Cavalry On The Way To Kettering

A couple of days ago it seemed likely that Kettering's Tuesday night game against Darlington would be their last.  Now, things have taken a turn for the better: rescue could be on its way.
Lee Thorne is the person on whom Poppies fans are pinning their hopes - he is the owner of a successful haulage business, and he is also Kettering's commercial manager .
There are suggestions that Thorne had had a serious falling-out with Ladak early this season over Ladak's poor budgetary control, and he wasn't seen at Nene Park for some months - until the last home game but one, against Grimsby.  That game was also watched by former Kettering manager Mark Cooper and his father, Terry Cooper.
Ladak had suggested that Kettering's would-be rescued included someone very closely connected to the club, from which I concluded that it was Cooper.  I don't know whether the Coopers are involved in any takeover, but for last night's game against Darlington - another club formerly managed by Cooper - there was, for the first time, match and programme sponsorship, presumably secured by Lee Thorne.
Kettering fans are more than a little encouraged.
If the Coopers were to be involved, I would guess that Mark would resume as manager there - which would be terribly hard on the current incumbent, Mark Stimson, who has been working under the most trying circumstances.
Presumably one of the first priorities for any new owner will be to pay off the football debts that have seen a transfer embargo imposed on the club.  One can only hope.
The game against Darlington, incidentally, finished in a 0-0 draw, and Darlington fans have showered opprobrium upon the heads of their team as a result.  I should point out that Darlington have similar problems to Kettering's, and that despite that they have done quite well under caretaker manager Craig Liddle.  They are currently on a three-match winless run, but those games were an unlucky 2-1 defeat to leaders Wrexham, a creditable 0-0 draw at home to Forest Green, and then last night's game; all secured despite a player exoduspartly resulting from the club's difficult financial position.

Kettering On The Brink

Things are now looking very serious at Kettering Town, who may be on the point of closure.

Imraan Ladak, the club owner, pictured here flourishing the keys to Kettering's new ground at Nene Park, has said he will no longer fund the club, and they are having serious trouble paying players, to the extent that they are now having difficulty in raising a team.


Ladak has been unafraid of publicity in the past: you will probably remember his short term appointment of Paul Gascoigne as manager; he was accused of politicising the club by arranging shirt sponsorship with a Palestinian charity; and he was happy to criticise but the Conference hierarchy and the local council for their perceived unhelpfulness in dealing with the club.    You may also remember that he fired the team's assistant manager John Deehan after an FA Cup defeat at Leeds - a game in which Kettering had three  goalkeepers on the bench and another performing the duties of player-manager.  Ladak felt that Deehan's substitutions that night were too negative.

Kettering had long had difficulties with their former home at Rockingham Road - in Kettering - on which the lease was running out.  And it's difficult not to feel some sympathy for him - and the club - over the council's unhelpfulness.  But Ladak's solution - to move the club to Nene Park, palatial home of Rushden & Diamonds, who folded during the summer, was always a gamble.

Season tickets were sold far too cheaply; a number of fans were reluctant to make the journey to Irthlingborough, seeing it as a dilution of the club's identity, and insufficient former Diamonds fans continued visiting Nene Park to make up the shortfall - they, quite understandably, saw Kettering as something entirely different from their club. Running costs at Nene Park were higher than anticipated, and extra income from conference facilities and the like were far lower: there was a disastrous Chinese Restaurant venture which lost a sackful of money.
On top of that there was the disastrous appointment of Morrell Maison as team manager.

Maison had had two previous spells at the club, unluckily being fired with two games to go to the end of the 2006-07 season with the team 'only' in a play-off place, and then taking the club over briefly last season between the management periods of Lee Harper - he had been the Kettering goalkeeper-manager when they played that game at Leeds - and Marcus Law, who was to depart, during the 2011 close season, for Tamworth.   Maison is now blamed for offering contracts far too generous to players who haven't deserved them.

It was a perfect storm.  Another new, and respected, manger was brought in in Mark Stimson, but there have been troubles on the field with the team receiving ten red cards thus far this season; pretty well all the first team squad were told they could leave; several of them did, and they were replaced with young players - until Kettering were told that they were under a transfer and registration embargo, largely becuse of a debt owed to Crawley Town.

For their last two games Kettering have been able to name only two substitutes, and they have barely been able to pay anything to their players; one has returned to Scotland "to earn some money" and another has asked to be de-registered.

There are now real doubts about the club's ability to continue raising teams, and it seems that, yet again, there is the likelihood of a club going out of business in the BSP leading to others being reprieved from relegation at lower levels and, very possibly, another unwelcome shift in divisional boundaries.

Kettering's next game is against Darlington, who are not without their own problems.

Imraan Ladak has gone strangely quiet.  The picture of him holding up the keys to Nene Park now looks like one of desperation rather than the one of triumph it was at the time.