After more than 60 years a shrimper, yes, my love for the club has faded immeasurably over the past three years. You see, I am now of an age where I know the club I have loved nearly all of my life will never recover to what it once was within whatever time I have left on this planet. That hurts, so why should I continue to let its constant miserable failure cast a shadow on my life.
I try not to be judgmental of players or other staff at the football club because I prefer to think that everyone tries their best in whatever role they play. However, one has to question what has brought about this catastrophic decline. Some will blame the players, some the manager but along with many others I firmly believe the root of the problem is Ron Martin.
So, why do I lay the blame at Martin’s door? Well, to begin with, RM is not a football man and although he probably considers himself to have become one since his involvement with SUFC, he has not felt the same love for the club as most of us have over the course of our lives. He therefore does not feel the same pain as us when we look at our once proud club hovering above the relegation zone of the fifth tier of English football. During the course of our history, although we have never hit the pinnacle of footballing prowess, we have always been a proud club and as supporters we have been able to hold our heads high. Back in the late 1960s my father knew one of the directors of Scunthorpe United who told us they always enjoyed their visits to Roots Hall because we were a ‘proper football club’ with genuine history and always entertained our visitors with the utmost respect. I wonder what opinions the directors of other clubs hold for us now.
Many describe Ron as a property developer but in my opinion he is not. He is a property investor, a speculator if you like. The difference is a developer will buy property/land, develop it and make profit by selling or letting the completed development. Property investors are commonly quite happy to sit on the land/property they have acquired for many years because historically in this country, unless very unlucky, over time the investment appreciates in value.
I am not sure Ron fully understood what he was getting involved with by becoming the owner of a football club, he merely saw the opportunity to buy a potentially valuable site at a knock down price because of the football club’s debt at the time. Why else would a property man with no passion for football get involved with a football club? The value of the assets were greater than his investment so that appeared to be good business but I do not think he realised then that the finance required to run a football club would severely erode his apparent gains. Once he became aware he had to hatch a plan to rid himself of the burden of SUFC without sacrificing the object that had attracted him in the first place and so chasing the dream began. Setting SUFC up in a new stadium would make the club attractive to potential new owners and RM would have spin off gains from the associated development and, of course, Roots Hall. So, twenty years down the line, why has this not happened?
The problem, and this is pure conjecture on my part, is that RM is not a developer, does not have sufficient capital assets and has not had the right connections/influence to bring the significant development proposed to fruition. Maybe his demands have also been greedy when negotiating with parties who would have been interested in becoming involved with the project. I accept that over time he has been unlucky in respect of some issues outside of his control but the fact remains he has not delivered on his promises in a time frame that has seen many other football clubs obtain new stadia.
Ron does not have the financial clout to run a professional football club properly, at least not in liquid assets, this has been clear for a number of years now. He is though stubborn, perhaps avaricious and ego driven to a point where he would never be able to work in partnership with others who could share the financial burden. The consequences are that the reputation of the club has been severely damaged by his inability to settle his financial commitments on time such that we now hear rumours of agents advising players not to come to us.
Those that blame the players we have for our plight are failing to see, but for a few exceptions, this is the level of player ability Ron is able/willing to afford and if some players are being warned off from playing for us our options are hugely restricted. As for the manager, I am beginning to think that PB may have passed his shelf life and I do not like the vendettas he has with some players. The current squad is pretty much his but if the player recruitment choices are restricted by the reputation of the club perhaps he has only been able to bring in the best of the bad bunch available.
I am sorry, but Martin’s failure to bring his master plan to fruition, coupled with what appears to be incompetence in running a football club are what has led us to sink to the depth we now find ourselves. I see him as an ill-equipped person chasing a dream to suit his own agenda while trying to sell it to supporters of the football club as a benevolent gesture. Statistics show that only 2% of dream chasers fulfil their ambitions.
