98 September 2019 FourFourTwo
rief and anger populate the
streets of Doncaster. Lining
the roads leading to Belle
Vue, hundreds of mourners
march in unison towards
the ground, surrounding
a funeral procession that
carries a sign reading: ‘The
Rovers, Cruelly Taken Away’.
Led by a pallbearer dressed
in a full black suit and top
hat, the cortege snakes its
way to the foot of the old
stadium’s family stand,
where a number of wreaths
and handmade memorials
are laid to commemorate
the departed.
Despite the sombre atmosphere created by
the mock funeral Doncaster Rovers fans are
holding, no one has died. But as the supporters
edge their way to Donny’s final fixture of the
1997-98 season, a feeling of loss is everywhere.
“It felt like a real funeral, like the death of the
club,” says then-Doncaster Rovers Supporters’
Club secretary Maureen Stephenson.
“We had a trumpeter playing the Last Post,
we laid wreaths and there were grown-ups
crying – me included. It was heartbreaking.
I honestly believed that was the end of Rovers.”
The demonstration was the culmination of
one of the worst campaigns English football
has ever witnessed. And not just because the
South Yorkshire side’s beleaguered squad had
suffered a Football League record 34 losses
on the way to relegation to the Conference –
a tally of defeats that still hasn’t been topped
more than 20 years on.
Doncaster’s tale of woe is about more than
just on-pitch struggles. Theirs is a story that is
so bonkers, it wouldn’t have looked out of place
as a script for Sky football drama Dream Team,
which had debuted a few months earlier.
With benefactor Ken Richardson pulling the
plug on his financial support, the club started
the season in administration. There were no
points deductions as punishment back then
but depleted funds meant the bank was bare,
with scant money to pay players and nothing
to fix increasingly ramshackle facilities.
“It was a joke,” former manager Kerry Dixon
tells FourFourTwo. “I loved Doncaster, the place
was great and it was my first managerial job,
but with what was going on in the background
and how it was, it was a disaster.”
The eight-cap England international had
taken over under controversial circumstances
at the beginning of 1996-97. Named Donny’s
player-manager on the season’s opening day,
Dixon arrived only to find that his predecessor,
Sammy Chung, hadn’t been informed that he
had been replaced. Perhaps the writing was
on the wall straight away.
Dixon lasted a little over 12 months. Before
August had finished the following year, the
Chelsea legend walked away from Belle Vue,
citing boardroom meddling on the back of an
8-0 battering at home to Nottingham Forest
in the League Cup.
“It started off for two or three months and
was all fine,” continues Dixon. “Then I started
getting phone calls saying Ken thinks this and
Ken thinks that, so come and meet him. He
was talking to players and telling me training
wasn’t too good that week. He was ringing up
the players and, obviously, people who aren’t
in the team or getting picked are disgruntled.
It was just general mischief-making as far as
I was concerned.
“I agreed my release with the administrators
because it was a joke – you didn’t know who
was running the club. Wages weren’t getting
paid on time and the PFA was involved. It was
a complete shambles.”
Things had started to turn ugly long before
Dixon arrived in Doncaster, though. When the
Richardson Trust purchased the club in 1993,
money had been spent on bringing in several
new signings. But that optimism soon vanished
when an advert was published in the Financial
Times advertising Belle Vue for sale, despite it
being leased to the club by Doncaster Council.
The ground’s site was valued at £18 million,
making it the most lucrative plot in the Football
League outside London. But after the council
put a kibosh on the sale attempt and refused
to reconsider, investment in the club dried up.
And when a fire burned down part of the main
stand shortly after the council discussions had
ended in 1995, the rumour mill began to churn.
It had all come to a head by the summer of
1997 and, as the season kicked off, Doncaster
supporters were bracing themselves for the
worst. With some now publicly challenging
Richardson about his intentions and little
investment on the team, there wasn’t much
hope on the terraces when August arrived.
“We knew what would happen, because we
knew Richardson was here for the land,” says
Stephenson. “It was the worst scenario.”Dixon’s exit a few weeks into the campaign
was the first of five managerial changes during
the season as the club limped from one failure
to the next. Youth team coach Dave Cowling
lasted only nine days – and three losses – prior
to throwing in the towel.
In fact, it took until boss number five before
Rovers won a league match. It was testimony
to Richardson’s interference that it ended up
being his right-hand man, Mark Weaver, who
guided the team to their first three-point haul
at the 21st attempt, beating Chester 2-1.
Weaver, who was Donny’s general manager,
didn’t have any credible experience of running
a football team and had previously been in
charge of overseeing the fans’ lottery. But in
the absence of any other candidates, he found
himself in the dugout.
He was supported on the training pitch by
ex-Uruguayan under-21 international Danny
Bergara, a La Liga hotshot in his playing days
who had since blazed a trail as one of the first
foreign-speaking coaches to work in English
football. Bergara had endured seven matches
as manager before Weaver took charge, but
stepped back because of abuse from the fans.
Belle Vue’s revolving door extended to the
players, too. With wages not being paid in full,
they were free to negotiate moves away from
Rovers under freedom of contract laws. This
led to an ever-changing XI line-up and some
hastily made, budget signings to fill the gaps.DOn CASTER
ROVERS