Over the last couple of postings I have looked at reasons why promotion to higher leagues may pose a financial problem for non-league football clubs. We have also seen why relegation exposes financial constraints on many of these clubs, especially as attendances drain away while costs remain stubbornly fixed. In yesterday’s entry I noted the Football Conference’s efforts to impose greater fiscal discipline on its member clubs, through quarterly reports under the Financial Reporting Initiative.
This raises the question: how should clubs make their way up through the non-league pyramid? At each stage up the footballing tiers there are stringent requirements on clubs’ grounds, as seen in this FA Category ‘A’ Ground Grading document. These inevitably mean clubs must plan for promotion and incur costs making their grounds suitable before they actually achieve promotion. Given that these costs will deprive clubs of revenue to spend on their playing squads and that ‘financial doping’ is starting to be outlawed at many levels of the game, how do the minnows compete?
As the season draws to an end, with playoff finals looming for clubs which failed to gain automatic promotion to the next level, we can look at two models for football success, taken from the non-leagues. Crawley Town have secured promotion to the Football League by winning the Blue Square Bet Premier league by a 15 point margin. The road to League Two has not been smooth, with the club falling into administration after over-spending following promotion to the Conference in 2004. New owners followed in 2008, facing another mountain of debt to clear and it was only at the start of this season that the club appeared to have achieved financial stability.
Given this recent history of the club accumulating debt only to repay just a proportion of its liabilities to creditors, it’s easy to understand why some observers have expressed concern over Crawley Town’s rise. When the club were matched against Manchester United in the fifth round of this season’s FA Cup, many of these worries were aired in public. Crawley have fought to clear their name of any association with murky dealings and the identity of their mystery backers. They deny claims of financial doping and say that the club’s manager has served his penalty for his part in a quarter of a million pound tax fraud in 2006, when he was at Boston United.
As a model for football success, Crawley Town are not without their critics and while their detractors’ accusations could be attributed to jealousy, the methods used to achieve results this season can be contrasted with those of other non-league clubs. The story of AFC Wimbledon’s rise to contest the Blue Square Bet Premier playoff final this weekend offers a different take on football governance and finance. This will be the focus for tomorrow’s blog entry.