Welcome to today’s final home game of the season, against Barnet.  At the time of writing Town haven’t yet been relegated but, I’m guessing, that by the time you read this our entry into the Conference will be confirmed. Either way, get behind the team (it’s not the current players that have got us into this mess) and make today’s game an enjoyable occasion.

As everybody knows England only win the World Cup under a Labour Government, but did you realize that the majority of Town’s promotions have come under Conservative Governments?  While the 1998 promotion was the first under a Labour Government, we have had 10 promotions under the Conservatives. Not including this season, we have been relegated 7 times while Labour has been in power and 5 times under the Conservatives.  The above got me thinking about what the 2 major political parties are doing in the build up to the current General election to attract the votes of football fans.

Both the Labour and Conservative manifestos include pledges firmly aimed at us, football supporters. The pledges in the Labour manifesto are:  ‘Registered Supporters Trusts enabled to buy stakes in their club bringing mutualism to the heart of football’ and ‘Sports governing bodies will be empowered to scrutinise takeovers of clubs, ensuring they are in the long-term interests of the club and the sport. We will develop proposals to enable registered Supporters Trusts to buy stakes in their club’.  The Conservative party pledge is to ‘reform the governance arrangements in football to enable co-operative ownership models to be established by supporters’.

Now the cynic in me suggests these pledges are mere gimmicks aimed at attracting a few extra votes in a close fought election. If the Labour party had really meant this to be the way forward, why didn’t they make the proposals at some point in the last 13 years? And why haven’t the Conservative party made a proposal along these lines during their time in opposition?

 However, given the recent problems with the way that Premier League football clubs have been run, this is a good time to push supporters trust ownership of football clubs.  Supporters Direct is a government backed organization that helps fan groups create, run and manage supporter’s trusts and the majority of trusts will have objectives along the lines of increasing the amount of ownership.  The publicity around these proposals has stated that supporters trusts will be allowed to buy up to 25% of the football club (GTST has an objective to increase the shareholding in GTFC and currently owns 22,000 shares in the club).

While the idea of the mutual ownership model appears good, and it can’t be any worse than the current structures at the majority of Premier League clubs and a large number of Football League clubs, questions remain around how a business can be forced to sell or hand over equity to a supporters’ organisation. It is unlikely that any Government would be able to push through the appropriate changes to company law that would make this possible, which means the only way it could be done is if the football authorities made it one of the criteria for being a member of the FA or appropriate League.  

Although supporter ownership sounds good in principal and works exceptionally well in Germany, in Spain most of the big clubs are run on a never ending overdraft despite being owned by the fans. The reasons behind this are the way in which the football authorities enforce financial controls on clubs regardless of who owns them. The German authorities insist on clubs proving they can meet their financial commitments every season. If they can’t provide this evidence they can be and indeed have been punished by relegation (this type of ruling would probably see us play Notts County in the BSP next season).  In Spain, nobody is going to tell Real Madrid they can’t spend whatever money they want on transfer fees and wages, even if they are unable to generate the required income. Meanwhile, there is nothing to suggest that the current English footballing authorities have the will or ’know how’ to enforce proper, sensible financial regulations, otherwise surely they would have done so by now?

It is the need for the next Government to intervene directly in how the Football authorities regulate themselves that makes it difficult for me to believe either party will make any real progress towards meeting their manifesto pledges aimed at football fans.  However, it is nice to see politicians trying to get elected by saying what they can do for football fans rather than what they will do with us. By the 2015 elections they may even be making achievable pledges!!

I hope everybody has a good summer and we can soon start looking forward to the 2010/11 season. It can’t be any worse than this season, can it?!

Ian Fitzgerald – GTST Board Member