The Shrimps Trust Controversy.
In my last but one football report, I posted the following photograph of a Butter Pie and thanked `Derek’ for making it.
(With Red Cabbage and Processed Peas, I ate it hot before the match against Notts County last Tuesday – and it was truly delicious. So thanks again, Derek.)
Now, I am going to eat a bit more pie: Humble Pie on this occasion.
I first started to seriously worry about the Shrimps Trust and their apparent complete lack of dynamism last May, after I had attended their shambolic so-called Emergency Meeting at the Exchange pub in Morecambe. You will remember from my first article about their role at our club that I asked them privately straight after the Meeting ended if they had any intention of telling anyone what the point of it had actually been in their opinion. They replied thus:
We will communicate with membership as much as we can, as best as we can, as soon as we can.
I’m a member of the Trust – a long-standing member at that. As one though – and three months later – I have not received any communication at all from them about this matter. Neither has anyone else because – at a unique time of crisis at our club – the Trust has apparently reacted to the dire situation threatening Morecambe Football Club’s very survival – by hibernating.
On the night of the meeting, I asked a question – perfectly civilly – and was yelled at by one of the members of the panel in response: “This is not a Kangaroo Court!”
Other people who took the trouble to attend were either ignored altogether even when they had put their hands up and patiently waited to be asked to contribute. Some lucky individuals did manage to ask the Panel questions. But – more often than not – these were either summarily dismissed with minimal – if any – discussion – or not commented on at all. This is a matter of fact – even the Trust itself doesn’t dispute it.
So, having been shouted-down as an actual member live at a Trust event, I have raised this issue here instead in the – so-far forlorn – hope that I might have more luck than I did on the night.
In doing so, lots of other voices have tried to shout me down as well.
On Facebook, the storm of personal abuse was strongest. But this is a wild place full of sad, angry feral people and abuse is Par for the Course. The reaction on the fans’ forum – Shrimpsvoices – was slightly more balanced. Some people understood and supported what I was trying to do – others didn’t. But even on there, I was accused of not being a member of the Shrimps Trust (and apparently, thus, being irrelevant) ; having been invited to stand for the Trust executive and chickening out; refusing to meet with them directly to discuss this matter etc etc.
None of these things are true. Sadly though, it’s another common tactic of the Social Media World: if you can’t think of something genuine to undermine what other people say – just make something up.
None of this is a surprise. I am indebted to my editor at D3D4 football – James Richards (who is much younger but far wiser than I am) for the following bit of advice, delivered several years ago:
“Roger – there are three things certain in life: Death; Taxes… and abuse on Social Media.”
I knew from the moment I published my first article about the Trustmeeting in May that I was probably on a hiding to nothing. I’m just surprised by how many people seem to think it’s perfectly ok for the Trust to organise the shambles which was the meeting in May and then not to communicate with their members about what they think came of it afterwards.
The club we all support is facing an unparalleled crisis – but the people who have appointed themselves to represent us to do something about it – or at least try to – do nothing at all. Or if they do – they don’t tell anybody: not even their own membership.
It has been made abundantly clear to me that the Trust I am a member of see it as far more important not to have upstart, smartarse troublemakers like me question what they get up to rather than take the opportunity to tell everyone what this actually is.
I recognise that a lot of people think it is extraordinarily arrogant of my very humble self to ask – demand from their point of view – the Trust to respond to me. After all, I’m just an amateur hack with no official standing at Morecambe Football Club and no influence whatsoever on the Board.
My friends – and even people I don’t personally know – tell me to drop it. They assure me that the silent majority agree with my sentiments. They tell me that nothing will change for various reasons: elitism at the Trust; lack of leadership in said organisation; an inbuilt arrogance that this clique always know better than the rest of us – etc.
One of my longest-standing and best friends (who isn’t even a Morecambe supporter but has read the stuff I have written) rang me recently to tell me a Home Truth. This is it:
The cardinal mistake I have made in raising this subject in the first place was to tell the truth.
