Jan 08 - Ebbsfleet Utd is Bought
Due diligence was progressing, albeit slower than envisaged, but certainly thoroughly. We had the financial side completed that highlighted the losses that the club was making per month.
Gary started working for the WT full time in early Jan. It meant Will and I had an extra pair of hands on site which was very useful. Duncan and Max were cracking on with development remotely in Bath; Julia was dealing with all the emails and customer service; Tim and Harry (cameraman, TV producer, aging Ginola) started to collate footage for our new TV channel; Tom started to work on ProZone, merchandise and TV; Will was having daily meetings with the press and others while I was busy trying to design and organise the development on the site whilst dealing with meetings and hundreds of phone calls. We started functioning and acting like a real start up. It was all very organic and very necessary. Everyone was working for gratis and putting in hundreds of hours to make it all happen. It felt quite special.
We launched the TV channel to show interviews (one of the first being Peter Norton which would become the basis of his chart chasing tune), match highlights and also player interviews. We hadn’t purchased the club yet so we were limited to what we could put on it. The TV was a massive moment for us because it took the site on another step or two. The content was well filmed and edited, the subject was right and the stream worked well for most.
The vote to purchase Ebbsfleet was cast on 15th Jan after the completion of due diligence. We now had to wait to see if the vote would be yes. Many members argued that the due diligence information was insufficient or that there needed to be a choice of clubs to buy. We just felt that we had done marvellously well to actually get to this point with any club - especially a club of the calibre of Ebbsfleet Utd. The vote was pretty much done and dusted within 5 hours after we got a massively in-favour yes vote. The auxiliary Liam vote to allow him to spend in the January transfer window was equally as emphatic. It was a big weight off our shoulders. We had sensed a growing discontentment on the forums but what was actually said on many threads seemed to bear little relation to what the members thought as a whole. This was to become something of a running theme.
The 97% yes vote to buy Ebbsfleet still needed to be sanctioned at an Extraordinary General Meeting on Feb 18th that was to be attended by current shareholders. The Board of the club, who owned the majority of the share, had already signed an irrevocable document that meant that the deal was done to all intents and purposes but it still needed to be rubber-stamped (approved!).
The team were performing magnificently on the pitch and our spirits were high. I met Liam for the first time in Southfleet and talked mainly about music - he loves his music. His dad is in a folk band called ‘Mist on the Bog’, which always makes me smile, and he was looking forward to Glastonbury this year which was to coincide with his 40th birthday celebrations.
The team had entered a bit of a purple patch that would see Liam win manager of the month for January. Dorchester Utd were defeated 2-0 away giving The Fleet passage through to the next round of the FA Trophy. Could we make the play-offs or even the Trophy final?
Feb 08
The month of the completion of the EGM for the shareholders of EUFC. We official owned Ebbsfleet Utd on 18th Feb after a unanimous vote to accept the offer by the shareholders . The story broke on the MyFC website, in an email blast to members and on the BBC website. Will and I could pay ourselves and Gary a wage. It was a massive relief to us all. We also started to work at the Stonebridge Rd so that we could get to know everyone who worked there.
I started to get more wrapped up in to doing things at the club rather than on the website. Duncan and Gary took the strain but between Feb and May the website had to take the back seat whilst Will and I working on getting the club back on an even keel. There was a big power vacuum where the old board had gone and MyFC had arrived. Employees were unsure of their futures, who they answered to, what there jobs now involved and fundamentally how MyFC worked. Will still had the many meetings that he always has, so it was down to me to try and get a grip on the club, and with the help of Phil (the MyFC accountant) we dealt with the financial situation.
Cheryl, Greg, Rachel and Roly work in the EUFC office and deal with everything. They had gone from being a small club with gates of 1000 and little media attention, to a club run by 30K members, in the full media glare and with a ten fold increase in queries to the club. They were all stretched to breaking. Maurice, Colin, Tony and Peter who look after the team and the ground where all working under unfamiliar terms. The previous board had been involved for 8 years and now something new was happening. It was very important for us to make relationships and hopefully work with each other to create a sustainable present and future. We were lucky enough to find that everyone there was friendly and capable. We soon struck up a great working relationship.
The financials at the club were a massive task to understand as there where so many suppliers, direct debits and totally football orientated transactions. There were plenty of old invoices that came at us because they knew the club now had money. There was hundreds of pages of spreadsheets and documents that needed reviewing to get a grip on the exact current trading status. We had numerous meetings between the club accountant, our MyFC accountant, the previous club accountants, the book keeper, and with our financial due diligence accountants.
