September 1, 2019 The Mail on Sunday^
Oliver Holt
chief sports writer
T
O N Y S T E WA RT, t h e
R o t h e r h a m U n i t e d
c ha i r m a n , l o o k s
immaculate. He is wearing
a sharp navy suit and a
gold tie. A matching gold
handkerchief is tucked into his
breast pocket. He leads me through
the boardroom at the New York
Stadium. It is an hour before
kick-off in last week’s Carabao Cup
second-round tie against Sheffield
Wednesday. His guests are standing
and chatting before they sit down
to eat.
Stewart goes through the double
doors. He knocks his fist on their
sturdy frames. ‘Hardwood,’ he says
proudly. He takes me into the gents’
toilets. He gestures towards the
gleaming washbasins and their
marble surrounds. ‘Fit for purpose,’
he says. We go back outside. He
peers over the balcony rail to the
foyer far below and pretends to
topple over it. ‘That’s how I feel
when we lose,’ he says.
Stewart takes his role as custodian
of the club seriously. He has no
concerns about their future.
Rotherham were punching above
their weight in the Championship
in the past couple of seasons but
they did not mortgage their future
on trying to stay there. They have
other income streams. The stadium
is a popular wedding venue. It is a
focus for the community. Last year,
it staged the funeral of one of the
Chuckle Brothers, who was a
Rotherham fan.
In the foyer, a glass case trumpets
the club’s history, their minor
triumphs represented in silver
salvers and triumphal photographs.
There is also a teamsheet from
Rotherham’s match against Walsall
on September 26, 1893 when
Rotherham’s goalkeeper, Arthur
Wharton, became the first black
player to appear in a Football
League match.
The New York Stadium was
opened in 2012. It still looks shiny
and new, a fitting symbol of a town
that has the fastest growing
economy in the north of England.
The land it is built on used to belong
to the Guest and Chrimes Foundry.
The ruins of the old brassworks are
still there, surrounded by red
boards saying ‘Danger’. Beside its
abandoned hulk, the neon signs of
the stadium look like hope.
R
OTHERHAm, relegated to
League One at the end of
last season, play well
against their local rivals
from the Championship,
who have brought more
than 2,000 fans with them. There is
shared history and shared enmity.
But Wednesday have a recent
habit of scoring late winners here
and, in the sixth minute of added
time, their Kosovo forward Atdhe
Nuhiu rifles the ball into the roof of
the net for the only goal of the game.
The Wednesday fans go mad.
It is my first visit to the New York
Stadium. It’s my 84th league
ground. The 84th of the 92. Or, for
the purposes of the rest of this
season, the 84th of the 91. Bury
£10k for a parking
space at Bury?
Why it’s time to
start protecting
the things that
we love the most
about our football
‘The previous boss at the EFL said
that kind of regulation would
restrict ambition,’ says Holt. ‘Well,
look, I’ve got an ambition to fly to
the moon but it’s not going to
happen. At least that way, you are
limiting the net amount of
indebtedness a club can get into. It
would stop somebody going daft.
‘You can’t have it both ways. You
can’t say that football should be a
capitalist free-for-all and then
complain when clubs like Bury or
macclesfield or Southend get into
difficulty. I don’t want to sterilise
the game but you can’t say “Just let
them go the wall like any other
business” and then throw up your
hands in horror when it happens.
‘We all know that the truth is clubs
are different from a normal
business. You run a club for
thousands of people. If you run a
shop and go out of business, your
customers can go and buy their
cornflakes somewhere else. It’s a
different level of responsibility in
football. It is wrong that one bad
owner should be able to end more
than a century of history.’A
T Champions League
level, Financial Fair Play
r e g u l a t i o n s s e e m
designed to try to protect
the ancient regime and
enshrine the superiority
of old money clubs such as AC
milan, Juventus, manchester
United, Real madrid and Bayern
munich.
But it is hard to escape the idea
that the obscene spending in our
top flight, the profligacy that sees
an agent like mino Raiola paid
£41m for brokering a transfer and
manchester United paying Alexis
Sanchez £200,000 a week not to play
for them, is connected to the fall of
Bury. It has infected our league.
Even smaller clubs have started
chasing impossible dreams.
‘Somebody overspends and it’s
like three-card brag,’ says Holt.
‘Somebody bets £1,000 and the next
person has to bet £1,000 just to stay
in the game. If you are in a 125cc
bike race, you can’t ride around on
some souped-up 1,000cc machine.
There has to be some regulation.’
At lower league level, the same
kind of regulations seem more like
a roadmap for self-preservation, a
way to protect clubs from
unscrupulous or irresponsible
owners should the need arise.
Upward mobility is still possible.
Just not at the cost of chasing
dreams of personal enrichment,
amassing unmanageable debts and
destroying clubs like Bury and
Bolton. People say that clubs like
that have no divine right to exist
and that is true. But when they
have been cornerstones of their
community for more than a century,
then they do have the right to be
protected from owners who are
human wrecking balls.
It is time to stop bleating and start
doing something about it. It is time
to stop standing back and start
strengthening the rules. It is time
to start trying to protect the things
we love most about football.have been expelled from the
English Football League the day
before. A calamity like that
concentrates the mind. Since I was
a kid, I’ve wanted to visit every one
of the grounds in our top four
divisions. Now, more than ever, it
feels like time’s running out.
It feels like the idea of the 92 is on
borrowed time. It feels like lower
league clubs are part of a
disappearing world, a precious part
of our culture that is getting
dangerously close to becoming
collateral damage in the midst of
the Premier League gold rush.
Bury’s demise cuts deep with me,
as it does with so many football
fans. I went to Gigg Lane severaltimes, first as an away fan with
Stockport County and later with
Neville Neville, who was one of my
best friends in football and who
was associated with the club for
most of his life. The main stand at
the ground is named after him.
How was the financial madness at
Bury allowed to get to the point
where the previous owner, Stewart
Day, was charging £9,995 for a car
parking space at Gigg Lane? I’m
sorry to miss the point but have you
ever seen the car park? How was
the madness not stopped? Why was
one man allowed to destroy so
much that had gone before?
I hope this is not a full stop for
Bury. There are plenty of examplesto suggest it need not be. Sometimes,
an event like this can act as a
liberation from the rapacious
tyranny of the charlatans who have
destroyed the club they professed
to love. The examples of AFC
Wimbledon, Chester, Stockport,
Leyton Orient and Accrington
Stanley are proof that after what
feels like a death, there can be
resurrection.
Accrington, in fact, are a
propitious example. Run on a tight
budget by a visionary chairman,
A n d y H o l t , t h e y a r e , l i k e
Rotherham, living evidence that
lower league football in its old
northern heartlands is not a lost
cause despite the traumas that have
afflicted Bury and Bolton. The
season before last, Stanley were
promoted from League Two despite
having the lowest budget of the 92.
They were due to play Bury in the
second game of this season before
the match was postponed and Holt
does not think things can continue
as they are without the lower
leagues sustaining more casualties.
He is in favour of greater
regulation. He suggests, for
instance, a cap of £3 million for
League Two clubs in player
expenditure per club, a sum that
would have to cover wages, agent
fees, player bonuses, national
insurance payments and lodging.TRIBUTE:
Oldham pay
respects to
the ‘death’ of
fellow club
Bury