On obtaining the Order
of Administration, Ward's first action was to cancel the contracts
of the three management staff and nine players. This led to much sorrow
and researching among supporters, but they fundamentally knew some
sort of action of this kind was necessary to bring costs under control.
The process of political education had already begun. The same morning
Ward held a meeting at his offices in Birmingham to which former directors
and Trust officers were invited. The chairman and his wife were already
present when the four of us arrived.
Barry told
us all that he was forming a local board to run the club on his behalf,
of which he would be chairman. He then invited us to decide whether
the current chairman and his wife, by then the sole directors would
continue in post, and left us to discuss the matter. We took the opportunity
to vote them out, and at that point they left with good grace.
The meeting
then resumed and it was agreed that the new board would consist of four
former directors and two representatives of the Trust. We insisted that
they be elected. On 10 April 1992 Phil Frost and I became the first
two elected supporters' directors on the board of an English League
club.
When the
club came out of administration and returned to normal trading in 1994,
this was reduced to one but that place is guaranteed by Northampton
Borough Council until at least the year 2019 as a condition of the club's
lease and licence to occupy its new stadium at Sixfields, Northampton,
which was completed in 1994. The Borough Council also has a non-executive
seat on the board for the same duration.
This stadium,
built and owned by Northampton Borough Council with the aid of a £l
million grant from the Football Trust, is a perfect symbol of the partnership
between the local authority, the football club and the Trust. It is
also state-of-the-art in its safety provisions and its facilities for
disabled spectators. It is truly a community stadium. The Leader of
the Council has recently said that he regards the Trust member on the
board of directors as representing not only the supporters but the community
as a whole. Councillors have also frequently stated that the stadium
would never have been built were it not for the Supporters' Trust and
the democratic guarantee it provided.
If the Trust
had not existed it would have been politically unacceptable to provide
a football ground from public funds for an unreformed club recently
guilty of gross mismanagement. In financial terms, the Trust has paid
over £102,000 into Northampton Town FC in the last seven years, with
funds still in hand, and it owns 30,592 shares in the club, over seven
per cent of the total issued. The sum invested bears good comparison
with that of any individual director over the same period.
We have advised
or assisted in the formation of severa1 Trusts at other clubs, with
similar objectives, including Kettering Town, Middlesbrough, Plymouth
Argyle and AFC Bournemouth. These trusts have enjoyed varying degrees
of success, the most notable being AFC Bournemouth, to which I will
refer later. We have also advised groups who wish to form similar trusts
at Dundee United, Manchester City, Partick Thistle, Lincoln City and
Chester City among others. |