Some people don’t like it, he told me (after decades of being a very successful businessman and learning this the hard way by himself) – and they will kick back against you just for having the temerity to do it.
He’s right. But other people I respect have told me their own truths about what I have done
I’ve been told in no uncertain terms – by people I know and whose opinions I respect – that I come across as a Know-it-All with a patronising attitude and a hugely inflated sense of my own worth. I should have stopped after the first article, they tell me. In not doing, I have antagonised and even alienated some people who initially thought I had made several good points in it. Worse still, I seem to be willing and able to upset some individuals and demoralise others without any empathy for them at all. They tell me I should have thought about the ramifications of the damage this might cause to the Shrimps Trust and its membership and executive before launching into what comes over as a personal vendetta against the organisation.
If this is the case, I’m genuinely sorry. Perhaps my own fears about the potential outcome of the current ownership crisis and my belief that the Shrimps Trust is doing nothing about it has caused me to overstep the mark. As I stated in the original piece about this subject, I wrote and published it with a heavy heart precisely because of the certain knowledge that it would stir-up a Hornets’ Nest – but I genuinely never intended to either upset or offend anybody.
I tried to explain in my last article why I have done what I have. I used the analogy of the Titanic: if you knew about the iceberg, what should you do before the ship hit it? Keep quiet and wait for the inevitable crash? Or make a fuss?
I’ve chosen to make a fuss even though I anticipated – rightly – that the upset and anger which I might cause doing this could be considerable. But I also genuinely believe- then as now – that if someone doesn’t do something about the situation at our club as it exists currently, we may end up with no club at all.
How upset will we all be then?
Don’t think it can’t happen: it happened to Worcester Warriors Premiership Rugby Union Club under the same ownership as ours less than a year ago.
How distressed do you think their staff and fans are now? Their club doesn’t exist anymore – like the Titanic, it has ploughed straight into the iceberg represented by the Bond Group – and sunk without trace. This could happen to us too.
So I’d like to ask all those people who have been so quick to tell me to keep my opinions to myself two very simple questions:
- Is the club we all support not actually in an ownership crisis as you read these words?
- What have you personally done about it?
You know what I have done about it – rightly or wrongly: that’s for other people to judge.
But at least I have tried to do something…
So what has the Trust done? Someone who has been severely critical of what I have done so far has defended them in these terms:
“Let’s go through the meeting you’ve complained about. – It was organised at short notice – It was organised by volunteers with day jobs, with little time and some with little experience.”
Elsewhere, though, another person has publicly posted this alternative view:
“Back to the Shrimps’ Trust, the usual whingeing and moaning about lack of volunteers doesn’t endear you to want to help them really. It’s a form of emotional blackmail. And from what I’ve seen and heard, I don’t think they’re open to new ideas etc – I think they just want more volunteers to agree with them and do what they want you to do. That’s a real put off for people to get involved.”
There’s truth in both of these responses. But the key word in them is `volunteers’. Nobody has forced the Trust’s Board into their roles. I’m a volunteer. I have to earn a living as well. My time isn’t limitless either. But I’ve chosen to express thoughts about Morecambe Football Club for over fifteen years – here; on the Vital and D3D4 websites – because nobody else would do it. People don’t spare the rod (no offence, Mr Co-Chairman) when they criticise me for the inevitable mistakes I make or opinions I express in my match reports and elsewhere. I don’t have a problem with that – it comes with the territory. They expect me to do a decent job into the bargain. I don’t think that’s unreasonable either: I realise that what I choose to write represents them as well as the club itself in a way, after all.
So why do the same criteria apparently not apply to the Trust as well? The shambles which unfolded at the Exchange pub in May – no wheelchair access; not even a single reliably working mike for an event which was going out live on the internet; no proper means to address the Panel; no Agenda – was absolutely appalling. The way people in the audience were ignored – or in my case, literally shouted-down by a member of the Panel – is surely not acceptable to anybody.
