training and have a look’, at which point I was
wavering until he said it was Doncaster. For
vanity more than anything, I had to say no.”
With their menagerie of footballers, it was
no surprise when standards continued to slip.
“People wouldn’t believe half the stories now,
as things have changed,” says Clark. “Training
pitches changed weekly from training grounds
to a public park. You didn’t know what you’d be
coming in to from one day to the next.
“It was run like a non-league club. People
turned up and kit was non-existent, so they
wore old gear from other clubs. On Saturdays,
there were no tracksuits. If you think about
professionalism and wanting everyone to act
the same, and eliminating issues so players
can’t make excuses, there was none of that.
“I used to turn up and nothing was in place.
We’d set off for away games on the day of the
match, which wasn’t the norm. The lads were
leaving their cars at the ground and coming
back. One time, we got back after a game and
a player found that someone had pinched his
wheels – his car was on bricks.”
As Doncaster’s struggles worsened, so did
Richardson and Weaver’s relationship with the
fans. Crowds fell beneath 1,000 as relegation
from the Football League became inevitable,
and the supporters’ club formed a group to
come up with strategies to force the duo out.
There were pitch invasions, walk-out protests,
and even a picnic arranged in the car park as
a game was taking place. On another occasion,
Stephenson and her husband, Tony, spent an
evening putting ‘Club For Sale’ posters along
the route from Weaver’s home to Belle Vue.
“I’ve got a couple of security lads who travel
with me to games, home and way,” Weaver
told Channel Five documentary, They Think It’s
All Rovers, about the Donny debacle.
“I had a death threat at the club and at my
home in Manchester, where a colour picture
had been taken out of a local newspaper with“WE GOT BACK AFTER A GAME AnD
SOMEOnE HAD PInCHED A PLAYER’S
WHEELS. HIS CAR WAS On BRICKS”
my head chopped off and blood dripping down.
It said, ‘Leave or else, Donny Boot Boys’.”
In response, a digger was commissioned to
destroy the terrace beneath the box where the
directors sat, to stop fans getting too close to
them. And while Richardson stopped attending
matches on safety advice later in the season,
there was no sign of the benefactor leaving.
Doncaster’s relegation was confirmed with
four games to go after losing at Chester, while
three more losses before the campaign’s end
meant the record for number of defeats was
theirs. Over 46 games, Rovers won four times,
lost 34, and recorded a goal difference of -83.
As 5,000 fans gathered for the season finale
at home to Colchester, to pay tribute at what
many felt would be the club’s last ever match,
a series of demonstrations were held, starting
with the mock funeral and ending with a pitch
invasion that threatened to call the match off.
“We couldn’t visualise where we’d go from
there,” adds Stephenson. “We had no players,
no money, no corner flags, nothing. The club
was stripped bare by the Richardson gang.”
Relegation wasn’t the end, though. Donny
survived to start the new season in the Football
Conference, but there was one more plot twist.
Nine months after the curtain came down on
the club’s 75-year stay in the Football League,
benefactor Richardson was facing charges for
conspiracy to commit arson relating to the fire
at Belle Vue in 1995. The jury heard how he’d
offered a former SAS soldier £10,000 to burn
down the main stand as part of a scheme to
force Rovers out of the stadium.
The plan might have worked, but firefighters
recovered petrol cans from the scene of the
fire, along with a mobile phone that contained
a message to Richardson that said, “The job’s
been done.” The evidence proved enough for
Richardson to be found guilty and sentenced
to four years in jail. It was a fittingly ludicrous
end to a scarcely believable story. A tale that
Doncaster fans are happy has been laid to rest.I was only 18 when Rovers went down
in 1998 – by then I’d been a fan for seven
years. I was well aware that I supported
a mediocre football club – fourth-tier
perennials. But Donny were my club and
I loved them. Then 1997-98 happened,
and things were never the same again.
It says a lot about what’s happened to
English football that I no longer think what
happened to us that season was especially
extraordinary. I didn’t feel like that at the
time, of course. This was before Wimbledon
got uprooted to Milton Keynes. Clubs like
Aldershot had gone to the wall before, but
I felt like a town having their team almost
taken away from them by the greed and
criminality of a man like Ken Richardson
was obscene, and that it made us special.
Now I think, ‘At least I’m not a Darlington
or Hereford fan’. Which lower league side
hasn’t been a crisis club at some point?
It was awful, but I’m almost ashamed
to admit that events which were hugely
traumatic are now recalled with something
approaching affection. One week you’d go
along and find ‘Richardson Out’ sprayed
across the roof of the Pop Stand; another
you wouldn’t see much football because
hardcore fans invaded the pitch just after
kick-off and sat down in the centre circle.
Now I look back and think it was quite
exciting, but I’m sure I wouldn’t feel like
that if we’d folded. I think many fans would
admit that going down to the Conference
was good for us. We rebuilt, and what we
built was better than what existed before.
Sometimes we chanted, ‘Just a pub team,
having a laugh’, and that unity came from
the rehabilitation at places such as Dover.
I often say what happened in 1997-98
politicised my fandom. It did for many of
us. I stopped caring just about Rovers and
started caring about the wellbeing of the
game. I started looking out for other clubs
in trouble. I signed the petitions. I attended
the protests. I started writing for the Rovers
fanzine. I even, when my knees weren’t
rebelling against me, started playing for
the fans’ team, Donny Arsonists. And that
season did kickstart the most successful
decade in my time supporting Doncaster.
We really were a phoenix from the flames...
That said, every time we achieve some
success, I cast my mind back to that year.
I remember beating Leeds in the League
One play-off final and mouthing under my
breath, ‘Are you watching Richardson?’ I’ll
probably be doing that as long as I live.
“THE COn FEREn C E
WAS GOOD FOR US”
Rovers rebuilt and built better during
their dalliance in non-league football,
says Donny supporter James McMahon
CHRIS EVANS
is a FourFourTwo contributor
and the author of ‘Learning
Curve: Life inside one of British
football’s most unusual clubs’DOn CASTER
ROVERS
Above Rovers fans
raid the field and
make their point100 September 2019 FourFourTwo