Football Governance
Debate between Tom Greatrex and Mark Field(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Tom Greatrex
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I have raised it with the Minister in relation to Supporters Direct’s previous funding difficulties. It does a huge amount of valuable work and we should be able to come up with a way to enable it to continue its work supporting and guiding supporters’ trusts, often when clubs are in crisis and trusts are seeking to maintain them at very difficult times.
Mark Field
Although I accept that an engaged supporters’ base that can play an integral role in ongoing development is fantastic for any football club, does the hon. Gentleman recognise that it is not entirely a panacea for all problems? There have been examples of supporters’ trusts that have not worked terribly well—Stockport County, for example. Without the requisite expertise on top of the enthusiasm of a supporters’ base, it can often go horribly awry.
Tom Greatrex
The hon. Gentleman is perhaps in danger of straying into the territory of Ron Noades a few years ago, who said, “Fans can’t do it and probably aren’t able to do it.” I am not saying that fans should be running clubs 100%. The Chair of the Select Committee is right to say that we would not have every club completely run by supporters, but if fans are involved, they can often help to stop making the mistakes that led to the position that Stockport were in. They were in that position because of mismanagement before the supporters’ trust was able to take over. In that case, it was very difficult for the supporters’ trust to be able to rescue them. If we look at other examples, Exeter and Brentford have managed to help turn things round. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) will no doubt wish to speak about AFC Wimbledon, where they started from scratch. We should never underestimate the ability of football fans from all walks of life, who have a club in common, to get together and make things happen.
The main point that I want to make about football fan involvement in the running of clubs is that it should not happen at the point of crisis. It should not be when everyone else walks away, or when owners have mucked it up and decided that they have had enough and walk away.