by Chris Harris
How Mercury 13 Deal Was Meant to Save Lewes FC Women But Instead Helped Relegate Them
For years, Lewes FC Women punched well above their weight. They competed in the Championship with intelligence, cohesion and belief. They were never title contenders, but just as importantly, they were never relegation fodder either. Season after season, mid-table security was built on the team management bringing stability, sensible management and, let’s be honest, the financial backing of Ed Ramsden. The tenacity and team spirit of the players and the amazing support all added to the mix. Oh dear, then the hapless board got involved, always a red flag for the past few years, in their first of three disastrous shake ups of the club, although at least unlike later ones this one was within the rules!
Mercury 13.
A high-grade organisation that does exactly what they say they will do. Now owners of the Bristol City Women and doubtless delighted they dodged the metaphoric bullet getting involved with Lewes FC. The proposed investment, announced a couple of years ago at the beginning of the 23/24 season with great fanfare, was sold as the rocket fuel that would propel Lewes FC Women into the Women’s Super League. Instead, through a combination of poor judgment, amateurish execution and catastrophic timing, it contributed directly to the club’s relegation. Responsibility for that sits squarely with the Lewes FC board of directors and close leadership actors at the time. Absolutely nobody else.
What supporters were never clearly told was just how fragile the club’s finances had already become. Officially, everything was under control. Unofficially, it was obvious that things were precarious. Nor was there any clarity about when Ed Ramsden had decided to step back from underwriting the club, or how close that decision was to the Mercury 13 discussions. His support had been transformative, but once it was coming to an end, the club needed calm, competence and discretion. What it showed instead was panic and a pathetic desperation to keep up appearances.
By the summer of 2023, just weeks before the season began, Lewes FC announced to the world that Mercury 13 were poised to take over the women’s team. The board appeared visibly giddy. Headlines followed. Profiles were raised. Validation was sought and briefly enjoyed. Locally, however, the reaction was far more cautious. Crucially, the announcement was made before proper due diligence had been completed, before anything had been signed, and before certainty existed. On its own, that was questionable governance. It looked like a hybrid investment/publicity grab. What followed was far worse.
Destabilisation, Decline and a Failure of Leadership
During the eight weeks or so that the Mercury 13 takeover hung in the air, something remarkable happened on the pitch. Lewes FC Women went on the worst run of Championship form in their history: one point from eight games. A single draw from twenty-four available points. This collapse was completely out of character and entirely inconsistent with their previous seasons. It did not happen by accident.
The reason was obvious. The players were effectively told they weren’t good enough. It was made clear, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, that the squad would need to be “upgraded” to compete for promotion. In other words, futures were being questioned at the start of the season. We were later told that the players welcomed this. I don’t believe that for a second. Professional athletes do not perform well when their livelihoods are suddenly placed in doubt. Confidence drains. Cohesion fractures. Uncertainty kills performance.
Once the Mercury 13 deal collapsed in farcical fashion, the immediate threat to the players passed, but the damage was already done. Had Lewes FC Women performed as they did post Mercury 13, for the first eight games during the Mercury 13 disruption, relegation would have been avoided. The maths is straightforward. The evidence is overwhelming. That eight-game collapse was the difference, it aligned precisely with the board’s decision to announce a speculative takeover, destabilise the squad and indulge their own excitement instead of protecting the team. Hey, this is Lewes FC, there’s always a wayward excuse, in this case our excellent manager apparently needed an assistant manager needed to be brought in to stop the rot, but actually this made no difference as the team averaged points before and after her appointment.
This wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t inevitable. And it certainly wasn’t the players’ fault. It was a failure of leadership, one that turned a stable Championship side into relegation casualties, all in the name of ambition badly timed and worse handled.
#Lewes FC #Non League #Football #Football Blog #Football Mismanagement
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