The procedure for trust board elections was started. Charles, the MyFC lawyer, along with Dom and Josh (MyFC members) worked on the rules and structure. This was one of the most important votes for the trust society. It was much debated on the forum and in MyFC HQ. It was also quite exciting, like our own mini general election. We asked for candidates to put their name forward. We had 105 candidates by the end of Feb. They were all campaigning on the forums, at games and in comments. It was good for the members to have something else to concentrate on other than us or the team for a short while.
By the end of the month MyFC and EUFC started to fell like the same thing. It was good to have face to face contact with people and to be actually reacting rather than talking about things. You only really get to know the club and it’s politics by speaking with people. I leant more about Ebbsfleet in a week than I knew in the previous 6 months.
The team continued it’s sparkling form. We won 10 out of 11 games. John Akinde had become a new name that everyone was talking about. He had gone from PASE kid to first team regular in less than half a season. Ebbsfleet beat Weymouth to reach the FA Trophy 4th round and faced high flying Burton on the 23rd in the quarter finals. I watched the games against burton both home and away. The away trip had a great following of the Northern members and we match Burton 0 - 0 at their impressive ground. The replay was two days later at Stonebridge Rd. Tom and Harry where filming the game and commentating. I watched the game with those two in the main stand. It was a very cagey affair before Stacy Long got the winner in extra time. Harry, Tom and I went potty. It really showed that Ebbsfleet had properly got under our skin. I had been very analytical of the games up until that point. I had always felt a bit like I was looking in rather than being full immersed in it. I guess a combination of an important result, working at the club and actually knowing that we owned the club has gelled in me.
It was all look so amazingly contrived at the end of February. It couldn’t have been scripted to develop any better and we were right in the middle of it. It felt like there was magic in the air and someone was smiling down on us and the club.
Mar 08:
We started the vote for the trust board on the 12th March to much fanfare and squabbling. The system wasn’t right, or people where campaigning wrong, or the number of places on the board where wrong. The results were surprising with 6 local members getting on the board and with one non local. What wasn’t surprising was the increase in tit for tat arguments about the result. Will and I knew it would happen though and just got on with sorting out the first meeting with the new trust board.
Whilst we had been working at Stonebridge Rd, and to negate the 4hr daily communte, we had been staying at the Manor hotel in Gravesend. The Manor had great breakfast, a gym and a comfy rooms - so it wasn’t much of a chore. The Manor has a few meeting rooms so we decided to have the first meeting between the new trust board and the MyFC team. Gary and I (Will was tied up in London at the time) met with Brian, Spencer, Mark, Jessica, Steve, Chris and Paul (via Skype). We talked through what we though was important, they talked through what they thought was important, everyone got to meet each other F2F. At a meeting a couple of days later Paul was voted in as Chairman, Mark as deputy and Brian as secretary. The board were now able to listen to members, make proposals and turn them in to vote for the society. By the end of May the board had already voted on season ticket prices for the new season and new a new international advertising campaigns. They have also dived straight into investigating club loans, club community schemes and reviewing the club accounts.
The members voted on the Nike kit deal for the following season. The was another forum outrage - ethical issues, lack of choice, lack of financial disclosure on the deal. We knew from previous votes that the forum response wouldn’t necessary follow the voting results. The vote dully passed with over 90% voting in favour. Nike started to set up the online store and scouted out the club for a shop location. This turned out to very fortuitous when Wembley fever hit.
At the start of the month we had no idea what would be happening at the end. I had start to implement new functionality on the site these included Loober, a Skype like conferencing system and a new SMS gateway for members to sign up through. They were both impressive systems and would help add extra communication abilities to members. We were also looking at getting members involved more with the development of the website and the content. All this work and implementation was put on hold with the developments on the pitch.
The team had a Semi final draw against league leaders Aldershot. It was the biggest game in the clubs recent history and also the first time the club had got to the Semi finals of the FA trophy.
I had booked a snowboarding holiday many months before that happened to fall at the same time as the first leg against Aldershot. I seriously thought about not going. I had too many people depending on me to go. I had friends traveling down from Liverpool and all over the country to stay at mine and fly from Gatwick. Not going was not an option without pissing everyone off and wasting hundreds of pounds. So come the semi final day I was getting slowly drunk covered in fall inflicted bruises, boring my companions, and using the mobile phone to keep me up to date with the score. After the result of a 3-1 victory was confirmed, I could almost taste Wembley all the way from Meribel. I couldn’t wait to get home and speak to everyone at MyFC and the club.
