With the tenth anniversary issue of our fanzine to be released next season, in a number of articles we look back to a time of great upheaval at the club when we nearly went bust and try to capture in reflections of a certain time some of the craziness non league football brings out in people at that moment in time and will hopefully give new fans a feel for what was going on.
The thing with an internet troll is if you accuse someone publicly of being one and you call it wrong you can be sued. Quite rightly. But that makes the pursuit and catching of one even more satisfying. Even if you have let them go.
We go back 10 years to a time of great upheaval at Lewes FC. Recently promoted to the top division of non league football, the owner had just pulled the plug on financing the club. The club forum went haywire. Amongst the customary well intentioned comment, nastiness, vindictiveness etc there was a slightly sinister poster. Most people would post under pseudonyms although everyone knew who everyone was, except for Howard 3. This was a shame as he or she was a particularly nasty bastard and an abject coward, posting viciousness and personal attacks from the anonymity of his or her lap top.
All everyone knew was he or she was well connected at the club, on the Board maybe or a family member, possibly just in the closely knit group who ran the club. In his position he or she knew what was going on and knew about everyone at the club and celebrated in the knowledge of the warts’n all failings of good Lewes fans. He or she would post with impunity people’s dark secrets, rabidly celebrating his local infamy on the forum with the reactions and attention his posts brought. A gross misuse of power not a spot of fun. The archetypal school bully and a truly grotty and mendacious individual. Nobody had a clue who Howard 3 was. A staunch supporter of the owner, it was strange though at a time of the club going into meltdown and a chance for he or she to step up and support the owner he or she went quiet. His downfall.
It was well known some of the Directors were unhappy with how things were unravelling and we knew who they were. If Howard 3 was a Director we could reasonably guess he was the one of the one’s we knew to be hacked off and one in particular sprang to mind. The cap fitted. But it was pure guesswork up to now and other credible theories abounded.
The Lewes FC forum was administered by a mother and son who patrolled it badly and broke all the rules and etiquette of the site themselves to suit their agenda which was in tune with that of Howard 3. Make no mistake, under the terms and conditions of the forum he should have been banned. In that he wasn’t showed the ineptness and bias of the admin. It was believed they knew who Howard 3 was. We had just set up a fanzine Ten Worthing Bombers and so in turn set up our own forum so we could leave the main one in protest. It was an immediate success and was very busy, not as busy as the main forum, but we were getting more posts that the collective tallies of our club rival Eastbourne, Worthing and Horsham.
Time dragged on and we became convinced we knew who the culprit was and at a club function a drunken colleague confronted the accused and asked him straight if he was Howard 3. Up to now it was a theory. The tone of his reply was a vicious denial that meant only one thing it was almost certainly him. The new forum became an outlet for new fans either banned or disillusioned with the main forum and out of the blue somebody whom we had no idea who he or she was contacted us and put his theory to us on the identity. They knew some great nuggets of info and clarified to us almost certainly the identity. But we still had no proof.
Now Howard 3 clearly had a pathological need to know what everyone was saying about the club so definitely read our forum and indeed commented on it on the main forum so we did a sting operation.
The funny thing was about him was he was a near neighbour of my parents and he would be the only person at the club to know that, he also knew that If I wanted to tell my parents the despicable and nutty stuff he was up to so his local community would find out. I never would but he didn’t know that. We had no proof anyway but he wasn’t to know with the unpredictability of people, we wouldn’t blab.
So we started a post titled Howard 3. We simply put we knew who he was and if he ever posted anything again we would reveal who he was. This would have been so socially embarrassing for him and he wouldn’t in reality be able to be involved with the club again. He would have read it and indeed hey presto he never posted again. This would not have been a coincidence. We had outed him with a de facto name and shame, it was a triumph and he has never posted since. So we know who he is but good to our word have never told anyone, his retarded behaviour muted so why bother.
But for years and I believe 1500 posts he had covered his tracks, which is no mean feat. But his going silent on the forum and in effect not getting behind the owner was the giveaway. We had caught our quarry and created the forum in which to reveal him. But being good sports we let him go as he had ceased to function as a troll. Maybe one could argue we helped make him a better person !!!
The Rights of Fans. 