Small Town Club, Big Town Economy - Part Eight

PRIOR to the scandal of Brian Hillier’s illegal payments, STFC appeared determined to undermine itself within its community.

In the autumn of 1989 disunity amongst the board room was rife as several senior directors announced their intentions to absorb the majority of the clubs shares.

Their plan was to cancel all 250,000 50 pence shares that existed and reduce to the size of the board from 9 to 5 members – effectively creating a consortium.

Lionel Smart, a vice-chairman of the FA and local farmer, was firmly opposed to the motion despite being named as one of the 5 directors to remain at the helm.

He announced that the STFC directors were “power crazy” and that “what they are doing is unhealthy for the club and totally unfair to the shareholders”.

The chairman, Cecil Green, was quick to expunge Smart’s remarks. “He is being damn silly”, was his blunt verdict. Smart failed to attend the 1989 AGM as a supposed show of resistance but later agreed to be a part of the new 5-man board.

This disunity and public disharmony only destabilised the image of the club amongst its community whilst Lionel Smart’s u-turn did not bode well for an executive decision maker. For the club to find its place within its community there was a need to reach out and extend an olive branch.

The financial power, however, was not there.

In 1984 the club announced losses of £115,000 including a £30,000 downturn in gate receipts as the side struggled on the pitch.

With an average attendance of just 3622, when at least 7000 were needed for the club to be in the black, the revenue streams did not exist from which STFC could promote themselves to a new social community. By 1990, despite two promotions, the AGM revealed staggering debts of in excess of £2 million and losses of £765,350 for the year.

Without the financial backing to help alleviate the club’s debts or, as will be shown later, the willingness of the council to negotiate flexibility in owed rent, the club was not in a position either to promote itself to the new inhabitants of the town or attract new spectators through high levels of performance on the pitch.

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During the 1980s and 1990s the management of the club invested a significant portion of their own capital into the sustaining of the business.

This element of their presence within the football club was frequently ignored or undiscovered by the fan base, who often accused the club of lacking ambition.

In 1992 chairman Ken Chapman invested £130,000 of his own money in the club to pay wages, whilst his wife had to sell some of her assets to assist with the venture.

From 1989 to 2006 it is estimated that Sir Seton Wills ploughed £6-10 million in unpayable loans into the club.

His financial support saved the club from administration twice in the 21st century. It can be said that the Swindon Town board have remained dedicated to their club and the continued existence of STFC but, simultaneously, have appeared to lack the dynamism, creativity or communicative ability to develop it from its modest setting.

Equally, the club’s administrative structure has always been admonished by its fans for its apparent failures. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s incidents created high-strung tension between the fans and the board.

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In 1984, as the club suffered relegation, attitudes amongst the fans directed anger at the board.

“The directors have always been quite content to class this club as ‘small’. [Swindon] is, we are told, the most progressive and fastest expanding town in Europe – attracting many new businesses and forward looking in every way – except in the case of STFC,” said a letter to the Swindon Advertiser.

The fact stated in the letter, which many fans use as a premise for why the club should be expanding as fast as the town, is a manipulation of the truth.

“Swindon led a lie in being labeled as the most rapidly expanding town in Western Europe. It was a misquote from someone who said that the Swindon market was the most rapidly expanding market he had in Western Europe. Salisbury, North Wilts and West Wilts were all growing quicker at the time,” said Les Durrant.

This misunderstanding generally summed up the way in which the fans viewed the club. Ironically, the letter writer in his assessment of the situation highlighted a principle reason for the lack of development of the club – the rapid expansion of the town.

The fans have always held high expectations of the club. STFC is a sporting institution with very little prestige in its history yet the fans remain adamant that it is a sleeping giant. This in itself is a reason for why the club appears to fail so significantly in the eyes of those with vested interests.

“STFC have always had a charisma of expectation surrounding them. The area’s population would love the chance of supporting a fine football club. I am sure I am speaking for thousands…… when I express my desire to support STFC as an ambitious, exciting football club,” read one piece of correspondence to the Adver in 1989.

Again this letter’s writer conveys the delusion of the club’s fans. In a transient town such as Swindon in the 1980s the only way in which the club would have been able to progress was with substantial financial support.

There were two routes to such a strong financial position - either huge attendances or big investment from outside the club.

The only way in which the club would enjoy large attendances would be from mass marketing the football team as a product to the new social fabric of the town yet this new social fabric did not associate with the club.

Far from thousands of fans desiring to see top quality football at the County Ground – there was a small nucleus of a few thousand who could not, by themselves, assist the board in helping the team progress.

The board, however, never did themselves any favours in appeasing the locals. The fans, throughout history, continued to make contributions where they could.