A SUPPORTERS’ TRUST is not a magic bullet for any club in difficulty and, in fact, there’s a lot of fluff written on the subject.
There’s no doubt that there are positives to having a club’s fortunes and future in the hands of people who care most for it. However, that doesn’t make supporters, or that structure, infallible.
Importantly, it doesn’t allow greater control over the myriad external influences with which club boards must contend. The most important aspect of football ownership is simply whether a club is being run properly or improperly.
It’s perfectly plausible that a club can – and will – be run effectively by an individual owner. Prior to the takeover by FORAS, the most successful period Cork City enjoyed was under an individual owner, Brian Lennox.
Pat O’Sullivan has put huge personal finance into Limerick, and while the last few years have been up and down for the club, there’s a sense that all the required pieces are finally clicking into place and that it’s a club firmly on the rise.
Of course, reliance on a single set of pockets to fund and rescue a club is a perfectly valid reason to seek greater supporter involvement. If the owner is willing, spreading the burden and load, and availing of the experience and time of a larger group can be valuable.
Often, the owner isn’t willing to take on that support as they feel it’s an agenda-driven offer, with equity sought for volunteering and investment by people who claim to love the club.
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It can be a difficult concept for a person mired in issues and day-to-day operations to grasp, and it’s not always welcomed.
There are examples through the years in Irish football of supporter or community ownership struggling, or failing to sustain and maintain a club.
Bohemians were supporter-owned right through the crises that saw them build seemingly insurmountable debt. Even Cork City lost a large amount of money in 2012 and 2013 when the crowds started to dwindle.
It’s to both clubs’ credit that they came through these issues to emerge stronger, but it’s still a warning to others who’d adopt the model.
Last Sunday, Athlone Town supporters had a kick-off meeting to drive the formation of a supporters trust, ostensibly to gain control of the club they all love, and which they feel is currently being run poorly.
I spent a season working with Athlone Town and thoroughly enjoyed my time there and made some great friends and I hope that the trust can galvanise support and ultimately improve the fortunes of the club and get it through the current crisis.
The thing is, what’s puzzled me about the need for a supporters’ trust in Athlone is the fact that Athlone is already a members’ club — it is not privately-owned.
A couple of weeks ago at an EGM, the members passed a vote of no confidence in the current board – reportedly in the absence of the current executive committee. I had the conversation in 2012 with a number of individuals about this exact fact.
Supporters’ trusts, following the successful promotion of Cork City in 2011, adding to the Glamour of Shamrock Rovers Europa League heroics and Sligo Rovers consistent success, had made trusts a cause celebre within Irish football.
I was asked by the club to investigate establishing a trust, my experience with Cork City cited as important. I looked at the structure and constitution of Athlone and reported back that a supporters trust didn’t add anything new to the club.
Supporters already owned it, held a yearly AGM and elected a board. Back in 2012, it wasn’t structure that was the problem, it was apathy. A sense that people didn’t actually want to get involved, that they felt the club was trundling along just fine.
I held a public meeting on setting up a trust — only six people who weren’t already involved in club committees turned up. That’s not unusual, in the early days of FORAS we couldn’t find seven people willing to come on the board, Arkaga had just taken over the club and were seemingly pumping millions into it.
Trusts are often borne out of crisis, there will be an owner who supporters rally against, convinced of the negative effect that individual is having – which is usually valid. But in those rare cases where a trust gains control, the difficulty comes when people are relaxed again, as they were in Athlone in 2012.
At its height, after taking over Cork City from the ownership by Tom Coughlan, FORAS had 700 members. A couple of years of prudent and successful management, a sense that the club is being well run – which it is – and that number has dropped significantly.
Its hard to sustain the interest in the absence of the enemy, that’s when the real work begins.
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There's a lot of fluff written about supporters' trusts and they're no magic bullet
A SUPPORTERS’ TRUST is not a magic bullet for any club in difficulty and, in fact, there’s a lot of fluff written on the subject.
There’s no doubt that there are positives to having a club’s fortunes and future in the hands of people who care most for it. However, that doesn’t make supporters, or that structure, infallible.
Importantly, it doesn’t allow greater control over the myriad external influences with which club boards must contend. The most important aspect of football ownership is simply whether a club is being run properly or improperly.
It’s perfectly plausible that a club can – and will – be run effectively by an individual owner. Prior to the takeover by FORAS, the most successful period Cork City enjoyed was under an individual owner, Brian Lennox.
Pat O’Sullivan has put huge personal finance into Limerick, and while the last few years have been up and down for the club, there’s a sense that all the required pieces are finally clicking into place and that it’s a club firmly on the rise.
Of course, reliance on a single set of pockets to fund and rescue a club is a perfectly valid reason to seek greater supporter involvement. If the owner is willing, spreading the burden and load, and availing of the experience and time of a larger group can be valuable.
Often, the owner isn’t willing to take on that support as they feel it’s an agenda-driven offer, with equity sought for volunteering and investment by people who claim to love the club.
It can be a difficult concept for a person mired in issues and day-to-day operations to grasp, and it’s not always welcomed.
There are examples through the years in Irish football of supporter or community ownership struggling, or failing to sustain and maintain a club.
Bohemians were supporter-owned right through the crises that saw them build seemingly insurmountable debt. Even Cork City lost a large amount of money in 2012 and 2013 when the crowds started to dwindle.
It’s to both clubs’ credit that they came through these issues to emerge stronger, but it’s still a warning to others who’d adopt the model.
Last Sunday, Athlone Town supporters had a kick-off meeting to drive the formation of a supporters trust, ostensibly to gain control of the club they all love, and which they feel is currently being run poorly.
I spent a season working with Athlone Town and thoroughly enjoyed my time there and made some great friends and I hope that the trust can galvanise support and ultimately improve the fortunes of the club and get it through the current crisis.
The thing is, what’s puzzled me about the need for a supporters’ trust in Athlone is the fact that Athlone is already a members’ club — it is not privately-owned.
A couple of weeks ago at an EGM, the members passed a vote of no confidence in the current board – reportedly in the absence of the current executive committee. I had the conversation in 2012 with a number of individuals about this exact fact.
Supporters’ trusts, following the successful promotion of Cork City in 2011, adding to the Glamour of Shamrock Rovers Europa League heroics and Sligo Rovers consistent success, had made trusts a cause celebre within Irish football.
I was asked by the club to investigate establishing a trust, my experience with Cork City cited as important. I looked at the structure and constitution of Athlone and reported back that a supporters trust didn’t add anything new to the club.
Supporters already owned it, held a yearly AGM and elected a board. Back in 2012, it wasn’t structure that was the problem, it was apathy. A sense that people didn’t actually want to get involved, that they felt the club was trundling along just fine.
I held a public meeting on setting up a trust — only six people who weren’t already involved in club committees turned up. That’s not unusual, in the early days of FORAS we couldn’t find seven people willing to come on the board, Arkaga had just taken over the club and were seemingly pumping millions into it.
Trusts are often borne out of crisis, there will be an owner who supporters rally against, convinced of the negative effect that individual is having – which is usually valid. But in those rare cases where a trust gains control, the difficulty comes when people are relaxed again, as they were in Athlone in 2012.
At its height, after taking over Cork City from the ownership by Tom Coughlan, FORAS had 700 members. A couple of years of prudent and successful management, a sense that the club is being well run – which it is – and that number has dropped significantly.
Its hard to sustain the interest in the absence of the enemy, that’s when the real work begins.
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