It’s not just me who is saying this. Lots of other people have expressed their irritation that – as fellow-members – their voices are clearly not being heard by the Shrimps Trust either. They have done this either in personal messages I have received – or online in public:
Anyone who reads the Morecambe fans’ forums will see that suggestions which were either batted away by the Panel at the May meeting or ignored altogether are still being relentlessly pursued outside the remit of the Trust. Probably chief among these are urgent calls for an organised march by all Morecambe fans – not just Trust members – to underline the fact that we are not happy about the ownership issue at our club and want to make it plain that we are not totally passive onlookers with no skin in the game. So what’s the Trust’s official policy about this? Nobody knows because they don’t tell anybody.
Similarly, a clearly very well informed young lady suggested in May to the Panel that they might want to investigate the business relationship between the owners of our club – the Bond Group and Sarbjot Johal – the apparent Saviour with the big car. In my view, they should have asked her there and then to take this task on and get back to them. But they didn’t – they just ignored her. Yet, this is an absolutely key element of the crisis which is unfolding at our club. So why are they not investigating it – or asking for other volunteers to do so?
The answer appears to be the circular argument they seem to use to justify their inertia about almost everything: we are volunteers; amateurs; part-timers; the website’s not fit for purpose but that’s not our fault blah blah blah. However, one of the extremely positive developments which has emerged from the fire and brimstone which has greeted my original article about this issue is that someone has offered their services – free – to sort-out the website. What’s their response to that? Again, we don’t know – because they don’t tell anybody. One of the people who has most loudly criticised me for the way I have gone about positing The Shrimps Trust Conundrum has told me privately that I have shown
“absolutely no gratitude for what the Trust have achieved.”
He goes on to list just some of these achievements which I don’t doubt for one moment are both significant and genuine. I can’t repeat them here because they were delivered in confidence and some of them have legal ramifications which it’s best to keep well away from. As I say, these achievements are impressive indeed. They prove that the Trust clearly can be dynamic – and that’s what I personally – and lots of other people; Members and non-members alike – find so frustrating about them.
Let’s go back to the Sarbot-Bond relationship. Unbidden, someone has taken the trouble to contact me privately and comment on this matter. I hope he will forgive me for repeating what he said in his emails because they contain exactly the sort of forensic detail about this subject which – in my view – the Trust itself should have been both investigating and conveying to the outer world since the day the man with the posh car became involved in the ownership farce:
“I’ve been following Sarbjot Johal’s Instagram account since he announced his “buy out” of the club. Initially he was posting regularly about The Shrimps…videos of him and his entourage at away games. Then almost overnight all his posts disappeared. Very strange for someone who seemed to be so keen to be our next owner..
As for Johal, others, such as Martin Calladine, on Twitter, has done some indepth research into the affairs of this so called tycoon and has found very little evidence to back up Johal’s claim of his wealth. The Trust are well aware of this but seem totally disinterested in trying to investigate the man that is Johal. We need him out of the picture so that anyone that has a genuine interest in buying Morecambe can make themselves known.
I was hoping (that) the BOD and the Trust could provide us all with answers and a positive response on the situation we find ourselves in. Maybe your articles could be a catalyst”
Let’s hope so – but there’s absolutely no sign of it so far. However, I promise to be the first person to express gratitude to them if they do investigate this absolutely key matter, despite their negative response on the night to the woman who first asked them to do so as long ago as last May.
The only positive thing I can think of which has emerged from the controversy which my last two articles about the Shrimps Trust have provoked is that it has put this matter squarely on the agenda. At this time of unparalleled crisis, this cannot be a bad thing. All I have personally wanted to do in raising my head above the parapet is to get the Trust to act dynamically and actually do something about the situation the club finds itself in. There are plenty of people out there willing and able to help them to achieve this – but it won’t happen if they are repeatedly and consistently ignored.
