes FC forum ever was one I started titled, ‘The Death of Our Community Club’ I am delighted so many people who insulted this view seem to be coming around to my understanding of the problems at the club. I have even received the odd apology.
But funnily enough I am now one of the people less bothered by this. I’ll be explaining in later blogs why I feel the community part failed and how like it or not a lot of people feel if that is at the expense of getting the Lewes FC Women into the Premiership it is a price worth paying. Equally those who feel we are a community club and should perform like one are the ones morally right? We’ll be asking is there a middle way? The last blog, 12, will be a series of ideas on how we can maybe turn around the current situation and whether anyone has the stomach for it.
We will examine how every other community club except Lewes would welcome a fresh tranche of ideas, a basic function of improving football clubs according to the Fan Led Review by Tracey Crouch MP, but how we all know the board at Lewes FC will simply ignore them. Predictability is such a drag isn’t it?
It is difficult to argue we are now a shell of a community club and in fact more of a privately owned, not run, club with a social and community conscience, dare one say a political experiment? One with a community club constitution where the leadership pays lip service too squirreling away community club aims, sacrificed at the altar of slavish political agenda progress.
But 2700 owners have signed up for a community club not a privately financed one. How do we genuinely reach a balance between achieving the club’s original aims of being self-sustained, transparent and accountable, and the apparent direction of the board.
These are exciting times and I feel we are at a precipice where something will have to give. I believe if the women are not in the Premiership in two years the whole thing will fall apart financially. I have previously written a blog suggesting resigning from the Championship to tier three would keep us high profile in the top 40 clubs in Britain but also rid us of the huge financial commitments. The Championship licence probably in reality costs us £500,000 a year. Do you remember when I got slaughtered for saying it would cost at least £350,000. Going down a tier would possibly knock that need for the £600,000 cheque and instead lead to self-sustained community purity model.
It never ends well, people in power who don’t deserve it. We have an incredibly weak board of directors who are thoughtlessly just rubber stamping a race to the bottom of Community Club purity at the expense of an experiment that I personally support but the pursuit of is destroying our community ethos. I will be examining that.
I’ll be explaining why we need to adopt the ‘shadow board’ suggested in the Fan Led Review and how we need a fit and proper test for future candidates of the actual Board. I will be setting out ideas on how we can improve the board membership and make it more accountable to the values we all signed up for and move the club back towards the community club. A community club should be fan owned but the current board is a mere pastiche of a community board, three of whom I understand had hardly, if ever, even been to a game at the Pan before or connection with the town, becoming a member.
Community or private? Are we disruptors or mere poseurs? How we can become Lewes FC rather than a faux political project whilst maintaining the profile of Lewes FC Women but introducing integrity into the mix. I’ll try and throw some thoughts and ideas around. I’ll make it the usual critical but constructive blogs and by the end hopefully a new train of thought moving forward.
Blog 2 tomorrow can be read here.
The 12 blogs will all be published here over the next 12 days
I will firstly say to be fair matchday management at Lewes is generally pretty good. Here is the but. It only needs one but for the whole matchday to disintegrate, sporadic is not good enough.
More beer….now
A group of 6 men in their late twenties attended a recent game. Physically attended as they were hardly compos mentis. They proceeded to spend the first half hurling abuse, insulting and swearing at the young opposition goalkeeper. It was sickeningly intimidatory. The goalkeeper tried to deal with it by going along with it but was clearly unsettled, as people are when bullied.
I mention this in relation to the blanket ban on Under16’s from attending matches on there own because of a handful of miscreants. They now have to be accompanied by adults. Lewes FC acknowledging a few louts can ruin a nice game of football for decent young supporters. Yes Lewes FC, the club that clearly falsely claims to be inclusive. I digress.
So come on Lewes FC what are you going to do about this behaviour?
Lewes FC have a duty of care for the safety at football matches. However, they are failing significantly.
This group were smashed at the start of the game. They were either-
Let through the turnstiles completely pissed and it would be impossible not to know that as they were so boisterous at kick off. IT IS ILLEGAL TO ALLOW ENTRANCE TO DRUNK PUNTERS.
Or- got drunk in the main bar. IT IS ILLEGAL TO SERVE ALCOHOL TO VISIBLY DRUNK OBNOXIOUS PUNTERS.
They were then immediately being a nuisance by the bar at the Ham Lane bullying the goalkeeper. This was not banter. However, the bar continued to satisfy their huge alcohol intake. IT IS ILLEGAL TO SERVE ALCOHOL TO DRUNK PUNTERS.
In the second half I asked the man and woman behind the bar, representatives of the franchisee Only With Love, who acknowledged the group were smashed, if they knew whether it was illegal to sell to inebriated and rowdy punters and they said they had not been told.
A steward simply aimlessly watched on. BY LAW HE SHOULD HAVE TALKEN STEPS TO BEGIN THE OFFENDERS REMOVAL. Any punter, no matter how drunk, recognises an invitation to be thrown out, see the police, the courts and a football banning order as a kind compromise to sober up and behave properly or removal procedures begun.
AM I BEING PRISSY?
Had there been a number of away supporters around this could have led to civil disobedience and acts of violence. Adults bringing families will take one look and realise the Dripping Pan is not safe and not come back
Lewes FC are practicing a gross dereliction of duty allowing this behaviour.
‘Only With Love’ are trading illegally and irresponsibly serving drunk badly behaved yobs. Had the head of licences watched this going on their license to trade would be removed.
