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.

Back again

A long interval since my last post.

I finished that by saying that nobody was happy at Rushden & Diamonds or Kettering Town.  Rushden folded during the summer; Kettering moved into their home at Nene Park, and things haven't gone well.  An ill-advised scheme to sell season tickets at a huge discount gave the club not very much money during the summer  and has severely affected their cashflow as we approach winter;  manager Morrell Maison departed; Mark Stimson came in; players started picking up red cards in huge numbers - including one each for JP Marna and Moses Ashikodi for fighting each other towards the end of  a crushing home defeat to Bishops Stortford; eventually almost all the playing staff were made available for transfer.

That left punters expecting a massacre of Weymouth v Rushden proportions for this weekend's game against Grimsby - but in the event Kettering were able to put out quite a competitive team, free of youth players; Grimsby did win, but only 2-1, and even then Kettering very nearly scored seconds from the end.

Kettering aren't the only BSP team in trouble.    Wrexham remain in difficulty, though there are signs that the protracted deal to sell the club to the Wrexham Supporters Trust may be about to be concluded.  May be.

Wrexham's messageboard  has pretty well always reminded me of Labour Party conferences during the time of the Thatcher government,   with people arguing among themselves with what looks like more energy than they use to put a bid together.  I fear that, should the WST succeed in taking over the club, the infighting will continue, both inside the WST and between some members of it and the general run of Wrexham fans who don't belong to the Trust.    Wrexham are, currently, top of the BSP though the word on the streets on Nonleagueland is that their budget is unsustainable, unless they happen to reach the FA Cup 3rd round and draw a plum tie.

Darlington are having their problems, too.  The vast stadium they moved into in 2003 is a drain on their resources, and they seem to be paying too much money to their players.  Chairman Raj Singh has invited them to take a pay cut; unsurprisingly most have refused; as has former manager Mark Cooper, who is holding out for full settlement of his contract having been sacked earlier in the season.

Truro City have had a brush with HMRC: they owe the taxman an amount in six figures, and have managed to get a winding-up petition adjourned until January.

Truro managed to get themselves into difficulty using method No. 2  that I posted in my handy "How to ruin a non-league club" guide fourteen months ago.  They had been doing it for some years before then, and sympathy for the club - as opposed to with its fans - is in short supply.

Farnborough  have had an eventful few months, with some cash problems last season, delaying the opening of a new stand behind one goal; a defeat to Ebbsfleet in the BSS play-off final; the departure of thier manager, Steve King; the recruitment of a new, mostly young, playing staff, who were put on full-time terms; the recruitment of anew manager, Hayes & Yeading's Gary Haylock, who was later sacked; and, in the past couple of weeks, the arrival at the club of Spencer Day, previously owner-manager at Chertsey Town, and
much previous to that and under a different name, closely connected with Aldershot.

A Solution Nobody Wants

Things have changed since my last contribution on here - with most of that change coming from Northamptonshire.

First, Rushden & Diamonds.  They were facing a winding-up petition on June 13th, not brought by but supported by HMRC.  June 13th was a couple of days after the Conference AGM, and the timing put the Conference in a very difficult position.


Their response was to seek assurances from Rushden, regarding their ability to compete in the Conference in 2011-12.  As Neville Chamberlain might have said, no such assurance was received - and Rushden were expelled, though they immediately announced their intention to appeal.  The result of that was that Southport were reprieved from relegation from the Conference Premier; that created a vacancy at step 2, and with the way things are done, the vacancy was filled by Thurrock, who had finished 20th in Conference South, with a superior points per game record to that of Stafford Rangers, who had finished 20th in Conference North.

So, it became necessary for a team to move from Conference South to Conference North - and that team was Bishops Stortford, who will now face games against Blyth and Workington next season. This is a situation that has been widely foretold: it stems from the imbalance of feeder leagues below step 4.

There's a notional boundary between North and South which stretches from the Severn to The Wash.  And there are fourteen leagues at step 5; but only 4½ of those leagues are north of that Severn-Wash line.  One of those leagues - the Northern League - rarely promotes teams to step 4.   The result is that step 4 - and, ultimately, step 2 - are fed with far more southern than northern teams; and when the Southern League promotes two indubitably southern teams, as it did this year with Salisbury and Truro, the imbalance is accelerated.

