Post by QPR Report on Mar 24, 2010 7:00:25 GMT
David Conn/The Guardian
Chester City fans rally round to build future out of ruins of the pastFootball must heed the lessons of Chester City's grim demise as diehard supporters seek to create a community club
Chester City RIP, long live professional football in Chester. Following the grim, agonising liquidation this month of the stalwart club originally formed in 1885, determined City supporters will tonight count fans' votes to name the club they will resurrect from the ashes.
After the ignominy of ownership under Stephen Vaughan, the Merseyside boxing promoter disqualified as a company director last year having admitted VAT fraud, City Fans United is directing its collective efforts to forming a new club, owned by supporters, to forge a more wholesome future.
"Chester people can easily support Everton or Liverpool," says the 36-year-old Jeff Banks, CFU's spokesman. "But we support the club as a proud part of being from Chester, and it has always been a big part of my life. It has been appalling to see the club fold under the Vaughan family, who owned it for so short a time, and we want to rebuild a strong community club."
Chester City 2004 Ltd, which owned the club, was put finally out of existence on 10 March following a petition by HM Revenue and Customs, having not paid overdue tax, or the players, been boycotted by their own supporters and expelled from the Conference for failing to fulfil fixtures against Forest Green Rovers and Wrexham. The Vaughan family tried to find a buyer, stating that they were owed £486,000 themselves, but nobody bit.
The bust company is now with the Official Receiver's special interest unit in Manchester, which investigates cases where wrongdoing is suspected, although it is not clear whether any such allegations have been made in Chester's case.
Stephen Vaughan, when disqualified as a director, said he had passed ownership to his son, Stephen Vaughan Jr, but the Football Association was itself investigating whether Vaughan senior was continuing in effect to act as a "shadow director", after he appeared in the media discussing the club's affairs.
The club's obituaries have scrabbled for highlights in 125 years of history, finding Ian Rush, the Chester goalscoring apprentice who sprinted to Anfield greatness, and the 1975 League Cup semi-final against Aston Villa. Yet the very point of clubs like Chester City is that they are not found engraved on endless silver cups or in memories of European campaigns. Decades playing semi-professionally in Cheshire, a non-league stronghold, then bobbing between the Third and Fourth divisions since election to the Football League in 1931, speak rather of effort, dedication, belonging.
Vaughan bought the club in October 2001, despite having left another notable lower-league name, Barrow, in liquidation. At the time, there was no fit and proper persons' test to regulate who can take over football clubs; the FA and leagues were still claiming it was unworkable. Yet even if today's test, which they subsequently introduced, had been in place, Vaughan would still have been allowed to buy Chester. People are prohibited from becoming directors or major shareholders if they have previously taken two clubs into insolvency. One liquidation is still no bar.
Disqualified directors are prohibited too, and Vaughan was declared not fit and proper last November, having been banned from being a company director for 11 years after admitting a £505,000 fraud while a director of Widnes rugby league club.
At Barrow, Vaughan himself said he had been arrested by HMRC, which was investigating alleged money laundering on behalf of Curtis Warren, the Liverpool drug baron. In the biography written about him, Cocky (Milo Books, £14.99), Warren was reported to have flown over Barrow's Holker Street ground in a helicopter, and said, pointing: "I own that." Yesterday Warren appealed against a conviction for plotting to smuggle £1m worth of cannabis, having started a 13-year jail term in December after he and five others were found guilty by a jury of conspiracy to import the drugs from mainland Europe to Jersey in the Channel Islands.
Vaughan acknowledged, always, that Warren was a childhood friend but denied being involved with him, insisted he owned Barrow outright, and was never prosecuted for any alleged offence.
Vaughan put considerable money into Chester at first, funding promotion from the Conference back to the Football League in 2004 at a gleeful Deva Stadium with a 1‑0 win over Scarborough, another old club now gone bust.
Many fans talk of their lowest moment as November 2007, when the pre-match Tannoy called a minute's silence for Colin Smith, described as a benefactor to the club. Smith turned out to be a major Liverpool cocaine dealer – although never convicted of any drug offences – killed in a reported gang shooting. Bob Gray, City's managing director, described Smith as a friend of the club but said he had "never put a penny" into it.
Chester were relegated from the Football League last May and they collapsed into administration. Vaughan then bought the club from the administrator using Chester City 2004 Ltd, and the local Chester West and Chester council, which owns the Deva, agreed the team could play there and have the lease transferred to the new company if the rent was paid.
The FA fined the Conference for allowing the new club in even though the debts were not paid in full as required by Conference rules, and City limped on, facing successive deadlines for not paying the players and other clubs.
Momentously, by January, the supporters finally decided it was more important to end the Vaughan family's ownership than keep the club hacking on. On 19 January, just 425 people watched Chester play Salisbury, the lowest attendance ever for professional football in the city. Then CFU called an official boycott for the Ebbsfleet match on 6 February, a 2-1 defeat, attended by 460, the last match Chester City ever played.
The players declined to go to Forest Green after their wages did not arrive again, then the police refused to attend the Wrexham match because their bill was not paid. The Conference met at Rushden & Diamonds on 26 February to expel Chester City, then at the high court on 10 March, the Vaughan family company was put into liquidation.
A century and a quarter of wholehearted football, since the club was formed by an amalgamation of King's School Old Boys and Chester Rovers, ended with a petition for £26,000 unpaid tax.
While the Official Receiver mounts its investigation into the running of Chester and the conduct of the directors, which is standard for any insolvent company, the supporters have immediately submitted an application to the FA to form a new club.
Council sources said the Vaughans' company never did pay the rent, so the lease was not transferred and the council has picked up the Deva Stadium keys from the administrator of the old company. Encouraging discussions have already been held with CFU about forming a club which, the council has said, it wants to be "a hub of a football in the community project, for young people of all ages".
So a modern, enlightened vision for a football club is taking shape in the ruins of the old, in which clubs are just companies, up for sale to just about anyone. The wider lessons of Chester City's gruesome demise should be heeded across football, including at Old Trafford, just 40 miles away but as far from the Deva concrete bowl as any football home could be.
After years of supporters' loyalty being taken for granted, the end for the Chester regime arrived because the fans finally became mad as hell, and then decided they were not going to take it any more.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/mar/24/chester-city-david-conn-inside-sport