The result of the game could have been changed by ‘home’ supporters obnoxious behaviour and that would be a stain on our great football club and town.
Make no mistake, whilst Lewes FC exercise such a lackadaisical approach to stewarding and drinking there will in time be a dreadful incident within the stadium and would it not be more sensible to have an overhaul of supporter safety now rather than after the event?
This is not a one off, I have seen away supporters clearly completely smashed being allowed into the ground. The stewards and people in charge merely exchanging banter with them rather than refusing entry at the turnstiles. There is an etiquette within pubs and clubs that it is fine to drink as much as you want if your behaviour is fine. It is only a few people who behave badly and it is time Lewes FC adopted a proper, grown-up and responsible attitude to rooting out aggressive and obnoxious behaviour that can be a catalyst for public order disturbances and injury.
Prior to the home game versus Margate I wrote a pre-match analysis. I implied, correctly, that after a poor run of form that the manager would be under mild pressure. The horror FA Cup exit to Three Bridges and the fan’s furious aftermath seemed to dent the confidence of Lewes FC as form and results collapsed and we spiralled down the table. I hope the club and manager learned that at Tier 7 of the football pyramid deciding to eschew cup glory to concentrate on the league is bloody stupid. You can do it in the Premiership as the FA and League Cup are low in the order of priorities to supporters. In Tier 7 it is very high.
Some supporters were calling for the managers head which was of course premature. The FA Cup debacle knocked the wind out of the Lewes FC sails and time is needed to get the show back on the road at this level of football. However, the reality is Lewes FC should be in the play-offs this season and if the last 6 games had seen continued poor form the manager would rightly feel insecure as manager of Lewes FC and we would be near the relegation zone.
But what a turnaround, no we didn’t heroically win six games, but we won two and drew four, playing some of the in-form sides and although I only saw two of the games, we are beginning, not so much to fire up, but are beginning to look more of a unit than we did at the tail of last season. The tight defence particularly pleasing creating a platform for stabilisation and building on.
We are now within striking distance of the play-offs and can rightly expect we will be in them in the not-too-distant future.
It is full credit to the manager who found himself, largely due to his own misjudgement, in the hole he was a few weeks ago. But he has turned it around and I believe would have learned, as would the players, a lot from it and be the better for the FA Cup calamity. Adversity and Tony Russell’s response to rebuild the confidence and form is a clever, accomplished and skilful art. He has added a string to his bow that will hopefully stand Lewes FC and himself in good stead and improved as a manager in the process.
On the 3rd November 2022, Lewes FC posted an announcement that young people under the age of 16 wishing to visit the Dripping Pan to support the club’s teams would only be granted entry if accompanied by an adult. For some of us this was a surprising and immensely disappointing reaction to what the club describes as “persistent aggressive behaviour from some of our Under-16 supporters…”. Club Statement: Under-16 Supporters – Lewes Community Football Club (lewesfc.com) A supporter for almost 20 years and a season ticket holder for 15 or so of those, I was amongst the individuals who committed early in support of Lewes FC’s vision of becoming a community owned club and its tremendous efforts to practise and advocate for gender equality, including through parity in players’ pay and prize money. Whilst I have listened carefully to the concerns that others have voiced about the club’s strategic direction, apart from the odd frustration with relatively insignificant aspects of match day operations, such as the growth in bar queues, I have found little to truly protest about over the last 20 years. I have understood what the club is trying to do. Until now. A community asset for cohesion and inclusion Much has been said and written about the need to learn from our experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the importance of community engagement, cohesion and inclusion to aid resilience and wellbeing. Given the isolation and anxiety that young people experienced whilst schools remained closed, a treasured community asset like a football club, can play a part in helping young people (re)connect and enjoy themselves in a safe and welcoming space, especially given they don’t have the likes of pubs to congregate and socialise. When I think about this, I am reminded how moved I was by a head teacher in Brighton who told me that when his students were finally allowed to return to school, instead of the usual playground energy and excitement at break times, he witnessed several weeks of the children sitting in groups talking, sharing their experiences of lockdowns and discussing their worries and hopes face to face for the first time in a long time. The decision taken by the Lewes FC Board signalled to young people that they can only be part of their local club if they behave in ways dictated to them by a group of adults without clear explanation or legitimacy for intervention in their lives. This approach – seemingly palatable to some – fails to recognise the diversity of household structures and young people’s social relations, prescribing a rigid view that every young person has an adult that can take them to the Pan on a weekend afternoon or midweek evening. So many of us have developed our love for our local football teams by going to watch them play from a young age with family or friends. These magical experiences are part of a patchwork of moments that stay with us as we grow. My eldest son is a case in point. He started coming to the Pan when he was six weeks old. Strapped to me and fed at half time in the Rook Inn. The Dripping Pan feels like a second home to him and his affection for the Rooks runs deep. In a couple of years, he was to begin attending home matches with his friends at times when I am unable to make it. That has instantly become impossible. Instead, the pull of RDZ-ball at the big stadium down the A27 will become stronger and his support for Lewes may dwindle. But, my son is just one kid. This action will affect many young people now and in the future, potentially shrinking Lewes FC’s next generations of support, including the cohorts of willing volunteers so vital to a community football club. Make young people part of the club
Yes, perhaps this a teachable moment for local young people, including those that the club considers to have behaved inappropriately at the Pan, to understand they are a welcome and important part of a club that needs to be fairly enjoyed and valued by all community members. But it is also now a time for the Lewes FC Board to not just think this matter will blow over with the support of some loud and trusted voices happy for their club to be secured for them through the exclusion of others. The Board should take the opportunity to reflect on their decision and genuinely consider the views of young people in decision-making as well as the ramifications for the club, now and in years to come. Now is the time for the club to build on its own effective engagement strategies on other important social issues and reach out to young people through local schools, talking about their club and the parts they can play, whilst also looking at the governance of the club and how local young people can be involved in meaningful ways, including in decision-making processes that may directly and indirectly affect them. Real commitments to tackling inequality and inequity have to be grounded in an appreciation of the different forms that discrimination and marginalisation take and their intersection. Lewes FC is in danger of undermining its hard work on gender equality if it doesn’t create an inclusive environment that enables the participation in the club by all members of its local community. Don’t push the kids away, Lewes.
