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Dulwich Hamlet and Coronavirus

If we laud our board for doing what’s right for our club, and we absolutely do, it’s hard to fault others for trying to do what’s right for theirs. Which ignores the obvious moral question around safety, but it’s equally not a surprise that decisions are being made on the economics of the situation. Certainly disappointing but not surprising.

The accountability sits squarely at the door of the League, who it seems to me are now purely in protection mode. They’ve made a series of serious errors, mainly around promises and assurances made on which material decisions have been based, which have led to a large number of their member clubs being disadvantaged to some extent, and you can only imagine that their commercial stakeholders are likewise not getting what they thought they were paying for.

They likely anticipate legal action from all angles, from breach of contract claims, to allegations of misrepresentation and fraud, to negligence, and I’d expect every decision they make to be designed purely to protect them against that. Getting clubs to fight amongst themselves must be a key part of their strategy.
 
Roger D said:
This league is a rich man's plaything. According to Keiran Maguire only 16 Conference teams returned a profit last year. Many lost over a million, substantial numbers lost six figures. Dorking declared a break even position.

It always has been thus. I first watched the Conference in 1979 (Telford and Stafford.) Back then it was the likes of Altrincham, Noel White and Peter Swales both spent time there.
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Much like the leagues above it then. I've come to think of the different leagues as immature alpha males on a boozy night out. The Premier League is knocking back the pints, the Football League is eager to keep up and get another round in, the National League is lagging behind but doesn't want to quit and go home because the others will see that as a sign of weakness. They won't get invited next time if they don't complete the season and provide a couple of new clubs. There seems to be a lot of peer pressure involved and the level below ours is the highest at which a semblance of objectivity prevails.

This is part of the reason why there should be four up to the Football League. Clubs can finish in the top three of the National Division several times without going up, whereas the top three in the division above all go up every year. There's a bottleneck of impatient and ambitious clubs at National Division

Roger D said:
Marc is doing what he believes is right for Dorking, quite rightly. That's what we expected Ben etc to do for Hamlet

I believe Marc is fast turning into a 'useful idiot' the truly guilty will hide behind.
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I suppose he is, it's just irritating that everything he says and does seems to be broadcast to the entire league. It can get a bit tiresome. He's pretty much in a category of his own, having founded his club and brought it this far. I can only think of Tommy South at Purfleet/Thurrock who's done similar, and he was much more old school and reserved with his public profile. As you say, there are probably more dangerous and reckless characters flying under the radar at other clubs while we're all distracted by the latest pronouncements from Dorking.

Roger D said:
The FA- non League should not have started this year without agreed positions, if we abandon with x% or fewer games played we do Y etc

The League Board. See above plus the failure to confirm funding post December. Also Marc asked for elite status, it was the Board who pushed for it. Marc asked for the season to start, it was the board who ordered it. It was the board who stuffed the funding formula up and made post December funding politically toxic. It is the board who preside over a ludicrously weighted voting system.
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Yes, it's remarkably convenient for the NL Board if clubs are at loggerheads with each other. Ultimately it's their duty to rein in worst excesses of rogue clubs. No one has been talking about the Bernstein Report recently. This mustn't be allowed to remain hidden. It's clear that the Board is responsible for a whole sequence of decisions, either incompetent or deceitful, for which they need to be held to account. What exactly has league chairman Brian Barwick OBE been doing recently? On the face of it he's a big hitter with all the right connections, yet he's given the impression of going missing in action during the League's greatest ever crisis.

Roger D said:
The ditector loan clubs - the people investing in Dorking, if this £700k is true, seemingly do so by writing off money. Fine, no problems. Hamlet did the same whilst in exile,albeit shares not advertising. Another club in the league currently wanting to play on appear to have confirmed a director loan if £300k last year. How big will the loan be this year? What happens if it ever gets called in? I far prefer the Dorking method yet no-one is calling out this club.
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I've no idea which club that is. I suspect quite a few clubs could easily be undermined by one or two directors/sponsors pulling the plug, even if the sums involved aren't as large as that. Once again, what is the point if an individual has to spend that sort of money at this level? We've all seen clubs crash and burn when it becomes unsustainable: Kingstonian, Canvey Island, Lewes, Hornchurch, Grays Athletic, Fisher Athletic, Margate, Whitehawk and that's just those in and around London.
 
scousedom said:
This.
Understandable in 19/20, unforgivable in 20/21.
And probably unbelievably likely in 21/22.
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This time last year I spent quite a few trawling through various leagues to see if I could find just one that had provisions for the non-completion of the season. Did find one.. Rather surprised given that some of those leagues went back to before not just the last World War but the the one before, had existed during previous outbreaks like Foot in Mouth Disease, some pretty awful winters like 1963 and even more recently the wet weather that saw 2000-2001 unfinished. Will have to check whether any league rewrote their rules on the basis of the Null & Void 2019-2020 seasons around the pyramid?
 
