Out of interest, I pasted this article into Chat GPT and asked it to generate a spoof version with Hercule Poirot!
A great debate has been raging on the Lewes fc pro boards fans forum. Fuelled by the article in the Telegraph claiming, correctly, that Equality FC has left the club in financial difficulties. I think on the whole, the general consensus of opinion is this is correct, albeit with different viewpoints of timing and causes, who was responsible, which poor decisions were more responsible for the financial mess.
I write this standing high up on my moral high ground, as pretty much everything that unravelled I predicted, I hasten to add.
July 2017 Equality FC was launched. I was told, but I cannot remember if it was publicly stated, that it was to be a three year experiment and that if it did not pay for itself within three years it would be pulled. This made complete sense.
It was, and still is, in principle a great idea. But, a year later, the decision to join the Championship pulled the trigger of uncontrolled spending, and a huge dysfunctional framework of bureaucracy that the club simply did not have the personnel or the skill sets to deal with. Essentially a large business was being set up run by amateurs, none with the ability required in event management, catering, frankly running a large business and well, practically everything you need to succeed.
So, 2018-19 season we join the Championship. I warned at the time it would be a financial disaster, the usual ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ delivered in the usual unpleasant manner, was divvied out on the forum and elsewhere, by people who of course actually didn’t know what they were talking about. Incredible excuses and general rubbish was pumped out when I questioned the costs of the license arrangements. All bullshit, but a customary Lewes FC trait to blow it’s own trumpet about how wonderful something is, knowing full well it cannot be judged as a success ot failure for a few years. Great business strategy.
Blind ambition and big egos that could only be soothed by the limelight took over the club. Over the next few years, the Board turned from a group of smart people who cared about the club and wanted it run properly to a Board of dreamers, not grounded, clueless, chasing appendages for their CVs.
Be careful what you wish for Harris. I can criticise both the club and myself. Prior to 2017, I was always heavily critical of the board and the general drift in direction. Had I known the level of low grade operatives that would replace them and flood the board during the Equality FC years, I would have been considerably more charitable. Thank the Lord for the 2025 intake.
Moreover, the game was expanding and with it cost were rising, as our budget soared from, I believe, £100,000 for the men’s team in 2016 to £600,000 with a vast bureaucracy to boot, nearly as mich again? Ed Ramsdem bankrolled the losses but subsequently withdrew his support as things were getting out of hand, and his tenure on the board ended.
He left a large legacy fund for Lewes FC, essentially a parachute payment. Squandered mercilessly.
The game was running away from Lewes FC but bad actors running the club failed to act.
Still banging on about the FA Prize Money, in an email exchange with Maggie Murphy, she was adamant about the theory that as the game expanded, more money would come into a) Organically into Lewes FC, through our own efforts and b) trickle down through the Women’s Premier League and Championship sponsors. This was short sighted and showed the view of the leadership of Lewes FC was skewed from reality. Again, I got routinely slagged off by characters involved with the Lewes FC Women with my opposing view, which again proved to be correct. In fairness, it wasn’t rocket science.
To me, the close season of 2023 was when poor decision making led to the inevitable decline. The Mercury 13 deal was clearly a lifesaver, to keep the show on the road. At this point, the board screwed up big time. I only have skant information from a few of my snouts close to the leadership, but I think this is what happened.
This was the point when the club should have come clean on the finances, halved both the player budgets, started making staff redundant, three teams in the Championship had half of our playing budget, it would have been tough, but competitive and we were relwgated anyway. But no, the club gambled on Mercury 13 coming through replenishing the coffers. The leadership were simply pissing in the wind, hoping it would all come good. Not a clue. You never gamble on a potential bail out for funding, the board practiced incredibly poor business management.
The end result was relegation—caused, ironically, not by bad luck or unforeseen circumstances, but by a disastrous start to the season. Despite the stream of feeble excuses from the club, the reality was clear: during the painfully drawn-out Mercury 13 debacle, the players were, in effect, being told they weren’t good enough. Unsurprisingly, this wrecked morale. If memory serves, we took just one point from the first eight games. The awful timing and poor handling of the situation, in my view, directly led to our relegation.
To me the financial decisions taken summer 2023. and the uncertainty for our players ended the chance of Equality FC amounting to anything in its current guise and the current financial plight.
Leaving the 2024/25 board not with a financial catastrophe, but certainly in a difficult situation. The failure to yet again cut our cloth accordingly, and to begin dismantling the bloated and unsustainable infrastructure at the club, was shortsighted. Staff redundancies, replacing with volunteers to run key aspects of the club should have been actioned and was resisted. Adding a COO to our costs instead. What 2024/5 failed to recognise is the bleedin’ obvious. The club was in decline and hadn’t a clue how to deal with it.
The 2023-4 must take the blame for current predicament, the 2024/5 board also must take the blame for failing to deal with the mess is anything close to a satisfactory manner.
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The Rights of Fans. 