IT’S not always easy to feel good about our national game. There’s England’s half-baked efforts in another World Cup for starters.
There’s the Premier League, at least partially at blame for the Three Lions’ failings in Brazil. A league harbouring characters such as Luis Suarez and clubs chasing Sky TV’s every penny.
Then there’s our governing body, giving serious consideration to pulling to pieces the one thing they actually do get right, our league system, by filling it with ‘B’ teams of the top level clubs they already pander to.
Non-League football, for balance, has hardly kept its own house in order.
Salisbury City are fast descending towards a circus. Some Hereford United fans are praying their club dies, effectively the only way for the supporters to gain influence and take control of their own destiny by starting from the bottom.
Decision-makers and the people in power in football’s corridors have never been under such scrutiny.
Hardly the best time then, you would have thought, for Eastleigh‘s money man Stewart Donald to invite The NLP into his world.
His Spitfires are the latest subject of close season wicked whispers and envy. They are spending money they don’t seem to have. They are the latest “ambitious” club that outsiders are convinced are being built on a flimsy base of sand.
Promise
We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Reaching for the stars, the cheque-writer pulls a muscle and, before long, pulls out. It’s not as black and white as that at Hereford and at Salisbury but trust levels for supporters in the street is at an all-time low.
Donald has pumped his personal fortune into Eastleigh. “Easily seven figures into the team and easily seven figures into the stadium,” he openly explains at the offices of his successful Oxfordshire-based insurance company Bridle, the club’s main sponsor.
He is aware that some have him down as fly-by-night. He knows too the same people think the Hampshire club are the latest rich man’s play thing, a toy that will be disregarded as soon as a big tax bill lands on the mat or a holiday home in the Algarve seems more appealing.
He accepts the day may come when he just doesn’t want to continue any more. In fact, he has already planned for it. But there is certainly more to Eastleigh than meets the eye.
The 39-year-old said: “I absolutely understand where those type of concerns come from, fully. As an Oxford United fan I read this morning that our owner is owed eight million pounds. Eight million!
“I totally respect that fans will worry that a club that, I suppose, can’t afford the players that we have have signed (Jack Midson and James Constable have both joined). Rivals supporters will be annoyed because we’re possibly a threat to their club, often bigger clubs in terms of size.
“If I would have bought Salisbury the Eastleigh fans would be saying the same! What you have got to look at is how the money is going in.
“Is it sustainable? Nearly every football club has debts. Eastleigh spends beyond its income – no argument here – because I subsidise it. Here, there is no debt. The day I walk away, there won’t be any debt. Not a penny and that’s a promise.
“Look at Bolton, Wolves, look at Nottingham Forest – what are the size of their debts in comparison to their turnover? We don’t have debt. All the money that goes in is either gifted, or goes in as shares. I am giving the club this money.
“When you actually think about it, our model is much more sustainable than most clubs. I’ve had Wrexham fans on my twitter saying ‘Oh look here’s another one’. But have aa look at the detail, is what I tell them.
“If say tomorrow something happened and I could no longer continue; not only would we not owe anyone, but they would have me continue to fund the playing budget for as long as the contracts have to expire.
“I wouldn’t walk away, even if I did stop my active involvement. I have made a commitment. I have sold players a vision of this football club – so if I have had enough, I have to accept for say two years I have extended the football club potentially beyond its means so it’s down to me to fulfil that obligation.
Family
“It’s not a legal thing, it’s a moral thing. We are saying ‘Have a little look’. When I eventually do leave the club, we will have built it to a model that can sustain itself in whatever league it happens to be in. We are investing in the stadium, boxes, conference facilities and so on. This will be here years after I am.”
It’s all too easy in football to leave a trail of financial destruction. Donald, whose playing career reached “the dizzy heights” of Hellenic League North Leigh, is determined to leave a legacy.
The cost of modern football is a growing evil, he believes. And it’s beginning to detach people further from the game he fell in love with as a wide-eyed teenager on the Manor Ground terraces.
He is putting his money where his mouth is to support his theory that if you continue to take supporters for granted, they will eventually turn their back for good.
Eastleigh fans will be watching Conference Premier football for as little as £4.56 per game next season. Season tickets for adults are £105 – and record sales have already been made.
Say what you will about spending money on the team but fans are being put first. The Silverlake Stadium is having major surgery. Three new stands are going up with costs running into seven figures.
Not the cheque-writing of a man planning to do a bunk any time soon.
“Everyday people do not want to pay £20 to watch football,” Donald added. “It’s a huge frustration and I think it’s wrong, simple as that.
“Football gates are dwindling but we’ve had 600 people come forward. I’ve had people come up to me and say that they went to three or four games last year, but for under a fiver a game they couldn’t say no. Will we make the same gate money, probably not. But we’ll have a bigger fan base.”
Donald, a family man with three children, sons George, 12, Thomas, 10, and seven-year-old daughter Abigail, knows all about the ups and downs of being a football fan.
He took his terrace support to the posh seats, Bridle sponsoring Oxford as they eventually powered back towards the Football League.
You get the sense that he would have liked to take his involvement a stage further but it wasn’t to be.
“Football is my joy,” he added. “Of course my family come first and my various business interests are important but I spend most of my time at the football club. I have been a season ticket holder since I was a boy so the cheques that I would have written to Oxford I am writing to Eastleigh.
“I enjoyed my time at Oxford, but now I have a big role at a club that is going places. I’m excited again.”
Oxford’s loss certainly appears to be Eastleigh’s gain.
