The sport that doesn't care
Words: Tom Reed
Images: Tom Reed
A Wednesday evening in England is time for having a pint in a pub beer garden that you can’t really afford but, fuck it, a second won’t hurt.
Or washing the car as the strawberry sized rain has just stopped and the harsh sun has come but your back’s hurting a bit, so may as well crash on the sofa and watch Wimbledon.
What it’s not time for, is traipsing to the mansion of a wealthy man who owns a professional football club where staff have gone unpaid.
What kind of nutter would want to spend their spare time picketing a giant house with its own security detail?
Yet that’s what Southend United supporters have been doing with their Summer evenings and Winter mornings before it.
30 of the hardy bastards, these brave football supporters, in the true meaning of the word, who have exhausted every possible avenue to protect the club they love and have walked the terraces in aid of, for far too long.
The fact that you might not know why they are doing it is indicative of a few things but most of all, the sport that doesn’t care.
Football, the communal game that brings people together in Tesco special t-shirts and plastic bowler hats for World Cups every four years but when a community institution of a club that is 117 years, 1 month and 25 days old, seems on the brink of going to the wall, the overall feeling is “that’s how it goes”
A whole industry, collectively switching over the news of Southend’s woes to watch Cash in the Attic.
Collateral damage, expendable people.
Of course there should be thousands of Shrimpers fans outside the sprawling abode of the Southend owner with its extensive lawns, while the water at the club’s training ground is cut off.
The fact that it’s only 30 or so protestors is indicative of a scared fanbase, as the first thing that goes is solidarity when things turn to shit. United fans can also only be in so many place at once with the club back up in the High Court for a winding up petition, that are so regular, that Mr Football Finance Kieran Maguire says Southend “have a season ticket with HMRC”.
It was standing room only in court for another weird away day as the process was adjourned yet again and torturous rumours went round of unknown buyers with unclear motives.
The silence from the Football Association is jarring, like the beginning of a film which starts with an extended quiet you can’t wait to be broken. An organisation which was once called the “guardian of the game” but it’s hard to tell what they do now in their modern offices filled with concrete inaction at tangible club peril, contrasted with the busyness of the various security guards at that mansion I talked about.
Matt Slater, hit the nail on the head or should that be a Whack-A-Mole on the bonce on Southend seafront, hinting that the National League (NL) may come for United before His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
The Bury reference is notable, with the Manchester club expelled from the Football League in 2019 after the previous owner just couldn’t get his shit together.
“That’s how it all started with them, with staff unpaid.” said Maguire.
Southend aren’t special in any regards in their suffering, for you only have to look at Hereford United FC, to grab one club from the arcade crane machine of outfits that haven’t been run to the standards their communities deserve. Hereford United were wound up in the High Court in 2014 and the reformed club, Hereford FC, are operating in the National League North, doing their best to regain the league status the old club once enjoyed.
Back at the FA they seem busy with plans to allow the Premier League to sell TV rights to the FA Cup, with various unpalatable side plates such as getting rid of FA Cup replays, and playing the final on a regular Premier League weekend.
Meanwhile, a Manchester grassroots club takes to Twitter to decry the state of facilities in the area.
Back at the mansion, the Southend fans park their bums on the perimeter wall and scratch their heads. Is it sunburn or the beginning of a cluster headache? It’s hard to tell.
The local reporter has had sleepless nights.
They don’t know what to do.
Private affluence and public squalor it’s been called.
It might well be a sport that doesn’t care.
©Tom Reed. Floodlights at Southend United FC.
Tom Reed is Terrace Edition Editor and can be found on Twitter: @tomreedwriting
