Let’s not give up fight for our club (From Worcester News)

Let’s not give up fight for our club

8:10am Tuesday 2nd February 2010

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WORCESTER City could go out of business and life would go on.

Sadly, it is possible such an event would barely register on the city’s sporting Richter scale at present — more people regularly watch the Wolves play basketball.

But for the relative few who do go to St George’s Lane every week — and the thousands who have gone before them — Worcester without a football club is unthinkable.

City are steeped in a history of more than 100 years and still well thought of around the non-league scene, by many who remember them when they were a giant of the semi-professional game.

Which is why all must be done to save it.

Sure, times have changed and the club is now teetering on the very edge of existence, but that’s no reason for people to wash their hands of it.

Plenty of comments posted on the Worcester News website in the wake of the board’s plea for help have made staggering reading. To paraphrase, the general gist in some quarters is ‘go out of business and leave us all in peace’.

The problem here is that the Worcester public’s perception of the Blue Square South club has been formed over many years during which mismanagement and an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach to Nunnery Way has brought City to its knees.

In-fighting and the never-ending ground move saga have tested people’s patience to the limit to the extent most can’t be bothered any more.

More worrying, mention the club to Joe Bloggs on the High Street and he, at worst, won’t have heard of it or, at best, knows nothing about it.

That is the task facing chairman Anthony Hampson, vice-chairman Jim Panter and fellow directors Keith Stokes-Smith and Colin Layland.

In order to generate money to pay the bills and provide football, they must convince the public the club is worth saving. It’s a tall order but not insurmountable.

The money-making suggestions set out in their statement make sense but they need help to do it.

There is an important distinction to be made here. Those who think money given to the club will simply be used to pay off a £1.5 million debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland are mistaken.

Selling up to Careys New Homes will take care of the debt, although admittedly if that deal falls through then it’s probably curtains.

What the directors are trying to do is eradicate the circa £100,000 the club currently loses annually so that it can survive day to day. That’s what sponsorship money will do.

Taking an advance from Careys to stay afloat until the end of the season is a dangerous move and only strengthens the Wembley firm’s grip on the club but it was a necessary evil to stave off administration.

The board have made a bold move by making a candid statement that leaves nobody in any doubt as to the perilous state City find themselves in.

As they say, people can either ‘use it or lose it’, but fans throwing the towel in helps nobody.

It could well be too late to save City but, while there is still hope, nobody should give up.

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