Stortford have announced their intention to appeal to the FA, but it's clear that radical restucturing of the top end of the pyramid is required.

Rushden's plight looks terminal - and their neighbours Kettering Town are little better off.  They have issues regarding their ground at Rockingham Road, which is in much need of repair and on which they have a very short lease.  The solution proposed is that Kettering move to Nene Park - Rushden's ground.  But it looks like a permanent move, not a temporary one.

Kettering fans believe that the club wouldn't be Kettering Town if it moved to Nene Park.  Rushden fans see their club dying.  Nobody is happy.

Still some fences to be jumped at The Racecourse

Lots of rejoicing today at Wrexham, where the Supporters Trust has announced that it is ready to buy the club.

This has, a little prematurely, been interpreted by most Wrexham fans to mean that the WST has bought the club; and suddenly, everything in the garden is rosy.

Colin Poole's interest in the club has ended, a turn of events probably not unconnected with a visit to Poole's country house by some Wrexham fans. You'd call that, I suppose, "Direct Action;" all' I should point out, entirely legal. Poole's wife Michelle didn't do herself, or her husband, any favours with her reference to Stephanie Booth as "That man-woman thing," let alone her "I said you should bankrupt them, Colin" remark.

Wrexham fans are delighted with the latest turn of events, but I would urge caution.
Leaving aside the fact that nothing has yet been finalised, there is the question of what the WST will do should it gain control of the club in the next couple of weeks.

First, there's the question of the Racecourse Ground itself. Will they take it over? And if so, when?

And then, there's the club's recent history of loss-making. The fans' perception that, following Tuesday's news, gates will soar, seems to me to be remarkably optimistic; should the WST have the long-term interests of the club at heart (which they clearly do) and should they act to bring costs under control, the team probably wouldn't compete for promotion from the BSP in 2011-12. I hope the rank and file supporters - by no means all of them WST members - will understand.

****

I'd promised to write something about Burscough, but nothing much seems to have happened there since last week. To summarise what has happened over the past year or so: Burscough started last season in the Northern Premier League, Premier Division; they were bankrolled largely by a single owner, Chris Lloyd. He fell ill last season, and was unable to continue financing the club; he eventually sold out to a property development firm, Chequer Properties.
Chris Lloyd died earlier this year.
Just after the end of the season, Chequer Properties fired the club's chairman and secretary (i.e. two different people) and agreed with the NPL for Burscough to groundshare next season at Skelmersdale - whose ground Chequer also own.
Burscough fans were outraged; now they are considering forming a rebel club.
Quite what this would mean for the current Burscough FC is unclear. They finished in a relegation place in the NPL in 2010-11, but have been offered a reprieve because of the closure of Ilkeston Town. I simply don't know what Burscough FC will do next season; it seems likely to me that they won't play in the NPL in 2011-12, but we could well have a situation akin to that of Bromsgrove Rovers last season.

In that case it became clear towards the end of the season that Rovers would not be able to compete in 2010-11; supporters formed their own club, hoping to take over at Bromsgrove Rovers when it closed and carrying on at step 4 in 2010-11. Rovers didn't close, but said they would play at step 4, even playing some pre-season friendlies; but they never even started the season, leaving the Southern League South & West Division with just 21 clubs. The new club, Bromsgrove Sporting, had to start in the Midland Combination, Division Two - at step 8.

There's another case of a 'rebel' club, and it's always trotted out when the issue arises elsewhere. Enfield were one of the country's most successful non-league clubs - winners of the Conference a couple of times, including in the last season before automatic promotion to the Football League was brought in - but they fell into the hands of an owner who appeared not to have the interests of the club at heart. A rebel club, Enfield Town, was formed while the old one still existed; the old Enfield struggled, went into liquidation and reformed, as Enfield 1983.

The two clubs shared a ground in the season just finished; but Enfield Town now have a new ground - and they have left, taking temporary stands they had built and paid for with them. Meaning that Enfield 1983, who won the Essex Senior League last season, now have to pass a post -season ground grading to allow them to take up their place at step 4 next season.

It's all been very rancorous, and it's all so unnecessary.