Morecambe’s Last Game Ever?

Too late for Administration?

I attended the 1-1 draw between Marine and the Shrimps yesterday in Crosby with the fear that this could very possibly be Morecambe Football Club’s last competitive game – ever.

As we have charted on this blog, the crisis generated by the acquisition of the ownership of our club by Essex `businessman’ Jason Whittingham seems about to reach its denouement.

We’ve examined on these pages all the reasons why this gentleman has always been unlikely to relinquish an asset that has been vital for the survival of his Bond Group. Even though he was able to dismantle Worcester Warriors Rugby Union Club a couple of years ago, things didn’t go the way he planned. He was ultimately frustrated in his attempts to sell-off the bits he had managed to get control of for the fortune he expected to make.

Jason is a liar and a fantasist – it’s how he operates as a human being.

But the sheer brass neck of the web of make-believe and deliberate deceit he has weaved over the last two weeks and longer as far as the Shrimps are concerned actually beggars belief.

Some random bloke who would introduce himself `shortly’ was invented just over a week ago as a `last-minute’ buyer. No such introduction was forthcoming. Then – suddenly – a `consortium’ was going to buy the club as recently as last Friday. He even gave us a name of the leader of this mystery group who – he assured us – would do the deal last Friday night and inject substantial funds into the club to compensate the many people who have not been paid as a result of his own fecklessness as an owner.

But it’s all fantasy – cruel lies which raise false hopes in fans and particularly the people with bills to pay, kids to look after and mortgages  to repay who are employed by Mr Whittingham at Morecambe FC – but haven’t been paid.

How has he been able to get away with it? Why does nobody take him to task?

There are people in prison – for not paying Parking Fines or their Poll Tax for example – at this very moment who have harmed nobody and done nothing objectively bad. But this bad man has potentially ruined peoples’ lives – first in Worcester; now in Morecambe.

So something’s very badly wrong somewhere, isn’t it? How does this work?

I’m not in the loop at Morecambe FC – and never have been. I don’t have any insider information or even any sort of official understanding about what is happening at the club right now.  I’m not a lawyer or an accountant either – so I have no professional opinion to suggest on these pages.

But some things don’t need any professional expertise to predict.

Tomorrow, it will be just nineteen days until the start of the National League season and Morecambe’s opening game at Boston in Lincolnshire.

All the signs are that the club will not be able to fulfil the fixture: they don’t have enough players; the club apparently doesn’t even have the funds available to hire a coach to take the scratch team we may be able to muster to and from the fixture.

I’m personally amazed that the National League – an organisation not exactly renowned for bending the rules or even being helpful to clubs in difficulties – has not already taken measures against our club to guarantee that its programme for next season can actually go ahead as planned.

But this situation can’t last: the NL has a duty to regulate its members and defend its own interests as well – and the uncertainty at Morecambe is not helping them to do this.

So I expect the National League to imminently demand a Bond of some sort to guarantee that Morecambe FC will be able to complete its fixtures over the next ten months or so.

It will be a lot of money. But Morecambe’s coffers are empty – and with our friend Jason dead set against selling the club – will stay that way.

So it seems to me that we have two alternatives at the moment: sit tight and wait for the inevitable catastrophe to happen.

Or – finally wrest control of our club away from the Bond Group by going into Administration.

This is just a last-minute thought as we all stare into the Abyss.

As I’ve said, I’m not a lawyer or an accountant.  So maybe what I am about to suggest is simply not viable.

But I believe that it is still possible to thwart whatever plans our devious friend from Buckhurst Hill has for what remains of his interest in our club. There’s a reason he won’t sell it and I can only guess – with the Cash Cow relationship it used to serve as a means to prop-up his own failing businesses now effectively at an end – he has an End Game which is now playing-out.

Maybe he intends to challenge to the Christie Trust’s ownership of the ground his buildings stand upon in a final attempt to make money out of the club’s collapse.

Maybe he has some other devious plan.  

Or he might just be desperately clinging-on to the only asset he owns which was actually ever worth anything in the hope that the insolvency and financial ruin he seems to be facing otherwise can be avoided somehow – or at least delayed.

But even at this Eleventh Hour, it seems to me that we can put a spanner in Jason’s works.    

I understand that it is still possible to get some creditors to file against him for non-payment of goods or services and force the club into Administration by this route.

I know it’s easy for me to say this: I don’t work there; my mortgage repayments aren’t reliant of the continuation of the club as a business.

But what’s the alternative?

Staff and players aren’t being paid anyway. The Bond Group has no capital to meet that debt and that’s not going to change. Effectively, the club has already ceased to function: all the events planned to happen at the ground in the future have had to be cancelled. Next week’s friendly against Barrow (which was initially downgraded to be played behind closed doors because there was no money for stewards) has now been cancelled altogether.

It is an impossible situation which the current owner has indicated – by the string of lies he has already told over the last two weeks – will not change and about which he clearly cares not a jot.

Administration, on the other hand, might mean that the club will be declared insolvent and liquidated – but this death by a thousand cuts is what is happening anyway – isn’t it? 

Administration will also attract points deductions and probably financial penalties from the National League – but the club is already under an embargo and – with the new season just over two weeks away – faces the real possibility from being expelled by the National League sooner rather than later in any case.

I may be missing something but it seems to me that Administration is the least worst option that we face at the moment.

Even under it and with points deductions, Morecambe could at least have some chance of surviving in the National League next season.

Without it, the current situation is inevitably going to lead to the club being expelled; having no other League prepared to accept a Phoenix version of the Shrimps at this late stage and probably blundering on to a point when it will cease to exist altogether.

So what’s there to lose?