In Shrimps We Trust… Or Do We?

I’ve thought long and hard about publishing this post ever since I attended an event just over two months ago. At the end of last season, the Shrimps’ Trust or Shrimps Supporters Society Limited – if you prefer – convened an extraordinary meeting at the Exchange (the old Imperial) pub in the West End of Morecambe on Thursday, 18th May 2023. I went to it. When I got home, I wrote most of what you are about to read whilst events were fresh in my mind. But I didn’t publish it. Instead, I’ve sat on it over the summer.

The reason for this is that what you are about to read is unremittingly critical of the Trust and I feared that if I published it then, my opinions might adversely affect the decisions of people wondering whether or not to join it. With the season almost upon us, though, I hope that any people in two minds about becoming members will have already made their minds up, one way or the other. As I state at the end of the piece, I have personally renewed my membership with all the caveats about doing so which I am about to express. I’ve no doubt that individual members of the Shrimps Trust and particularly the panel which faced the public in May will be dismayed by what I am about to write. I don’t doubt for one moment that most of these people genuinely do their best and all of them have the best interests of Morecambe Football Club at heart. But – quite frankly – I think that what you are about to read needs to be said. So here we go…

After the meeting on May the eighteenth, I sent the Trust the following email:

I was at the meeting last night but we all know that a lot of people couldn’t make it. Are you going to put a summary of what happened on your website? Would it be possible for you to make a statement of the Trust’s current strategy of dealing with the crisis at our club? There were some really good contributions from the audience last night but it is not clear to me at least which of these the Trust will be adopting and/or investigating. Could someone clarify this please?

This is the reply I received, very promptly:

Hi Roger

Thank you for attending. 

We will meet as a board and decide on the next actions, time permitting. You can appreciate we are already working around the clock beyond our day jobs to try and move the situation forward. We will communicate with membership as much as we can, as best as we can, as soon as we can. 

The Trust duly published Minutes of a further meeting it had with members of the Board and Administration of the club in due course. For those of us who may not have seen them, here they are:

“Following on from our recent open meeting for fans, we have since been able to arrange a meeting with Morecambe FC board members Rod Taylor, Graham Howse and Ben Sadler for an update on the current situation at the club. Please see the minutes below. NOTE: This meeting took place on Wednesday 24th May at the club. This was prior to the recent announcement from Bond Group regarding a support package.
Q: There ha(ve) rightly been calls for the Trust to work together with the Board of Directors to work through the current situation. Are the Board aware of any further steps the Trust can take to navigate the situation and help the Club reach a more stable ownership position? 
A: No. We do not see what you can do that you are not already doing (which is:) having the meeting, the open letter and continue what you have been doing supporting the football club and promoting the events. Promoting the season tickets appeal brings money into the club, but so do other events such as the Gala draw. New goal posts are needed at a cost of £2,500. Would the trust be interested in sponsoring these? The most important thing is (to) generate income for the Club to meet its financial targets to operate at breakeven.
Q: How regular is the contact between Bond Group Investments and the Morecambe FC Board of Directors? Do these conversations include an update on the potential sale, and, have you had any indication on how close Sarb Capital are to completing the deal?
A: (Co-chairmen) Rod (Taylor) and Graham (Howse) have their own roles within the club. Graham is the one who speaks with Jason (Whittingham of the Bond Group) all the time and this includes discussion re the sale of the club.  This contact has been daily. The EFL have been doing all they can, they have been asking the questions but are still awaiting more documentation which has not been provided to them yet.
Q: Can the board confirm that (potential Buyer Sarbjot Johal’s) Sarb Capital’s cash injections are unsecured and that there is no recourse on the share capital injection from December? Are there any conditions of repayment on the deal not proceeding?
A: Sarbjot has bought shares in Morecambe Football Club and he cannot claim any money back if the purchase does not go through for the shares but could sell them if he located a buyer. There is no security on any loaned income.  
Q: In our initial meeting, Sarbjot suggested that he intended to keep the same board and management in the event of any takeover. Do the current board expect to remain in their roles in the event of a takeover by Sarb Capital?
A: Yes but in the event of any takeover it will be a two way conversation and both parties will need to decide whether we want to work together. This has been the case with previous takeovers.
Q: Is there any truth in the rumours circulating that members of the board have been suspended? Have any ordinary resolutions been passed that minority shareholders should be aware of in relation to this point, as required under the Companies Act.
A: Graham is a company secretary and no resolutions have been passed to that effect. 
Q: Is the board aware of any other party interested in buying the club?
A: Yes, the board are aware of other interested parties and these have been passed to Jason. For legal reasons Jason is unable to seek new interested parties at the moment, but they can approach him. 
Q: It has been documented that, as it stands, the Club will be operating at a breakeven budget next season. What level of season ticket sales/average attendance is required to achieve this position? Where do you think this budget would leave us in comparison to other teams within the division?  A: With the breakeven budget we would expect to be the lowest in the league. We should remind people that Bond group have put money into the club in the 2022/23 season, but they have requested that the Board operate to a breakeven budget for 2023/24. The money that was paid back in the 2022 financial statements was loans that the previous owner, Peter McGuigan, had signed up for prior to Bond Group acquiring the company, and were attracting a high rate of interest. Based on statistical information, season ticket renewals in the first year after relegation can be up to 98%, with a drop off in the 2nd year. We have budgeted for a lower percentage prudently. To date we have sold 1,100 tickets but expect this to increase by the end of the month due to early bird closing. It’s not only just about season tickets we still have to hit targets in all areas of the club with a baseline that is achievable to secure the football club. Sky have been clawing back money from all clubs through EFL central funding for when there was no televised football due to COVID and we are still paying them now but this is coming to an end. We have repurchased the land at the front of the stadium, but at present we have no money to develop this.
NOTE: Since this meeting took place, it has been announced that Bond Group will be offering ‘support package’ for the club, enabling a ‘playing budget that will be the highest provided as a League Two Club in our history.’
Q: Is Derek under contract for the coming season 2023/24?
A: Yes.
Q: Do the board of directors’ have any intention to hold a public meeting to engage further with supporters given the current situation? 
A: Not at this stage, as there is no further information to provide. We would put out statements through the usual channels. Proposed club AGM with a fans forum afterwards, but only once a new owner is in place.  The staff have been amazing even when moral(e) was low everyone has supported each other. The Club were only late with paying wages once, and there is no expectation that wages will be paid late in the coming months. Our message is support the club and support the staff, there is so much good at this football club and we have great supporters. The desire is that the ownership situation is resolved as soon as possible.  We hope these minutes are able to provide some added clarity regarding the current situation. It’s worth highlighting again that this meeting took place before the announcement from Bond Group about the support package. We’re unsure how this (a)ffects the situation alluded to in the meeting regarding a breakeven budget.”

That’s the end of the statement. I have just looked on the Trust’s own website (on August 2nd 2023) and can find no further updates about the situation at the club. The leadership of the Trust clearly think that there is nothing more to say currently. However, if some of the suggestions made at May’s Emergency Meeting were taken-up, there would be an awful lot more to say…

The Meeting at the Exchange.

The actual Crisis meeting hosted by the Trust in May prior to Minutes replicated above posed far more questions than it actually answered – in my humble view at least.

On the evening, things started badly. Only one microphone was available for an event which was being broadcast live on Zoom. So no wonder people who couldn’t attend complained they couldn’t actually hear what was being said; particularly when the panel hogged the mike for the entire opening of proceedings – and for some time afterwards.  This wasn’t helped when no format for asking questions in what was supposed to be an Open Forum was suggested by the Panel at the outset – or any other time for that matter.

Worse still, what seemed to be the de facto Chairman was obliged to apologise to all wheelchair users that the venue – despite repeated assurances to the contrary prior to the event – was actually not accessible to anyone using such a contrivance.