Well with the Steps being announced today that include the provisional for outdoor adult sports to resume after March 29, it’s going to throw a few cats among the pigeons if any of the league below NLN/S decide to restart... By the way that doesn’t mean I think the club, the directors & the fans have made a wrong decision. In fact it reinforces it.. After all by my reckoning 27 games would have to be fitted in, three times a week (if that even sensible when many players still have other careers) and things might be finished by the middle of June.. Suppose we’ll have to see if the FA have a cunning plan to resolve things in this instance...
F3922022-1FEB-4C61-8B86-6B889FD2E39A.jpeg
 
Paula_G said:
Well with the Steps being announced today that include the provisional for outdoor adult sports to resume after March 29, it’s going to throw a few cats among the pigeons if any of the league below NLN/S decide to restart... By the way that doesn’t mean I think the club, the directors & the fans have made a wrong decision. In fact it reinforces it.. After all by my reckoning 27 games would have to be fitted in, three times a week (if that even sensible when many players still have other careers) and things might be finished by the middle of June.. Suppose we’ll have to see if the FA have a cunning plan to resolve things in this instance...
View attachment 255682
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I don't see that changes anything does it? There's no implication there that fans will be allowed in and the actual games were already permitted.
 
Maybe the solution for 21/22 is to split in two along “self sustaining clubs” and “sugar daddy clubs” lines. If the latter are so keen to play on at all costs, let them have a platform and good riddance. Would be very interesting to see how clubs self-identified if forced to polarise in that way.
I’m not serious. I don’t think.
 
As if it's not already mad enough, Shahid Azeem who is cited as the League's Commercial Director is quoted in today's Aldershot News as confirming league members are not allowed to take on the proposed loans.

He still wants to finish the season though
 
Roger D said:
As if it's not already mad enough, Shahid Azeem who is cited as the League's Commercial Director is quoted in today's Aldershot News as confirming league members are not allowed to take on the proposed loans.

He still wants to finish the season though
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I think we'd all like the season to finish, in much the same way as we'd all like our team to finish top of the table!

I've said right from the start that it was a stupid and totally misguided decision to begin behind closed doors. What's more the League initially told clubs that wouldn't happen, so I would very much like to know the reasoning behind that change of mind. Who exactly made the decision, and why? Because if they'd stuck with the original decision we wouldn't be in this mess now.
 
Roger D said:
Interesting to see him cite Dorking as one of the helpful teams.
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And Fylde. He's obviously referring to the clubs who were united over the grant funding issue rather than the division between those who wish to complete the season and those who can't afford to. That's a secondary issue arising from earlier poor decisions and mismanagement.

Jim Parmenter being interviewed on Football Focus right now.
 
Interesting comments from one of the Maidstone United owners, Oliver Ash on Twitter. He's promising to hold both the league and individual directors " who have failed in their statutory duties and has been at the heart of the mismanagement" to account.

He goes on to make it pretty clear that Jim Parmenter is one of those in the line of fire, despite his resignation.
 
Pink Panther said:
Maidstone chairman calls for wholesale replacement of National League Board:

www.kentonline.co.uk

Stones chief calls on the FA to dismiss the entire board of the National League

The season is over for Maidstone United and co-owner Oliver Ash has called for the immediate resignation of the National League board.
www.kentonline.co.uk www.kentonline.co.uk
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Good! The National League board cannot be allowed to remain in place. They are clearly not fit for purpose and should resign immediately. I'd like to see representatives from community clubs such as Dulwich, Maidstone, Chester, Darlington and Slough replace some of the imcompetents. I have nothing against clubs that have wealthy owners and good business models as we all need to make money. I do have a massive problem with a board that is not representative - and even worse, doesn't understand or care for - a large segments of it's member clubs.
 
"There were actually more clubs in National League South that wanted to play on, voting 12-9 in favour of continuing the season, but in National League North 15 teams wanted to stop the season with seven preferring to carry on playing."

Terrifying that a majority of Clubs in the South could risk so much for so little - reckless
 
PartisanDulwich said:
"There were actually more clubs in National League South that wanted to play on, voting 12-9 in favour of continuing the season, but in National League North 15 teams wanted to stop the season with seven preferring to carry on playing."