Why Lewes Bonfire Societies Are Stupidly Shunned by Lewes FC
Why Do Lewes FC Not Tap into Lewes Bonfire Societies
WHAT IS CO-OPTING A BOARD MEMBER?
Under the terms of our constitution, we have an elected board. We are also permitted to co-opt, appoint members. It is rightly suggested that the club co-opt people from the community who can bring something fresh and important to the club, add a real functionality cog between the club and the community.
DO LEWES CO-OPT BOARD MEMBERS
I once asked a pivotal member of the board why Lewes FC had not ever co-opted anybody and was told the board felt they had all the skill sets covered. We have recently co-opted some women with experience in women’s football but certainly for the first eight years of community ownership Lewes FC co-opted nobody.
WHO SHOULD LEWES FC CO-OPT?
I believe it was the 2017 AGM that a board member conceded the club was at a loss on how to sort out the debacle that is the catering. The logical thing would be to co-opt somebody from the catering industry, a local landlord or landlady perhaps.
But it is sheer stupidity that Lewes FC has never co-opted somebody from the Lewes Bonfire Council or of similar kudos.
WHY BONFIRE.
Lewes Bonfire is the beating heart of the town. It is the largest amalgamation of bonfire societies in the UK. 6 societies, some with 2000 members. Lewes FC is supposed to be a community club and has no links with the institutions that define the town. Lewes FC boasts about having 2900 members, most from around the world through marketing strategies, but Lewes Bonfire has maybe twice that just I the town.
The local community. A wealthy community of volunteers and enthusiasts that on the whole shuns the football club. There is an uneasy stand-off as the society’s memberships know the football club is run by people who do not know or understand the town or Bonfire. Many board members have privately acknowledged to me that Lewes FC ‘has lost the town.’
A healthy relationship with Lewes FC working with Bonfire and Bonfire being on the board would bring the enormous organisational skills that are needed to put on the largest Bonfire celebrations in the UK, once up to 80,000 people. The links and connections to the community and Lewes commerce that Bonfire would bring is awesome. Most importantly the goodwill would begin to mend the links between Lewes FC Community Club and the Lewes Town Community back together again.
WILL THIS HAPPEN?
Not a hope in hell. Lewes FC is farrowing a dangerous path of overstretching itself enormously financially and is beyond believing that getting the community onside can help fund this in a self-sustained way and are instead chasing outside investment.
HYPOCRITICAL?
100%. This is a board that promised the membership it would run the club within it’s own means within the community and instead is running up gigantic profit and loss deficits chasing money from big sponsors out of the town.
How can the ‘politically correct’ Lewes FC, specialists in liberal ethics, still justify plastic glass use for even one more game?
Plastic pint glasses at Lewes FC even recycled can end up with children scavenging through them in Africa and the Far and Middle East
PLASTIC GLASS RECYCLING. WHY?
So why have so many clubs adopted an ethical plastic glass recycling scheme?
Because it is so easy to do. To not do so is totally irresponsible.
Enormous energy is used to make plastic glasses and recycling is a minefield of inefficiency with Lewes FC plastic glasses potentially sitting in Africa, the Middle and Far East with children sifting through them in enormous rat and disease infested landfills.
Adopted at lots of sporting venues, this morning I had a Covid jab at Brighton Racecourse, they do it. Last but one away game I went to was Eastbourne Town, they do it. The customer pays for a pint glass, made from recycled plastic or a composite with a long shelf life. £1 or £2. Then at the end of the game they return it and get their ‘deposit’ back. Other clubs sell the glass and you take it home and bring it back.
IS IT REALLY THAT SIMPLE?
Yes, a child could set it up.
SO WHY DO LEWES FC NOT DO IT?
Because Lewes FC are having an environmental impact study being done. As with everything, to justify the huge salaries to non-football staff lots of boxes have to be ticked. Cynics would say there is probably a publicity grab involved as well.
BUT YOU KNOW THE STUDY WILL RECOMMEND THE CHANGE TO RECYCLING?
Yes, every game we play at home means potentially harm to the environment and eco-system that can be stopped tomorrow with the purchase of 1000 recyclable plastic beakers. There is no excuse for a supposed ‘leader’ in liberal and ethical football club theory to drag their feet on this.
THE NEW CATERING PARTNERS ‘ONLY WITH LOVE’ WHY HAVE THEY DONE NOTHING?
Presumably because they do not value the environment very much. If they did they should of got involved with Lewes FC on the condition plastic glasses were shelved immediately. They could of told Lewes FC you do not need an environmental impact study to tell you recycling is a good thing.
