| Northampton
Town Supporters' Trust was formed in January 1992, as a result of
a large public meeting attended by over 600 fans. This meeting was
called by a group of ordinary supporters, including Rob Marshall,
editor of the fanzine What a Load of Cobblers, and myself,
in response to a financial crisis at the club and a series of misleading
statements issued by the then chairman.
The club was
reluctant to send representatives to the meeting, but relented at
the last minute, and the situation disclosed by them was a debt approaching
£1.6 million, representing more than two years' turnover for the club.
As the Trust subsequently discovered, the rot had set in some time
before, and unpaid bills stretched back several years, to the time
of the previous regime at the club.
The crisis,
however, had been precipitated by the club's failure to pay the previous
two months' players' wages, which amounted to about £64,000. The Professional
Footballers' Association had had to cover this, and so it too had
now become a creditor of the club.
The Trust was
set up with two objectives: first, to raise money to save the club
(but not for the then current regime), and to be accountable to the
supporters for the expenditure of that money; and second, to seek
effective involvement and representation for supporters in the running
of the club in order to ensure that such a crisis situation would
never occur again.
In this latter
respect, the Trust marked itself out as being distinct from normal
supporters' clubs, in that from its inception it has had an inescapably
political dimension. By doing this, the Trust was a forerunner of
a variety of independent supporters' associations and other similar
bodies, who have sought to change the way that their clubs are run
and how they relate to their fans.
The Trust has
also had a representative of Northampton Borough Council on its executive
committee since its inception. The Trust's initial strategy was a
dual approach: campaigning for change and fundraising in public, whilst
negotiating in private with the club's creditors, former directors,
the Football League and the Professional Footballers' Association.
In this way
the Trust was able to establish its credentials within the first three
months to play its part in the running of the club. The Trust's publicity
campaign met with almost universal support from the public and the
media. Fundraising efforts began spontaneously in pubs, clubs and
workplaces, and dozens of individual donations ranging from £l
to £1,000 were received. A bucket collection at the first home
match after the Trust was formed yielded £3,500, over £1
per head of the gate.
This particular
occasion became immortalized locally by the chairman's attempts to
evict the collectors from the ground in front of television cameras.
In the eyes of supporters, this only added to the legitimacy of the
Trust and its members, and the bucket collections continued successfully
for the rest of the season. The private negotiations were aimed at
bringing a winding-up petition against the club in court. Strange
though it may seem that loyal supporters might take such drastic action,
the advice we received was that this was the only way to wrest control
from the chairman. The Trust could not, of course, bring the petition
itself, because it was not a creditor of the club, so we had to persuade
others to take this course.
The company
that eventual1y did so was Abbeyfield Press Limited, the club's programme
producers, who were owed over £11,000. Abbeyfield was owned
by Tim Vernon, himself a lifelong supporter, and his partner. Despite
pressure from various quarters, they stood firm and went ahead with
the action. When the petition was brought, the chairman was granted
an eight-week adjournment on the basis of preparing a 'rescue plan'
for the club. This was worrying because it would have taken until
the end of the season when, with fixtures completed, the Football
League would have had much less incentive to help keep the club going.
For a brief
period it appeared that the club's only future lay in the route already
taken by Aldershot Football Club, which found that after the old company
folded in 1992 and a new one formed, the team itself had to resume
playing five divisions lower in the league 'pyramid'. Northampton
Town's only 'assets' in these circumstances would have been the £13,000
thus far raised by the Trust, and the right to continue playing at
the old County Ground. This ground no longer even met Southern League
Premier Division standards.
The chairman's
'rescue plan' collapsed within days and shortly afterwards he called
in administrators to run the club. On his own admission, he thought
that by doing this he would obtain a year's breathing space, and then
return to run a club free of debt. Barry Ward, the administrator,
took a different view. He first had to obtain an Order of Administration
from the High Gourt and in order to do so had to convince the Court
that the company was capable of returning to solvency and normal trading
within a reasonable period of time.
His two main
pieces of evidence were the continued interest of former directors,
and the volume of public support as evidenced by the formation and
rapid growth of the Trust. The Trust, meanwhile, was continuing its
public work through fundraising, bucket collections and open meetings. |