Terrifying that a majority of Clubs in the South could risk so much for so little - reckless
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Doesn’t really surprise when one looks at Duncan’s spreadsheet on the so-called “grants” earlier in the season. Under that criteria a majority of clubs in NLS actually benefited from the handout so presumably still had lots of loose cash rattling about whilst in the NLN the reverse was the case so there those funds would either have run dry or be pretty close to being exhausted..
 
Just checked the Pompey Dunc spreadsheet and in the NLS (9-12) the grant negative/positive (loss/profit) split was 8-13 whilst in NLN (15-7) it was 13-9. So it would seem very few clubs that profited from the grants voted to null & void the season...
 
Paula_G said:
Just checked the Pompey Dunc spreadsheet and in the NLS (9-12) the grant negative/positive (loss/profit) split was 8-13 whilst in NLN (15-7) it was 13-9. So it would seem very few clubs that profited from the grants voted to null & void the season...
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Havant and Dartford were the biggest losers in the lottery grant scandal after ourselves and Maidstone, and they both wanted to play on. Hampton profited from the grants andwere well placed to contest the play-offs, but after deliberating for longer than most they released a reasoned statement concluding that it simply wasn't viable to continue.

I can only assume that most clubs wishing to play on, with the possible exception of those who profited enormously from the grant and/or those with the smallest playing budgets, are being generously funded by directors or sponsors. Supporters of these clubs who are bleating about the curtailment of the season are merely useful idiots to their owners, egging them on with half-baked sneering at the clubs who've had enough: you should have budgeted better, you should take out a loan, you should charge for live streaming, your supporters should raise funds by crowdfunding, you shouldn't be in this league if you can't play the matches etc.

What kind of club's directors want to play out a season behind closed doors? What about the supporters? Who wants to chase promotion when no one else is there to enjoy it? I'd be embarrassed to lead a club like that. Those owners and directors can attend the matches every week and play out their private fantasy league while the rank and file are excluded. They make out they're doing everyone else a favour by providing and charging for a live stream to watch remotely but these are non-league matches, they're not meant to be watched on a screen in your living room. A small number of wealthy individuals must be spending a small fortune to make it happen, and virtually no one except themselves is allowed to be there. The biggest worry for me is that a majority of clubs in our division now appear to be in the hands of these people. If they don't need supporters now, they won't need us in the future. It's the thin end of the wedge.
 
Pink Panther said:
Havant and Dartford were the biggest losers in the lottery grant scandal after ourselves and Maidstone, and they both wanted to play on. Hampton profited from the grants andwere well placed to contest the play-offs, but after deliberating for longer than most they released a reasoned statement concluding that it simply wasn't viable to continue.

I can only assume that most clubs wishing to play on, with the possible exception of those who profited enormously from the grant and/or those with the smallest playing budgets, are being generously funded by directors or sponsors. Supporters of these clubs who are bleating about the curtailment of the season are merely useful idiots to their owners, egging them on with half-baked sneering at the clubs who've had enough: you should have budgeted better, you should take out a loan, you should charge for live streaming, your supporters should raise funds by crowdfunding, you shouldn't be in this league if you can't play the matches etc.

What kind of club's directors want to play out a season behind closed doors? What about the supporters? Who wants to chase promotion when no one else is there to enjoy it? I'd be embarrassed to lead a club like that. Those owners and directors can attend the matches every week and play out their private fantasy league while the rank and file are excluded. They make out they're doing everyone else a favour by providing and charging for a live stream to watch remotely but these are non-league matches, they're not meant to be watched on a screen in your living room. A small number of wealthy individuals must be spending a small fortune to make it happen, and virtually no one except themselves is allowed to be there. The biggest worry for me is that a majority of clubs in our division now appear to be in the hands of these people. If they don't need supporters now, they won't need us in the future. It's the thin end of the wedge.
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This should be published. Brilliant, and I read it in your voice.
 
A combined single division tier two playing on this season is being proposed. Membership is voluntary. Promotion would be granted at the end of the season. 15-20 clubs have declared interest.

It needs three lots of approval before it can happen.
 
Roger D said:
A combined single division tier two playing on this season is being proposed. Membership is voluntary. Promotion would be granted at the end of the season. 15-20 clubs have declared interest.

It needs three lots of approval before it can happen.
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That's mad but let them get on with it if that's what they really want. Seems to me that the football world has lost all semblance of common sense and perspective. I suspect that if it goes ahead that it'll not get finished and they'll probably not plan for how to decide who the winners are in that scenario. I'm pretty sick of the whole thing to be honest. Just way too many selfish people with no consideration for the bigger picture.
 
Concord have confirmed they are out despite pushing to play on / get such a league set up from memory. Financial reality kicking in?