How can the ‘politically correct’ Lewes FC, specialists in liberal ethics, still justify plastic glass use for even one more game?
Plastic pint glasses at Lewes FC even recycled can end up with children scavenging through them in Africa and the Far and Middle East
PLASTIC GLASS RECYCLING. WHY?
So why have so many clubs adopted an ethical plastic glass recycling scheme?
Because it is so easy to do. To not do so is totally irresponsible.
Enormous energy is used to make plastic glasses and recycling is a minefield of inefficiency with Lewes FC plastic glasses potentially sitting in Africa, the Middle and Far East with children sifting through them in enormous rat and disease infested landfills.
THE SOLUTION?
Adopted at lots of sporting venues, this morning I had a Covid jab at Brighton Racecourse, they do it. Last but one away game I went to was Eastbourne Town, they do it. The customer pays for a pint glass, made from recycled plastic or a composite with a long shelf life. £1 or £2. Then at the end of the game they return it and get their ‘deposit’ back. Other clubs sell the glass and you take it home and bring it back.
IS IT REALLY THAT SIMPLE.
Yes, a child could set it up.
SO WHY DO LEWES FC NOT DO IT?
Because Lewes FC are having an environmental impact study being done. As with everything, to justify the huge salaries to non-football staff lots of boxes have to be ticked. Cynics would say there is probably a publicity grab involved as well.
BUT YOU KNOW THE STUDY WILL RECOMMEND THE CHANGE TO RECYCLING?
Yes, every game we play at home means potentially harm to the environment and eco-system that can be stopped tomorrow with the purchase of 1000 recyclable plastic beakers. There is no excuse for a supposed ‘leader’ in liberal and ethical football club theory to drag their feet on this.
THE NEW CATERING PARTNERS ‘ONLY WITH LOVE’ WHY HAVE THEY DONE NOTHING?
Presumably because they do not value the environment very much. If they did they should of got involved with Lewes FC on the condition plastic glasses were shelved immediately. They could of told Lewes FC you do not need an environmental impact study to tell you recycling is a good thing.
Having created a clever niche in football, Lewes FC continue to miss open goals.
America gives pretenders Lewes FC two fingers
Lewes Fc have made no bones about the fact that like many British ‘entertainers’ etc, that they want to break into America.
Lewes FC 2021/22 Strategy-
‘Establish a greater presence in the US which is more attune to discussions around soccer, equality and cultural impact and where we have existing very strong relationships and potential to collaborate and partner.’
We read from Eric from America on the website how amazing Lewes FC and our values are.
Of course, it is a preposterous notion thinking Lewes FC can crack America and it is synonymous with the small vocal and dominant political do-gooding bubble at the centre of the club who seemingly value anywhere except Lewes. A town that has always held very liberal values but is as disinterested in its local football club as the club is disinterested in the town. Read the 21/22 club strategy a large bulk of work and find me the bits about Lewes Community Football club working with the community other than the simple sporting tie-ups and food banks. Look at what other community football clubs do with their communities and it puts us to shame.
So, you will find in the strategy a strong commitment to grow the club through membership and the club make no apology in various literature in wishing to do this globally and especially America.
The upshot however is global interest in Lewes FC is not what the club hierarchy hoped it would be. Which of course anyone could of told them. Industrial self-regard does not necessarily convert into members.
The club achieved approximately 20% of the 3500 target in the strategy, Eric and Erica from America were not that interested it would seem. Heaven knows how much money was invested by the club in its growing army of backroom staff to obtain this paltry figure.
Maybe rather than court international publicity and member’s Lewes FC could do what thy said they would do and work and build up more interest and ties with the town of Lewes. I really hope one day they realise that bringing in a new member locally means 1 membership owner subscription PLUS attendance at matches, buying at the catering and merchandise stalls and bringing friends. Maybe volunteering too. A new international owner means 1 membership subscription and er….that’s it.
As ever, Lewes FC shuns the enormous financial pot of gold on its doorstep in exchange for publicity grabs and pats on the head for being the plucky club. Meanwhile we continue to trade in a perilous manner heavily bankrolled by individuals rather than the generous townsfolk of Lewes in a self-sustained manner. You know in the way they said they would run it when the community club was set up.
Will the fail of gaining international adoration and owners prompt a rethink of getting back to basics or will there be another ‘smart’ idea to waste lots of money trying to achieve? My bet is on the latter. Meanwhile the amazing position and potential the leadership of Lewes FC have carved for itself through Equality FC remains completely unfulfilled by the leadership of Lewes FC
Lewes FC Membership Ambitions Crash at the Altar of Narcissism
25th October 2022
The Lewes FC Club Strategy for 2021/22 set the target of bringing is 3500 new owners by the end of the 21/22 season
The great plan at Lewes FC to become self-sustained was one rooted in de facto narcissism. Instigated by people clearly with a such a high regard for themselves and everything they do, they assumed everybody would buy into it. What could be so wrong with the human race that they wouldn’t think what we do is astounding? So one by one the world’s population were supposed to sign up for membership of Lewes FC, the community club the board have mistaken for global, and help dent a hole in our huge trading losses.
‘We’re so amazing, as is everything we do so come join us, pay your subs and become a member.’ As far as business plans go it was a long shot!
