In an article for the Guardian, David Conn looks at how football has returned to Edgar Street.
The new Hereford Football Club, founded by supporters after their beloved, historic Hereford United crumpled into liquidation last year,
has been reborn with a pre-season friendly against FC United of
Manchester, attended by a remarkable, emotional crowd of 4,000.
The club, registered to play in the Midland Football League
for the forthcoming season, the ninth level of the English game’s
pyramid where clubs generally attract gates of around 100, has sold more
than 1,000 season tickets, such is the enthusiasm generated by the
prospect of a fresh start.“There is absolutely huge goodwill and excitement that the club is being run by supporters and local people who care for it,” said Martin Watson, the vice-chair of the Hereford United Supporters Trust, now installed as the part-time secretary of the club while still running his computer repair business. “We have dozens of fans who have volunteered to do work on the ground and other jobs, and this one pre-season friendly has drawn a crowd about as big as the total attendances for every game last season.”
In the terminal, desperately unhappy season for Hereford United, after 90 distinguished years forever highlighted by the famous 1972 FA Cup third-round giant-killing of Newcastle United and Ronnie Radford’s 30-yard screamer, most fans reached the point of boycotting the club completely.
It had fallen into financial difficulties under a locally born owner, David Keyte, amassing debts of £1.2m and failing to pay its own players and former manager, Martin Foyle, who initially issued the winding-up petition. In May 2014 Keyte passed the club for £2 to an east London property developer, Tommy Agombar, whom fans discovered to be not “fit and proper” having been convicted of lorry theft and spent time in prison.
During a fractious and occasionally deeply unpleasant period the club was passed to a company, Alpha Finance, specialising in “distressed debt,” and the most public director became Andrew Lonsdale, a partner of Agombar’s with a patchy record himself. Bankrupt in 2007, disqualified in 2006 from acting as a company director for six years, convicted in 2008 of illegal waste dumping, Lonsdale as the owner of Feltham FC had moved the club out of its arena then dumped five times more than the permitted quantity of soil and rubble on it, and it fell derelict.
Although Lonsdale and his partners insisted they wanted to revive Hereford, supporters who had dug up all that baggage opposed them absolutely, foresaw that their club might collapse and that the future lay in a fresh start. After repeated adjournments of the winding-up petition, in December Hereford United’s time ran out when Lonsdale failed to produce a required £1m proof of funding, complaining he was stuck in traffic on the way to court.
HUST, which had already prepared plans to form their own club, greeted the liquidation with a promise to rebuild, which they have eagerly fulfilled. The Edgar Street ground, site of Radford’s goal and the landmark scenes of delirious boys in parkas swarming on to the pitch, is owned by Herefordshire county council, which repossessed it after the club was liquidated.
In February, two months after the liquidation, the council agreed a lease with the new club, thereby fulfilling its own promise to ensure Edgar Street would remain a home for football. The fans, living their dream of owning and running their club after the years of indignity, found the ground itself a rackety distance from being a field of dreams. Decay, disrepair, dodgy electrics and asbestos meant around £200,000 was needed to restore it to safety and decency, so the trust did a deal with four local people, described as “benefactors”, who funded the works.
Watson says the trust willingly agreed to this dilution of the original plan for complete supporter ownership and that, although the benefactors want to remain unnamed publicly, he is confident they are long-term supporters who have financially assisted in the past. For their £200,000 the benefactors are currently majority owners. The trust has put in £25,000 so far, with fundraising amassing the best part of a further £25,000, and the supporters hope ultimately to raise £200,000 and own an equal 50% stake.
“We are comfortable with this because of the people the benefactors are,” Watson says. “To have them in a more formalised role is actually comforting. We haven’t run a club before and they have bucket loads of experience we can call on.”
The board will have three elected trust representatives on it, alongside four appointments by the benefactors, under the chairman, Jon Hale.
The match with supporter-owned FC United of Manchester, now of Conference North, was arranged after Hereford’s head of volunteering, Ken Kinnersley, inquired how FCUM organise their famed battalions of volunteers. Peter Beadle, Hereford’s newly appointed manager, used the FC United game and a friendly last week against Malvern to assess more local triallists to add to only seven signings at that point.
“The support has been amazing,” Beadle said. “It shows how passionate people are here and how important football is to people in Hereford. Our job is to aim to be successful but to run the club properly, sustainably, so they never again end up in the position they were last year – and ensure there will always be a Hereford football club.”