This was almost darkly comic. How on earth could the people in wheelchairs hear this if they couldn’t gain access in the first place? What on earth is the point of an apology in these circumstances?

Let’s be serious for a moment: this is an appalling – and actually deeply insulting – oversight. Any even vaguely well-run organisation would have checked-out this very basic requirement, surely – particularly before telling one and all repeatedly and in response to specific questions raised with them for ages beforehand on-line that access for everybody would be no problem. This is exacerbated by the fact that the club – where access for disabled fans is guaranteed – had offered to host this meeting in the first place on its own premises only to be turned-down.

This shambolic approach to things, sadly, rapidly developed as the pattern for the evening.

Members of the audience patiently waited with their hands in the air only to be often ignored altogether. Suggestions from the floor which were actually heard, furthermore, were sometimes clearly taken as negative rather than positive criticism by individual members of the panel.

For example, someone suggested from the audience that the Trust `had missed a trick’ by failing to provide membership forms on the evening for anyone who had not already joined. Good point. The apparent Chairman seemed to accept this but it was clearly not appreciated by another member of the panel, who equally clearly took what I at least considered to be a constructive comment as a personal criticism of himself.

Early doors, one of our number – shall we call him the member for Fulwood? – clearly and articulately repeated a suggestion he had already made on Shrimpsvoices – the fan’s forum – earlier in the week. I hope he will forgive me for repeating what he wrote on-line:

“I would like tomorrow’s meeting to also draw up plans for fans action. Our club is teetering on the brink of collapse and we need to do all we can to help it survive. I would like the Trust to organise a protest march from the Mazuma to Morecambe Town Hall to present a letter to the local MP. I also think we should contact the Sports Minister and also Robin Walker one of the Worcester MPs involved in Worcester Rugby club fiasco with the Bond Group. We should contact BBC Look North and Granada Reports to publicise our plight. Time is running out and we have to do everything to help our club to avoid us following the likes of Bury into liquidation. The time for action is now!”

General applause – the loudest of the evening – met this suggestion. But it was rejected out of hand by the Chairman – without any further discussion.

“What have we got to protest about?” he asked – without any apparent irony at all. I would have liked to have asked him at this juncture `So what is the purpose of this meeting, then?’ – but, in the absence of a microphone, I was unable to do so. I will thus take this opportunity to answer my own unheard question here:

We as Morecambe fans (as opposed to the Shrimps Trust) are not happy with the ownership issues at our club. If these aren’t sorted out – and soon – we could find that we have no club to support at all.  Any publicity which we as fans can generate concerning our feelings about this must surely be a positive thing. It would also make it clear to the general public that Morecambe supporters are not silent, passive bystanders to an intolerable ownership position and that we as a collective are prepared to mobilise in the way other clubs’ fans have in the past.

So when he rejected any organisation of a demonstration, one of our number put his hand up and asked “If not now, when is the right time then?”

The Chairman didn’t get the chance to answer. Instead, the same gentleman who had already taken exception to the observation about the failure to provide Membership Forms on the night yelled at the person who has asked this question: “This is not a Kangaroo Court!”

I don’t this was a very helpful response, personally. And it is personal – it was me who tried to ask the question only to get yelled at. I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything – I was merely trying to ask what I think is a question that all of us in the audience would have liked to hear an answer to.

So if this was supposed to be an open forum, I remain personally completely unimpressed by the way questions like mine were not only ignored but actively suppressed.

I don’t think anybody present on the night was looking to blame anybody on the panel for inaction; perceived or otherwise. What I think we all wanted was to hear a plan for a clear route forward from the people facing-up in front of us to change the current situation.

There was a guest speaker on the night – Tony Wilkinson from Blackpool Supporters’ Trust. Tony did an excellent and authoritative job on the evening. The main thing I picked-up from him was his advice not to rely on the EFL to sort out the mess our club currently finds itself in. He said they won’t because they don’t see dispute resolution as their role. What he said was clear and very succinct. But the communication problems which beset the entire evening made it impossible in reality to ask this man – who has been there and done it – how they as a collective representing Blackpool fans managed to finally get the hated Oyston ownership out of their club.