The Lewes FC Club Strategy for 2021/22 set the target of bringing is 3500 new owners by the end of the 21/22 season
A huge fail. The figures I can source is that the membership in 2018 was 1400. Presumably, an educated guess would be 1800 by 2021 when the target was set. As of now the membership is 2700. So the target was dramatically missed. Factor in the target was set for end of 21/22 season 6 months ago and since then we have had Euro 2022, I would be surprised if we managed to achieve just under 20% of that target maybe 800? Don’t get me wrong a huge achievement but don’t forget the huge support and non playing management that are being paid to generate that membership. Well let’s hope the new subscriptions at least cover the money and time spent chasing them.
Yes, I know every flaw and failing from the club is done up like a dog’s dinner, but this is one that cannot be sculpted into a positive. In fairness there was an acknowledgement at the AGM that the target was too ambitious. Should not be a big deal, but when the brains that run the club have suggested the club can be membership funded and it clearly, as they admit, cannot be where is the money coming from?
Okay, it was obvious that it was another in a long list of pie in the sky wishes based on ill-founded high levels of self-regard and we move on. But it shows a complete continued detachment from reality from people running our club. We are a club trading and operating outside out means on the fantasy ‘build and they will income’ philosophy that is looking more and more perilous
I also wrote this a week ago examining a bit closer our terrible financial mess.
sat through the election addresses so you don’t have to waste your time. If you wanted to watch and learn about their points of view on issues of the club’s huge trading losses, fans matchday experience, volunteering, linking to the town, transparency and democracy and a big etcetera none of them are interested except in the daily grind. I’d suggest maybe they should not be anywhere near the board of a community football club. Luckily in Tim Bradshaw there is a stand out candidate who I would recommend as the only one worth voting for. I have never met or heard of Tim so I do not recommend for any reason other than the equal playing field of these addresses.
Briefly.
Willa Bailey
Willa has been involved with cricket in Chalvington, useful, but I don’t think been to a Lewes game. Willa talks a lot about Willa and not about Lewes and a lot of irrelevant waffle appertaining to a community football club. Only interest is women’s football and not a hint of interest in the day to day struggles of a small community football club. At 23 Willa feels she can build a connection with fans of that age, as our fans are under 15 or over 30 and any of her age just go for a social drink I’d suggest if Willa ever bothered going to a game she may not have used that as a selling point. Very smart person but should not be allowed near our boardroom as nothing realistic to offer.
Matthew Barrett
Matthew, as with all candidates very smart, his big three points of interest are commercial media networking and collective action. Again, all pie in the sky stuff.
Tim Bradshaw.
Stand out candidate, proper Lewes fan, lives in Ringmer and addresses day to day down to earth things a board needs to grapple with. Matchday volunteer, happy to pitch in. Vote for him.
Andy Gowland
Another idealist involved with ‘Right to Dream.’ Brand building and about building relationships. A fresh perspective and ‘holistic approach.’ Has a lot to offer football but nothing to offer Lewes FC.
Eden Shepherd
I didn’t really make any notes as he didn’t say anything I thought relevant to the task in hand.
Bradley Spiby
Is from Barcelona and thinks we can become a really big club through membership which is clearly impossible and a non starter, tried and failed. I think he is saying even if the whole population of Lewes were members that is not enough so maybe feels he can bring 30,000 new members in. Dream on son! He has worked with Lucy, who is on the board, doing stuff for Lewes FC. Although not sure if he has been to a game. Feels we need an international representative on the Board which I believe Lucy already is, so slightly confused. Brad has things to offer Lewes FC but really should not be near to the board until he understands the club and town. Might be an idea if he and some other candidates went to some games.
Ian Wigston
Seems at first glance to have a more grounded approach to football and certainly ticks some boxes. Again no idea of any involvement or even attendance. Good background and maybe someone who could help get to grips with our terrible finances without the waving of the magic wand of five of the others. Talks good stuff but falls flat on his face with an address that says ‘our financial position is good,’ just after the accounts reveal the opposite. Should have done some legwork. Best candidate of the other 6.
My own thoughts are Tim Bradshaw is so many leagues in front of the other candidates it is untrue. Wigston is probably better than some current members so worth a consideration but just because the others are simply not good enough.
This not the nuclear option many will suppose. The jewel in the crown that we can be rightfully proud of Equality FC, budget parity can and must be maintained.
Time to face financial reality and cut our cloth accordingly. Lewes FC Women should resign from the Women’s Championship
The recent publishing of the accounts and the unravelling of our dire financial situation means as membership of the Women’s Championship is way outside our means needing a £600,000 donation to cover them.
We must resign because the cost of membership under the licence arrangement with the FA contains so many expensive and unaffordable cost we are racking up astronomical financial losses.
The hapless bunch in charge run around with fairy-tale ideas of raising money, the net result of their efforts being looming financial disaster.
First and foremost we are supposed to be a community club striving to achieve the aims of the constitution we signed up for, the main point being we are financially self-sustained, If we cannot be we must cut our cloth accordingly.
Resigning will mean the loss of some revenues from involvement in the Championship. From some of the deals associated with our participation from tv and Barclays etc. However these are not huge amounts in comparison to how much membership is costing us.
The huge costs we would lose are the plethora of backroom staff that under the licence arrangement we have to employ in both management and training fields. We have a ridiculous wage bill of support, office and management not associated with actual team management.
All are unnecessary, we should be run by volunteers. It works for all clubs of our size. Nobody anywhere near us in tier 7 for the men or in potentially tier 3 for the women needs £500,000 thrown away on wages not associated with playing games of football in those leagues.