I’ve been strongly criticised for simply yelling loudly on these pages and upsetting all the passengers on the Morecambe Titanic. I’ve been told, for instance – by another person I personally like and whose opinions I respect – that I should have gone to the Bridge first and spoken to the Captain.
People who say this don’t realise, though, what has been happening behind the scenes. All they see – forgive me because I can’t help it – is the tip of the iceberg. They don’t know what has been happening under the surface.
I’ve lost count of the number of private messages I have sent to the Shrimps Trust or individual members of it since the meeting at the Exchange in May. I’ve asked for their views; I’ve told them in advance what I was going to do – I even sent them a draft of my last article and offered to edit or change it altogether if they would give me good reasons to do so.
But they didn’t respond, other than to offer me an off-the-record cosy chat or a phone call,
Implicit in the Trust’s refusal to deal directly with me are these two questions:
Why should we do what you tell us?
Who the hell do you think you are anyway?
These are both good, valid questions. My answer to both of them is simply this: I am a member of the Shrimps Trust – and I have been continuously for over five years.
I naively imagined – clearly wrongly – that being a member gave me a right to question what the Board get up to on my behalf and that of the rest of the membership in general. But I discovered at the May meeting what happens when you put a question to them in person. I literally got shouted down from the Panel on the night. I’ve received numerous private messages from people who were also at the meeting and who share my frustration about the Shrimps Trust’s dire performance then.
Last week, I sent an email to someone with strong links to the Trust’s Board and included a copy of what you are reading now, asking for a response. I wanted to publish this last Thursday but suggested I would hold fire until they replied. I finally got a response from them today; Tuesday 22nd August 2023. This response has clearly been prompted by him. How do I know this, Dr Watson? Because they have sent it to me using an email address he has – but they don’t. I must thus thank him for doing this. And the following is what they have told me:
Dear Roger
Your recent communication was discussed at the Trust board meeting on Wednesday 16th August.
The collective decision was not to formally respond to your unofficial blog, but most of your points will be addressed by the Trust at the upcoming AGM on the 7th September, where we will be able to update the membership as a whole.
The offer of a meeting with Richard Allan, subject to availability, still holds. He expects to be available pre-match at the Salford home game on the 2nd September, and most likely the Liverpool U-21 game on the 19th September. The entire board will also be available at the Trust AGM.
All future communication will be made through our official channels to the collective membership, only.
Kind Regards,
The Shrimps Trust
It would be nice to see the results of what they think about my `recent communication’ – better still, it would be great to see some evidence of any `communication made through our official channels to the collective membership’ about all the issues raised so far on these pages. However, I see this invitation to attend the Shrimps Trust AGM on September the seventh and put the specific questions I have posed on these pages so far in person as a positive move. But I can’t: September the seventh is my birthday and I will be celebrating it out of the country.
So I’ve contacted the member of the Trust who was kind enough to offer this invitation and asked him to pose these questions to his fellow members on my behalf on the night. I’ve accepted his offer to meet with him and discuss what their response actually is afterwards. It seems a very tortuous way to get them to address matters most of which were largely ignored at May’s meeting – particularly as Rome Burns in the background. But I suppose it’s better than nothing.
So that’s it for this topic at least for now folks. If you have anything else you would like to be posed at the AGM, why not take the example of other people who have some very interesting things to say about some of these subjects and contact me at
I will then add them to the ten questions I posed in my last article about this matter and hope to have addressed on the night. Anybody who takes the trouble to attend the AGM might like to share with us all their impression of what they thought it achieved. (I promise to keep their identity secret to protect them from the abuse which will inevitably follow.)
I assume that details of the location and time of the meeting will be on the Shrimps Trust website and I hope it proves to be a positive event. At the end of it, maybe we can all decide on the best way to go forward and actually address the appalling ownership situation at our precious club.
Surely, that’s what we all want – isn’t it?
Now forgive me – I have a stone to crawl back under…
shrimplythebestfootball 