The club is dead. Long live the club. Crewe (Home) 7.12.2019

By Jen Kelly on December 9, 2019

Jen Kelly – a.k.a. Cheshire’s Revenge / The Word Nerd – brings ilovemacc her own take on the highs and lows of The Silkmen

I was always going to miss the Crewe game.

The charity I work for had their Winter Wonderland event booked in for this weekend well ahead of the fixture list being released. Winter Wonderland is when the charity, When You Wish Upon A Star, takes a bunch of kids with life threatening illnesses off to Sherwood Forest with their families for a weekend of Christmas fun and winter magic. It’s a chance for these families, many who are going through some truly horrendous times, to kick back and forget about their troubles for a few days.

I must admit, I was glad to forget with them.

Wheels off, carnage everywhere…

When I heard confirmation that the game was definitely off, I was watching Batman and Deadpool croon to Christmas songs on the dance floor. Seriously. Even with the brutal reality of what the families around me were going through, I couldn’t help but feel a knot in the pit of my stomach. A knot that has been forming since the beginning of the year, and has been getting tighter with every rumour, statement and Facebook rant I see.

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Spent the weekend watching Batman and Deadpool groove to Christmas songs. What did YOU do?! . . . #winterwonderland #whenyouwishuponastar #whenyouwish #charity #batman #deadpool

A post shared by Treacle Face (@jennifox1983) on Dec 9, 2019 at 9:14am PST

Told you…!!

As a club we’ve been careering towards this point. Brakes off, parachutes torn to shreds, no crash barriers in sight. We’ve had shots fired from every angle, denting our shell and ripping off piece after piece after piece. We’ve been held together by fraying threads and rusty joints, gaps plugged with the cheapest glue in the vain hope that we can limp forward for another week.

This weekend the wheels have most definitely come flying off, along with everything else.

Our wonderful team have had enough. When their statement was released, my first thought was “good on them”. They’ve been plugging away week after week, putting their trust in their employer to look after them. Because that’s what an employer should do, look after their employees. Keep them safe, keep them happy and keep their contract. It’s not rocket science. Businesses struggle and hit hard times, sure. Sometimes tough decisions have to be made, everyone understands that. But no-one understands when those tough decisions are made in the interest of the one man in charge, at the expense of everybody else.

But then Saturday came…

Just as I thought the faint glimmer of hope had all but extinguished, a short statement appeared on the official site. Two sentences long, with almost no detail, it perhaps offered more hope and promise to everyone involved in MTFC than we’ve had for a long time:

Majority shareholder Amar AlKadhi would like to advise that he is currently in advanced negotiations with various third parties, with a view to selling his stake in Macclesfield Town Football Club.
Although we are bound by obvious legal restrictions at this present time, a further update will be made as soon as we possibly can.
‘An update of behalf of Amar Alkadhi’, 7th December 2019, http://www.mtfc.co.uk

Now first of all, let’s be clear what this is and what it isn’t. This is NOT a statement from Amar. He didn’t sit down and pen us a long, heartfelt statement about the situation and what will happen next. He didn’t sit down and write us a short, to-the-point statement. He has sent instructions to Bob to get something out to the masses. The reference to ‘various third parties’ is cryptic, although maybe it’s just to throw us off the Sealey scent? At this stage, trying to work out what goes on in Amar’s head seems like a massive waste of time.

Secondly, on a more positive note this does seem like, well, a more positive note. It’s the first actual hint we’ve had that he might be ready to loosen his iron grip on the club we call ours. There’s so much that could happen between now and the deal being sealed, but for now I’m taking this as a huge step forward.

EFL – aka Elitist, Fumbling and Laughable

Of course, we still have the potential punishment(s) from the EFL to come. After meeting with the team and various representatives, they have stepped up to help with both the money and mental health worries. All other feelings aside, a commendable thing for sure. Of course, it should never have gotten this far, should it?

But how much power do the EFL really have over rogue owners and dodgy goings on in the game? On their own website, they define themselves as:

“…the largest single body of professional clubs in European football…responsible for administering and regulating the EFL, the Carabao Cup and the Leasing.comTrophy, as well as reserve and youth football.”
The EFL, in their own words…

Administering and regulating the English Football League. So that means arranging fixtures, shuffling paperwork and, erm….nope, that’s it. Regulation doesn’t seem to extend to making sure the clubs that make up your league can stay in business and offer sound employment for players and staff. It only seems to involve punishment when it all goes to shit. Just ask Bury and Bolton.

The problematic way that the football world works, both in England and further afield, could fill another 200 blog posts. There is desperate need for reform but at the moment all that seems to be happening is that Macclesfield Town Football Club is the latest euphemism for failure; a cautionary tale for all the other clubs out there. The EFL said they’d learned a lesson from Bury. We wait with baited breath to see whether they actually have or whether they’ll simply slap us with a nice, fat points deduction and skip off into the sunset.

Accrington Stanley? Who are they!

But I’m getting ahead of myself with all this. We wait on the EFL decision just like we wait on the sale, or non-sale, of the club. We wait to see if the Crewe game will be rearranged or forfeited. We wait to see what the future holds for all of us.

So while we wait let me tell you a short story that filled me with a little bit of hope this weekend…

At Winter Wonderland, I got chatting to a chap from Accrington. He’d come to the event with his 14 year old daughter, who has been fighting cancer for most of her short life. In spite of everything they were full of jokes and laughs, and were genuinely a joy to talk to. The dad turned out to be a lifelong Accrington Stanley fan and, after finding out where I was from, immediately brought up the “utter bollocks that Macc Town are going through ‘cos of that idiot owner” (his words!).

He told me about his own footballing journey with Stanley and how his whole family had been involved in the club through the good times and the bad, including the dark days of the late 60s. He explained that those days are embedded in Stanley folk law and that every single fan knows how lucky they are to be where they are now.

As we parted ways he gave me a hug and said:

“Every single proper football fan in this country is right behind you guys at Macc. I’ll be keeping everything crossed for some good news for you all.”

Because regardless of who we support, every single football fan wants just two simple things. To be able to have pride in the club they follow and to be able to cheer that club on through the good times and the bad.

Let’s hope we have something to genuinely cheer about before the year is up.

#againstallodds https://thewordnerd.home.blog/