Remember budget parity was supposed to be about a principle of equality, but since it’s inception the club has totally lost all sense of perceptive, drowning in a process of corporatisation that has seen us simply drift away from attempting to be a community club to a wild unfunded attempt at ‘making it big.’ That has failed in everyway, where we have ended up with people on the board and candidates for board elections who have not even been to a game, seduced by the presentation and ideals of a politically perfect football club.
Yes, we have reached the farcical position where people from Lewes don’t want to stand for the board of Lewes FC and instead we are run alongside the club ‘strategy’ which is pretty much focused on getting sponsorship and income from outside the town.
Not only completely wrong but unworkable and we are now in the financial shit, bankrolled by someone who helped set the community club up 13 years ago, an idealism based on how wrong it is to bankroll football clubs! We are a joke of a community club. Budget parity has been both very good and very bad, the ugliness with how the club is now run so badly should stop.
Yet instead of cutting our cloth accordingly we continue to hire more and more staff to help keep up with the potential explosion in women’s football post Euro 2022 and the new investment established league clubs are making. It is financially unfeasible and we drift further away from financial reality. We will never ne able to compete with these clubs. We got lucky and got involved from the inception as the previous owner had always ensured an emphasis on the women’s team.
Lewes FC is now not a football club with a healthy side-line in promoting equality, it has become an out of control monster eating at the very principles of community ownership. We have only a few years in reality before we will be simply ousted from the Championship by the growth in the women’s game. Budget parity is now established and is an amazing tool in the club’s armoury for what we stand for as a town, but like the club it must be run sustainably. We need to resign from the Championship before the whole thing brings the whole club down and private individuals come in to bail it out. The inception of Equality FC, a gimmick to many, but one that has worked well as a principle for Lewes FC to be proudly associated with. But the management of this little jewel has to date been nothing short of shocking.
Lewes v Charlton. Dripping Pan Sunday 23rd October
The Lewes Women are one position above the dreaded single relegation place in the Women’s Championship, four points out of five, four draws and a win. Mind you so are two other teams and bottom placed Coventry have no points in five games. So a relegation threat a long way off
The board maybe slightly concerned. Scott Booth was appointed before the start of the season. A superb record in Scottish women’s football at Glasgow City including some fine European results would make him look a superb appointment. City reached the Champions League quarter-finals for the second time in 2019–20; they were the last independent women’s football club to achieve this under his tenure. But you don’t get something for nothing and he left Scotland to join Birmingham City in the Women’s Premiership where his record was dire- P7 W0 L6 D1. An ambitious appointment with a tinge surely of concern at a diabolical record in English football.
However, Birmingham had the smallest budget by far in the Premiership and there were apparently a number of shortcomings in the Birmingham City set up. But a slightly risky appointment nontheless. Football is an impatient sport and with the previous managers doing such a fine job there must be concern. Our defence has been solid and that is such a plus point. Just a few lucky touches and a couple of goals would see us sitting comfortably mid table. A win on Sunday could settle the jitters and we can build towards pressing towards the top, a loss and a win for bottom placed Coventry P5L5 and an inevitable sense of doom, such as that on the team Truss team this week, will begin to settle.
My prediction Lewes 1-1 Charlton
Lewes v Margate. Dripping Pan Saturday 22nd October
Having just missed out on the play offs last season nobody at Lewes thought a nearly a quarter of the way though the season Tony Russell would have us sitting in 17th place. A sound start has led to a miserable string of results including the spineless exit to Three Bridges in the FA Cup. Premature talk of relinquishing with his services were muted by a fine 4-2 away win at fancied Enfield Town six days ago.
We are at a stage in the season where two defeats will see you near the relegation zone and two wind sniffing at the trough of the play offs. I have consistently said a manager with a poor start to the season has to be judged on his first twelve games. Tony has three home games on the trot to stabilise the season for the Lewes men. Coming into them on the back of the Enfield win and we have a number of games in hand, some good results will take pressure of the players and fingers crossed in 8 days’ time we can be talking of crashing into the play offs. Three bad results and the board may have to act. The fundamental problem is for all to see. We play lovely football, great of course, but to break out of leagues like the Isthmian Prem you need to sometimes scrap to win games. You need an impenetrable defence and if you cannot nick games settle for a draw. Style is not a prerequisite if you want promotion, it is a luxury you hope you can encompass into the game. Russell needs to show as well as overseeing good attractive football he has the man management skills to turn Lewes into better honed spirited team of fighters to win promotion and eek out results and a little less pussy footing around.
The foundations are there, we have a top five defence and look good going forward, but we have a sound nucleus nowhere near a finished article at the moment.
At Lewes FC Community Club every year three board members depart and three are elected. Unless there are further resignations.
Before I criticise the standard of candidate, please make no mistake they all come across as nice, decent and smart people and probably highly capable. Much of what they say about themselves is very impressive. I believe they can all bring various skills to help the club and in a peripheral way some already do. But I wouldn’t particularly want any of them at the helm of my club, bar one, for the following reasons.
At Lewes FC sadly the quality of board member and candidate has for years been in sharp decline and becoming less of a pivotal role and more of a gang of wannabe revolutionaries with little history with the club or town. Remember, this is very simple, I’ll spell it out LEWES FC COMMUNITY CLUB.
Seven people are standing. You sort of hope they tick a few boxes.
