After nearly 20 years of low expectations, writing about Lewes Football Club, hoping the club would do the right thing by our constitution and town, the clever thing, the smart thing, only to see them usually fail, I never once thought the club would go way over and beyond my expectations and exceed them.
In the last couple of years, as it’s become increasingly obvious that the financial structure of the club was unravelling, I’ve repeatedly said in my blogs: the club needs to come clean.
We’ve never been run like a proper community, fan-owned club, more like a hybrid of private enterprise and community ownership. I’ve said over and over: this won’t work at Lewes FC. At some point, the club will need to be honest with the people of Lewes, bring us into the fold and reboot the club properly. You run it fan owned or privately, inbetween simply is not a successful option.
A new reset, a new chapter, a new direction, a new way to do things. Since the final legacy money from Ed was squandered, hard times have arrived.
That needs a plan, a strategy. Over 18 months of the last board, the strategy was the debacle of Lewes FC Holdings Ltd, the board’s grand plan that fell at the first hurdle as they failed to check on the legalities and then, er… nothing.
For 12 years plus, directors have run the club knowing full well that someone would always pick up the bill for mismanagement and waste. That meant Lewes FC never had to bother doing the “community football club” thing properly.
They never engaged meaningfully with the town, with the organisations of Lewes, or tapped into the huge human and financial resources that the town has to offer.
Building the club on solid foundations, not on publicity stunts and cash grabs, is sadly a lesson that still seems lost on some directors at Lewes FC, even after fifteen years of it falling short year on year,
It’s astonishing, is it sheer belligerence, or a fundamental failure to grasp the core principles of running a business in entertainment and hospitality?
This failed business model, as well as leaving the club reliant on benefactors, also had the effect of managing to piss off the town Lewes FC sits in the heart of. An award-winning feat of gross incompetency if ever there was one.
Directors said to me in person that they know the club has lost the town. Negative posts about how the club was being run on my socials were often liked by Lewes Bonfire societies, the beating heart of Lewes life at odds with theb football club. Testament to what happens when a fan owned local football club ends up run by people with no history or connection to the town or club.
Nine months ago, the club itself admitted that the amount of sponsorship coming in from the town’s successful businesses was pitiful, frankly, a disgrace. They also admitted that only 20% of our membership is actually from Lewes and its surroundings, and acceded themselves this was dreadful.
With this failure to connect with the town, I’ve always said: the club must come clean if it wants to rebuild trust. If it wants people to think about Lewes Football Club as a town football club, not an abstract, international community football club, then it needs to reconnect.
I’m a member of FC United of Manchester, where fan ownership is done properly. As a member, I have full access to the club’s budgets and finances, both the positives and the challenges are shared openly.
At Lewes FC, it’s a completely different story. Unless you’re willing to trawl through the indecipherable accounts, and I’m good with accounts, yet still can’t make sense of them, you have no idea what the financial situation is. It doesn’t help that the most recent accounts aren’t available through any of the club’s platforms. The only place to find them is on the FCA website. Frankly, the finances at Lewes feel like a dirty secret, hidden away and treated as something members shouldn’t see.
That is such a turn-off for possible local investors, donations, etc. People and businesses will be generous and help out if you ask and explain why.
Over the last 18 months, we’ve heard vague mutterings about being skint. These just made me want to tear my hair out. For Christ’s sake, I thought—go to the town! Be honest. Say you’ve changed. Ask people to get behind you and help.
Now, I wouldn’t know the best way of doing that.
So, when I walked into the supermarket earlier this week and saw the front cover of the local paper, with a picture of the Philcox Stand and a headline saying the club was ‘humbly’ coming clean about the parlous state of our finances, I thought, about bloody time.
At last, some common sense.
And on the front cover of the newspaper? That’s fantastic. Okay, we will leave aside some of the shortcomings of the recent ‘coming out,’ that you can read here. For instance, £120,000 is a ridiculous amount needed to see a small club like Lewes through the close season, and it’s a bit rich to claim successful financial management to the end of the season, having clearly only budgeted for 9 rather than 12 months.
There seems to have been a positive response. That is great, but remember the club has a long way to go to rebuild trust in Lewes.
Blurting it out in such an in your face manner means this is not tittle-tattle pub talk, ‘I hear the club are in the shit.’ No this is clever and grown up. It is honest. People will respond to this.
Of course, there will be those who don’t think it’s clever. Lewes FC has always operated behind a veil of secrecy, despite all the talk of transparency and accountability,
Some will argue we should have done the usual, cross our fingers, keep quiet, and hope something better comes along. It shows us in a poor light. That is because it should.
A Real Chance for Rebuilding Trust
I really hope this is just the beginning of a cleansing process—sieving out the bullshit of the past, keeping the good stuff, rebuilding the club so it can stand alongside Lewes Bonfire as one of the bastions of community and volunteering endeavours in the UK that, with the talent around the club, we are capable of being.
I can only assume that the recent shift in direction is thanks, in large part, to the four newly local elected directors, people who genuinely seem to understand what community ownership is all about.
They appear to grasp the gravity of our financial position and, in clear contrast to some of their predecessors, are committed to building the club sustainably rather than chasing short-term fixes or vanity projects.
Yes, I’m sure this will be presented as a collective board decision, shared responsibility and all that, but let’s be honest: some directors remain firmly rooted in the past and will have to be carried forward by those pushing for progress.
Now, let’s do the maths. In 15 years, we’ve never seen anything this open, honest, and trust.
Yet within just one month of these four progressive directors joining, we’re seeing a real shift, one that finally reaches out to the local community and asks for their support in meaningful ways. That’s not a coincidence. That’s leadership and intelligence. Will the others join in?
Of course, Lewes FC will still need to seek external finance, but it must be careful not to fall into the same trap again.
Relying too heavily on outside funding and benefactors was a mistake of the past. It’s not inherently wrong in the short term, but rebuilding trust and attracting local investment will take time especially after 15 years of the club effectively sticking two fingers up at the town and earning a reputation of arrogance.
But the Sussex Express cover couldn’t have been a better reboot. It’s out there, we are in the shit and please help as we are now your football club and not the travesty of a fan owned community club too many people have used for personal egos and objectives.
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The Rights of Fans. 