I thought a proper understanding of what Tony and his fellow Tangerine fans had done to change their club’s ownership could – and should – have been the highlight of the evening.

But it didn’t happen.

Instead, things were said about other club’s Fans’ Trusts from the panel which only served to show the total ignorance of some of the members of it about this subject. Anybody who has even a cursory knowledge of Fans’ Power would use Exeter City as an example of how successful this can prove to be. But one of the panel said that their Trust was basically an exclusive club which costs a fortune (‘hundreds of pounds a year’) to join and is thus an irrelevance to our experience. But what he said simply isn’t true. Anyone can join the Exeter City Fans’ Trust for exactly the same fee we pay to the Shrimps Trust: a tenner. In fact, it can be a lot cheaper: Couples can join for £15 – just £7.50 each – and families (up to four people living at the same address) can sign-up for just twenty quid: that’s only a fiver each.

(Source: https://www.exetercityfc.co.uk/fans/supporters-club/ ).

Surely we can all agree that this is money well spent given the Grecians’ league position at the moment and the excellent state of St James Park. Their experience could prove to be a blueprint for our own progression – but it won‘t be if it is simply written-off with a throw-away line which is totally wrong in the first place.

Perhaps in tandem with this was the dismissal out of hand of another well-expressed suggestion from the floor that the Trust might like to invest in shares in the club and ask the membership to contribute. Apparently, the Trust could not buy enough shares to make a difference. But how do they know this if they don’t at least try? For all they know, there could be people among us who are prepared to underwrite a significant shareholding in our club. Even if there aren’t, surely some holding in the club – however small – is better than none at all…

I acknowledge that what I have just written is extremely – and unrelentingly – critical of the meeting which the Trust arranged on 18th May. I have stated my reasons for making these criticisms and I would welcome a response from them which I promise to publish unedited on these pages.

I would personally like to see the Shrimps Trust play an effective role in representing the views of their members. I wish them total success in achieving this. But I don’t think that playing the `we are amateurs’ card – as was done on the evening – helps to do this. I am an amateur. I don’t get paid for writing stuff like this – on the contrary, it costs me a lot in terms of time and the money I pay for keeping this blog going, for instance,  out of my own pocket. But I pride myself that the match reports I have written for over fifteen years for D3D4 and Vital football now (because nobody else will do it) – and this blog – are of a professional standard. There are plenty of members of the Shrimps Trust – and I have mentioned some of them in this report – who clearly are eager and willing to help to change the fortunes of Morecambe Football Club. Personally, I would like to see the Trust update its communications with the rank and file who support it and be both more responsive to members and a lot less defensive about input that we as the actual membership try to make as far as its role is concerned. We should be all singing from the same hymn sheet, shouldn’t we?

Prior to the meeting, I published an Open Letter to the Shrimps Trust on these pages. In it, I posed several questions which I invited them to answer. They duly did so. Surely it should be possible for the Trust to open a facility on their own website where members can pose questions or make suggestions which might help solve the current crisis which besets Morecambe Football Club. This could provoke debate – such as the relationship between the Bond Group and Sarbjot Johal which one of our female members raised during the meeting and surely deserves further investigation. One of the things the Panel complained about on the evening was the lack of volunteers to run the Trust. I’ve no doubt that if an issue like the one just referred to was raised on their own website, there are those among us all too eager – and capable – of investigating issues like this one and reporting back – if they are asked to specifically do so. I’m not aware of any mechanism by which any of us can have our ideas or concerns addressed by the Trust. Doing so could trigger a more co-operative approach to this crisis.

So how about it?

Despite my disappointment concerning the result of the meeting, I have renewed my own membership of the Trust again this season. Having done so, I really hope that its efforts this term are more consensual and representative as far as the membership is concerned than was the case at the Crisis Meeting in May. We all want the club to prosper, after all and we as a collective – which includes our disabled members – should be better represented than has been the sad reality at times so far…