We have been fortunate over the years to have board members who have not ticked any of these boxes but have gone on to provide excellent service to Lewes FC. But their election addresses were based on grounded community ownership and hard work. The current seven addresses are just agreeing with the status quo of follow the leader, the crazy unsustainable bulging entity full of paid staff adding little to no value.
Of the seven people standing only one, Tim Bradshaw ticks those three boxes. If you are reading this before the election, I beseech you to vote for him. I do not know or have ever heard of him, but what I do know is he is the only person that ticks the history of the club and town box that is so important to try and understand what the club and community ownership is all about. It is desperate stuff when you choose someone for a local community board on the basis they are the only one from that community and not on what they can bring to the club.
Not one addresses what should be the staple of the current election address-
The huge trading losses we suffer.
Improving proper community links to Lewes.
Improving facilities for the fans.
Improving fan participation in running the club.
Failure of the 3g pitch to bring in significant revenue.
Trust me, the list goes on.
Does that mean the candidates other than Tim are hopeless? On the whole I would say yes. Their criteria and experience for standing to be on the Board of Lewes FC is totally circumspect. None seem to grab the ethos of what a proper community football club is about other than the ethos dictated by the people running the club who let’s face it don’t really understand the vague basics of proper community ownership. The 5 pillars of the tick box ‘club strategy’ some bang on about is just pissing in the wind and no basis for a proper election address.
As Lewes FC more and more becomes a brand and vanity project, facilitated by the current Board, it has been a turn off to anyone local or with the necessary savvy to effect change wishing to join the Board, roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of building a proper community club. Instead as we become a political fantasy of unsustainable pc dreams the candidates attracted see only the branding, image and publicity grabs and their ‘husting’ statements are just a bewildering diatribe of unfettered nonsense with no bearing to the reality of community ownership, the town of Lewes and the mess we are in.
Why is everything NOW NOW NOW…? Why can’t they do some leg work, grotty work and get their hands dirty for a few years, some experience without, in maybe an ego-fuelled whim, jumping straight in the deep end? None of them seem to understand the huge issues and problems at the club when the club needs people on the Board happy to challenge the poor mis management on the Board not queue up for more.
Will Equality Fc at Lewes Fc be drowned out by the exponential growth of women’s football?
As ever the enormous hype about the explosion in interest in the women’s game after 2022 was very much exaggerated. Figures in the Guardian newspaper show the healthy continued growing interest in the sport, but realistically until the FA dictate games must be played in the participants main stadiums attendances this season will rise from the National Conference level of last season to that of the old division four.
However, the growth and investment, slow as it is, is very much happening and it is surely only a matter of time before the FA decide to qualify for a licence for participation in the top two tiers of women’s football home games must be played at the club’s main stadiums. Only occasional showpiece games are currently played in main stadiums but with around 60,000 due at the Emirates this weekend for the north London derby this will see the game explode financially.
Equality FC is the moniker behind the spiralling growth of Lewes FC. Launched five years ago and regarded as a gimmick at the time, so small was the budget of the Lewes FC men in tier 8 of the football pyramid it was with absolute ease to be the first football club to introduce wage parity to the agenda. Our men and women’s teams receive commensurate financial renumeration. A really small risk to create an enormous amount of interest.
What certainly has been no gimmick is the masterful way the club has grown Equality FC, the women’s side of the club and the club in general. For me the priority of being a community club is always to aim for being self-sustained and the rapid growth of the club has very much dragged us away from that aim. The pay-off has been large new income streams from sponsorship and tv money that has increased the playing budget for both the men and the women, the profile of the club raised enormously going from also rans to pioneers of women’s football and the force for good driving gender equality and investment in the club infrastructure, the FA’s recent £750,000 grant to upgrade the pitch entirely on the back of the Equality FC.
The jeopardy is the reliance on these new income streams for not just the players, but the huge wage demands of the staff required to run the women’s set up under the FA Licence arrangements.
The fear is that Equality FC has a sell by date, and it is soon and when it catches up with Lewes FC financial ruin could be around the corner. Make no mistake the loss of these new income streams if we drop out of the ‘lucrative’ top two tiers will create such a huge trading loss the whole club structure will fall apart.
The maths is simple and scary.
We are one of three minnow club amongst the big boys, the last game of last season was against Liverpool FC. You have to pinch yourself sometimes. But as more money comes into the game the more the playing budget required. Growth in women’s football is slow but very much tangible. Already dealing with a relatively archaic infrastructure at Lewes compared to our peers we will have the huge disadvantage of half of the income and financial rewards of the Lewes Women redistributed to the men through the budget parity commitment. In short, we will be handicapped by budget parity. At the current low levels of wage costs, it easy to patch over the differential funding with our rivals through the superb effort of the club to compete. But endeavour and smart management can take you so far. Eventually as the stakes grow higher money and budget will become the kingmaker and Lewes FC will be giving 50% of the growing sums of money from the FA, sponsorship, and TV to the Lewes men as every other rival team retains 100%. Okay it is not all as simplistic as that, but basically in principle it is. The more the sport grows the more the women’s budget will be penalised and the larger the advantage our competitors will have over us.
Will Lewes FC reach a tipping point whereupon to compete it will have to drop Equality FC? I firmly believe so. Equality FC brings in huge advantages, it has been entirely responsible for Lewes being invited into the Women’s Championship according to my correspondence with one of the heads of the Women’s FA when we awarded a licence. She told me we are cut a lot of slack on some of the demands of the licence because of what we stand for. This is something of merit. Most of the sponsorship we receive is on the back of budget parity, it has that advantage, but that can only go so far before we are unable to compete properly.
