This article was written by Trust member Ian Fitzgerald and appears in the GTST column for the Mariner matchday programme versus the MK Dons on 7th March. 

Just imagine in a few years time; this article could be written by a Scotsman, welcoming everybody to Firs Park, Falkirk for today’s English Fourth Division game between Grimsby Town and the MK Dons. Now if you think that sounds a bit daft, let’s remember that the Premier League know what’s best for football, so if they decide that moving league football to other countries is the way forward then surely the Football League will follow suit and logically the fans of the Scottish Third Division will come out in their thousands to see high quality English football!

Seriously, football fans of all clubs need to unite and stand together against the Premier League’s Gam£ 39 proposal or any other subsequent ideas that they have about selling the rights to host league games anywhere other than the home team’s own stadium. The whole point of a League competition is to ensure that all teams play each other in order to decide who the best and worst teams are. By playing an odd extra game, the league table becomes obviously unbalanced. Even playing one game at a neutral venue could be unfair to other teams.

This whole idea of allowing the highest bidder to stage league matches is nothing more than franchising football to make money and sod the important people who actually go and support their clubs. Whilst in most cases the fans don’t financially own their club, they certainly hold the moral ownership as, without the fans, a club doesn’t have a life.  No footballer wants to play at an empty soulless stadium; TV audiences don’t want to watch a game where there isn’t a crowd or be associated with a club without any fans.

If football fans don’t stand together, then this next stage of franchising our national sport will be allowed to happen. Once it has happened, the wrongs of the idea will soon be forgotten and we fans will be expected to move on and get on with it.  If you don’t believe that, look at how quickly the media and some fans’ attitudes towards the UK’s first two football franchises (MK Dons and Airdrie United) have evolved over the last two or three years. If any of the above upsets any of our visitors today, I’m really not sorry, as it is your continued support of England’s first football franchise that gives the likes of the Premier League the belief that they can get anyway with anything, as longs it earns a few quid.

If the Gam£ 39 proposal is successful, either in the current suggested format or dressed up in any other way that will keep the FA, FIFA et al happy, what will be the next step? Move the FA Cup Final to Sydney, an England World Cup qualifier to Asia or even a Fourth Division fixture to Falkirk?!

I'm sure all right-minded football fans around the country will be wishing Grimsby the best of luck against the ‘Small Franchise in Bedford’ at Wembley on the 30^th March (and GTST would welcome any neutral fans who wish to attend the game and show their support for football over franchise). 

For more details regarding protests about the Gam£ 39 proposals, please visit the Football Supporters’ Federation at www.fsf.org.uk