No good for them given they probably have a Trophy final to play in May.
 
pinknblue said:
That's mad but let them get on with it if that's what they really want. Seems to me that the football world has lost all semblance of common sense and perspective. I suspect that if it goes ahead that it'll not get finished and they'll probably not plan for how to decide who the winners are in that scenario. I'm pretty sick of the whole thing to be honest. Just way too many selfish people with no consideration for the bigger picture.
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That was my first thought when Marc White began suggesting this comprise few weeks ago. What harm can it do? Let them get on with it, if it keeps them happy.

However, you can never appease these sort of people for long. What will they demand next? What if supporters are still not allowed back by August? They'll be demanding to start another season behind closed doors, because it happened this time, and clubs without a sugar daddy or big money sponsors will be excluded again. Well supported clubs like ourselves and Maidstone should not be left out in the cold while a minority of other clubs, prepared to find money by any means necessary, compete for promotion. That's not how leagues work.

I'm still baffled by how so many of the National Division clubs seem to be finding the money to play on. Most of the players at that level are professionals, I can't believe they're all turning out for fifty quid a week just because they like playing. And what about the lower divisions of the Football League? Where exactly is all the money coming from when a lot of these clubs would pull an aggregate attendance of about 100,000 a season through the turnstiles? Some of these clubs must have a shortfall of well over £1,000,000 compared to a normal season. Just how are they covering it, and what sort of rules might they be breaking along the way?

In recent seasons there have occasionally been postponements of Premier League matches because adverse weather conditions made it unsafe for large crowds of supporters to travel and attend, even though the pitch was perfectly playable. How is that different to the current situation? If it isn't safe for supporters to attend the matches, don't play the bloody matches. That should be set in stone. Football should not be played behind closed doors.
 
Surely, non league football outside former League teams and the odd local businessman, is primarily, based on huge voluntary efforts on match day, fund raising behind the scenes, and arguably not paying players what they should for their labour,. For many Clubs it really is a season to season existence and sometimes a big doze of "creative accounting". While the ever present property developers circle and smell the blood in the water

Going forward this cannot continue - but probably will, with the inevitable hemorrhage of clubs along the way

All our club can do, is articulate the demand for a better future for non-league football, with community clubs central to that
 
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To me, the key point for the league now is to get all clubs to the starting line next season. There is an increasing logic for some clubs playing on.

DH have confirmed the club cannot furlough many players due to the season start date. This is presumably true of many others. DH have also said they are looking at other funding, presumably on better terms than the government loan.

Better terms may not be available to all. If so, and you can't furlough your squad, you either stop and declare redunadncies, stop and borrow enough to furlough etc or carry on and borrow enough to carry your costs. That's basically 20% extra on wages and match days costs, training costs etc.

In return you get some revenue from streaming. You also ensure you don't have to refund season ticket holders, advertiser's etc - cancelling out some of the extra outgoings to play on.

Now start juggling them a bit, possibly furlough your highest earners eligible for furlough and bring in non contract players on the cheap - Tonbridge and King's Lynn had lots of players offer to help out - and you can start cutting your outgoings simultaneously. You also maintain fan and volunteer interest, something becoming an increasingly big risk to non league clubs

To be clear when asked my opinion I said I thought the club should stop playing to save itself financially, irrespective of any punishment. DH however are an unusual beast at this level. I can see other clubs may be better off playing on. Let them. This also permits relegation so Dover and any other tier one clubs who cannot finish the season only go down one step. Helping to protect more league members.

I'm not too bothered about bankrolled clubs playing on for the sake of it, but in a few cases I think there is a plausible argument certain clubs may be better off playing on.

The league has a duty to protect all member clubs at the end of the day.

Edited for clarity, the 20% extra is because.I believe you pay the wages and then reclaim furlough money so you have an up front cost.
 
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If we knew this thing would be with us for five years, what would we (or rather a responsible League management) do? Probably, some or all of:
  • Change the season timing to Mar-Oct to maximise the chances of playing games when not in lockdown and therefore in front of crowds (because lockdowns are more likely to occur in autumn/winter).
  • Either agree to play seasons to a finish, even if that took five years, rather than cancelling one half way through every year.
  • Or rearrange the fixture scheduling so that every team plays each other once and if you have to call a season halfway then you can.
  • Adapt new standardised contract wording to enable seasons to be extended over lockdowns without incurring huge extra wage costs.
  • Hold any Government support money centrally, and distribute only on basis of need, and only to clubs who can show clearly that their budgets are sustainable based on their "normal" income - excluding sugardaddy top-ups.

So on the basis this thing will be here five years (or however long this Government lasts), we should start getting on with this. Otherwise we'll just have five more unfinished seasons and a lot of bankrupt clubs.
 
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