Will being a ‘pet’ of the FA and will sponsorship, much of which seems to be based on our stance on budget parity, go tits up if we drop budget parity. Is there an alternative plan? Quite possibly so, although it is difficult to see Lewes FC pulling two rabbits out of the hat.
So, enjoy it while it lasts, the irony being as much as the people in charge of Lewes FC crave for more investment in the women’s game, the faster and higher that is the quicker it will bring about the demise of the current model at Lewes FC. With the club so reliant on the financial windfall of the surge in women’s football I’d suggest the slower the growth in women’s football the longer we can compete at the top table. Be careful what you wish for. We are completely sustained on the Equality FC model and we will soon be priced out of the game and have no other major income streams to fill the gap other than cutting our cloth through huge redundancies and the slashing of all budgets and expenses taking us back to where we were before.
Equality FC is the one triumph of community ownership at Lewes FC, but I fear the days maybe numbered.
The hullabaloo, the lights, the excitement, the entertainment, the tricks, the illusions, the atmosphere, the bustling crowds, the catering, all the fun of the circus. But for Lewes the circus is over for now,
For many it feels flat. Like the atmospheric excitement of pre-Christmas dragging into the anti-climax of Boxing Day and the temporary escape of seasonal goodwill seamlessly tapering off to the moribund reality of life. It is all over for now. But life goes on.
The big showstopping finale over for now as the customers go off to the safety of their homes as the temporary escapism and sense of anticipation is sated.
As life gets back to normal off they go. As the customers reflect on the show lying in bed, still excited, the reality of the circus and circus folk kicks in. Overnight the big top is disassembled, the clanking dissipating around the field as the heavy rain falls.
As day breaks off the circus goes. The temporary home for so many people, the Dripping Pan, now just memories of a failed Circus, not happy or sad, it was just an experiment after all. Off go the leaders of the circus, Maggie, Tony and Scott in their electric motorhome. They had already let everyone know they were leaving like it was some earth shattering news, but nobody was that bothered, they’d had their time.
The clowns follow, crocodile tears smearing their makeup. The clowns were in charge of the business side, and they were not very good at it. They jokingly called themselves the board, well they are clowns after all! Soe of the clowns who didn’t really ‘get it,’ had already been leaving prior to the last night. They didn’t care. They had only come along for vanity and the adulation of the crowds. They did not live and breathe the circus and would go off and find some other organisation to bugger up.
The whisky flowed into the night as games of cards and gambling strengthened the resolve of the decent clowns as they saw the last night out with talk of coming back again next year, leaner and fitter.
Raystede, the local animal charity turned up early in the morning with all manner of animal transportation. They’d agreed to swap a lawnmower so the crowd favourite Roger the Groundman could return. A small group of animal rights activist were too late to get out of bed early enough to mount a protest against the circus and wondered off to the pub. Well, it was midday and strictly that is still the morning they mused.
The paid staff and paid entertainers wondered off intermittently throughout the day, they enjoyed the circus but also knew it was a financial shitshow and to enjoy the ride whilst it lasted.
‘Mummy,’ Josh enquired. ‘when will the circus come back again?’ It was time to break the news. Josh had spoken of little for the last month but the last night showstopper.
‘It will be different next time little Joshy’ explained the mother, ‘it will probably be a lot smaller and a lot less razzmatazz.’
‘A lot less deluded idiots involved too’ said his father under his breathe.
‘Do you promise it will be back?’
‘Of course, it is a fan owned circus and lots of silly people have got involved and now they are leaving so now some other people will give it a go,’
‘But it won’t look so good.’ A disconcerted Josh muttered.
‘Oh Joshy, what you will learn is that you can make anything look good if you throw lots of money at it. But if it does not work properly it was money wasted and not a real experience. Teddy ‘Chip’ Shoppe (geddit) the circus impresario kindly spent lots of money trying to make it work. But the people in charge were delusional and thought our circus was wonderful, so because they did they thought everybody else would and chuck their investment s and sponsorship deals into the ring.’
‘Well I hope the next people running the circus don’t let the community down again.’ Josh said matter of factly.
The Next Year.
As night follows day the circus did return. Not as you would imagine big circus extravaganza, but a Flea Circus.
The new Lewes FC Flea Circus squad.
It was much smaller but it was affordable. The volunteers returned, the true circus fans returned, the queues to the toilets and the bar receded and all the boorish hullabaloo around the last circus had dissipated. The people who weren’t from the area didn’t bother turning up but more locals did and the local businesses all helped to pay to put it on.
Circus Toxico had failed dreadfully, but there will always be a Circus at the Dripping Pan for people like Josh.
‘I really enjoyed it mummy.’ Josh had low expectations but was really pleased with the new circus. ‘It even smelt nicer.’
His dad smiled a wry grin and muttered to his wife, ‘that’ll be because all the crap they spouted has gone.’
We sold out of this issue outside the ground so this is for those who missed out
For newbies whose thoughts of Lewes FC are a vibrant, trendy, cosy fan owned community club with great ideas and financially sound, oh how wrong could you be. The truth behind the spin is here, a club that is all mouth and no trousers and in terminal decline.
The Rights of Fans. Lewes FC Fanzine 