We had our first bad defeat in almost 3 months straight after the Aldershot game, losing 3 - 0 at home to Rushden. It was the first game I commentated on. I was crap at commentating anyway but I the performance, the turnout (only 500 odd) and rubbish weather all brought the importance of the Aldershot game in to focus. We weren’t invincible and the magic could only last so long. It put it all in to perspective for the return leg to Aldershot. We could afford to lose 1-0 and go through to the final but no more.
The day of the Aldershot game was very odd. Will and Gary (along with many other of Will’s friend) went up in car to Aldershot’s Recreation Ground. I travelled with a friend, Connor, from Chiswick on the Train. I was very nervous so start on the Guiness very earlier in a local Irish bar in Chiswick. I spent the morning playing pool with Connor and random QPR fans who were equally starting early for their championship game against Burnley. They didn’t have a clue who Ebbsfleet were or why we were going to Aldershot. Little did they know that by the end of the day we would have a Wembley final to go too - QPR hadn’t been to Wembley since 1982! After mutually wishing each other good luck, we travelled to Richmond on the tube for the over ground train via Ascot to Aldershot. We stopped in another pub in Richmond which was packed with Rugby fans from both England and Ireland waiting for the 6 nations game to start. They were all equally perplexed by the Ebbsfleet game. Connor and I travelled to Aldershot arriving at the ground 10 minutes after kick off.
If Connor wasn’t feeling the whole Wembley thing, he was when we entered the ground. We were greeted with around a 1000 bouncing Ebbsfleet fans. The 3000 odd Aldershot fans were loud but we held our own. This was a massive game for us both and passion was high either side of the 80’s style segregation fences.
It was a rollercoster ride of a game. We held our own for the first half to go in at 0 - 0. Will was very stressed, Gary was bouncing about, I was pensive but though we had enough to see the game out. Tom, Tim and Harry were filming and commentating on the game - listening to Tom and Tim’s commentary latterly shows how wound up they were as well.
The second half kicked off first with rain and then with a bullet to the heart. Aldershot scored in the 60th minute. The crushing reality of what was on stake overwhelmed us all. The crowd got quiet, Gary and I became as stressed as Will and cowered under our hoodies. Connor was even bitting his nails. We had 30 minutes to last and we would go to Wembley or In 30 minutes we were the unlucky nearly rans. I had the whole project running through my head. We had worked so hard for so long, under so much pressure and with so little reward. It had all come down to the team getting to Wembley, at the time, it felt like make or break. I felt every tackle, challenged for every ball, screamed myself horse. Those 30 minutes were the most intense footballing experience of my life. This was beyond supporting a team, it was my whole 10 months work on the line, it was the difference between success and failure, I would have swapped an arm for Ebbsfleet no to concede at that very point.
The minutes ticked away. Will shrunk in to his coat, Gary hid behind a tree, I screamed obscenities at the Ref and Anna filmed it all whilst it happened. We got to injury time - 3 minutes added on. George Purcell had a chance to finish the tie with the Aldershot keeper leaving an empty net after coming up for a corner - unfortunately his shot was tame. Aldershot attacked again, hearts were in all our mouths, a collective gasp and then cheer as out lines where cleared. George Purcell ran on to a nice chip by Sacha, George flicked it to Stacy Long on the edge of the area. Stacy drove in to the box skipped round a challange and went for goal. Good save by the keeper… the ball rolled out to Michael Boswick on the edge of the area and… The world slowed down, the crowd went silent for a millasecond. When the ball hit the back of the net everyone, and I mean everyone, went mental.
Will started doing his best David pleat impression and sprinting up and down the terrace shaking his fists - then he promptly hugged a police officer. Gary and I jumped up and down on the spot embracing each other (I’m in the grey hoodie). Tom, Tim and Harry sprinted up from where they were commentating to celebrate with us. Harry was hugging everyone in sight. People were crying, others sitting on the floor with their heads in their hands, many just sprinting with nowhere really to go. It felt absolutely amazing - the single most exhilarating football moment in my life.
The final whistle blew straight afterwards. The player, fans and us celebrated for a good while after the game and well in to the night. Whatever happened now we were going to Wembley.
It took 2 days for the who enormity of the amount of work Wembley would take to sort out. We started to get calls from the FA, the local council, the fans wanting news and tickets, the local press. We had tickets to sell, merchandise to sort, team affairs to arrange, press to manage, Wembley single to release - whilst still trying to run a football club with a massive fixture back log. The MyFC team and the EUFC team had a long month ahead.
We sorted jobs out between ourselves. Tom dealt with all the merchandise arrangements, Will dealt with the press, sponsors and liaised with Liam about team preparation, Gary kept the site ticking and I got stuck in to sorting the tickets out.
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