Scaffolding in front of a mural featuring former Arsenal defender Martin Keown as seen from Drayton Park Stadium. Photo taken October 19th, 2011.

Photo credit: Stephen*Iliffe on Flickr

Yes, they may have both a Russian tycoon in Alisher Usmanov and an American billionaire investor in Stan Kroenke, but the club has been run by the Hill-Wood family since 1929 and takes pride in their plurality of ownership. What’s more, unlike several of England’s bigger clubs, the relationship between the board and the fans has always been generally good.

It’s not really a surprise, then, that Arsenal have become the first Premier League club to give their backing to a scheme from the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST) that will see fans pooling their money in order to purchase shares in the club in an attempt to increase the voice of the fans inside the marble halls.

But while this is a first in the English top flight, it’s too early to say just how effective the Fanshare scheme will be. Some bloggers, notably Ahmed Bilal from Soccerlens, have criticised the scheme for promising more than he believes it can deliver

Arsenal fans who aren’t Trust members have initially appeared to give a cautious yet optimistic welcome to the plans. The main question, though, is will this really make a difference to the Gunners?

A fan-filled future at the Emirates

The scheme itself is reasonably simple. The current going rate for one Arsenal share is £10,250, which makes it somewhat expensive for ordinary fans to invest in their club. The Arsenal Fanshare scheme offers fans a chance to contribute to the cost of a share with monthly payments of between £10 and £1,000.

Any fan who puts in the equivalent of one hundredth of the share’s value – currently £102.50 – becomes a Fanshare member. This enables them to vote on club policy that requires shareholder approval, receive detailed financial information about the club, and be able to put themselves forward to attend Arsenal’s annual general meeting, although this will be chosen by ballot.

This Trust-run initiative also comes with the backing of the Gunners’ two biggest individual shareholders, Usmanov and Kroenke, while the club’s chief executive, Ivan Gazidis, has talked about the importance of valuing and nurturing fans. It’s a rare piece of Premier League unity between boardroom and supporters, with the latter potentially able to have their voice heard within the club without any hostilities.

And in this age of austerity, and with noises and aspirations of supporter takeovers at the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Newcastle United, it also scores a nice piece of PR for the North London club, although AST member Vic Crescit is adamant this is just a fortunate by-product.

“Arsenal Fanshare is NOT about public relations for the club,” he emails when I put this question to him. “It’s about ensuring OUR club remains OUR club.

“The people involved in Arsenal Supporters’ Trust, an independent not-for-profit mutual organisation, wouldn’t have launched this scheme if they didn’t think it was to the benefit of Arsenal supporters. The fact that the club listened carefully to the presentations made to them about Arenal Fanshare and decided to actively back it speaks well of the board and chief executive Ivan Gazidis.”

Significantly, it’s worth emphasising that this is a project of the Supporters’ Trust and not Arsenal Football Club. Had Gazidis and the board not given their approval, it’s likely the scheme would have gone ahead anyway. That they have the backing from the powers-that-be is an added bonus.

The practicalities: What’s in it for me?

Arsenal vs. Manchester United, 28 August 1948. United won 1-0 in front of 62,000.

Photo credit: manchesterunitedman1 on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Outside Emirates Stadium.

Photo credit: Stephen Iliffe on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

When this week-long series on fan ownership was conceived a few months ago, it was practically unthinkable that the dominant headlines in recent weeks would be about a potential supporters’ takeover of England’s biggest football club.

Yet, at the time of writing, the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) has seen membership rise to around 128,000 since the wealthy Red Knights group announced their intention to take over the club with the help of the fans. At the other end of the pyramid, Chester City look set to start again under Supporters’ Trust ownership, and trusts across the land are ever more prominent in the media.

Fan ownership, then, is more relevant in English football than it has ever been, yet it also stands at a crossroads. Will we see the idea of Trust ownership take hold across the English leagues and many more clubs going into the hands of their supporters? Or, when we revisit articles from this period five years on, will it be a curious footnote as the billionaire single owner model reigns supreme?

And what of those clubs already under fan control? Will Brentford revert fully to the wealthy benefactor model? Will Exeter’s rapid rise through the ranks be the undoing of their fan ownership? Will AFC Wimbledon resolve their ground issue? And if a member from a Trust the size of Scarborough comments on here that there is a two-tier membership, what hope is there for a model that involves all fans?

Where, then, does fan ownership go from here?

Fan Ownership vs. the Benefactor Model

Whether the Trust movement takes off or not in the Premier League, the free market idea that billionaire owners are the best way forward has taken one hell of a kicking over the past 12 months. The Glazers at Manchester United, Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool, Mike Ashley at Newcastle and any one of the myriad of owners at Pompey have all galvanised the respective supporter bases at each club in opposition.

For Dave Boyle, the CEO of Supporters’ Direct, it’s not a surprise that the fans are starting to think towards a different ownership model. “I think there were two types of negative response to supporter ownership this time last year,” he says.

“The first was that it was only for the little clubs but with the discussion around Man Utd that’s not really tenable anymore, which in itself is on top of increasing understanding of the way German clubs work.

“The second response was that people could see some advantages to supporter ownership, but couldn’t see what the problem was that meant it was a solution worth pursuing. Linked to that was the idea that the current model delivered cash for player expenditure in an effective and efficient manner.”

It is Manchester United who are currently making the most waves in this area, and for Boyle, the whole saga has opened fans’ eyes to the dealings of the boardroom.

“It seems to me that a lot of people didn’t know how much the Glazer business plan bleeds them dry and how risky it is to the club in the medium-term and beyond. That information has been the catalyst for everything which happened subsequently. But the ground work was done back in the years leading up to the takeover in the campaigns against the club’s various takeovers, and in the anger which was fuelled by the inflation-busting ticket prices.

“But shy of sequestration of the club they need to be bought out, and that means people with money need to come to the table, and clearly, what one might like – 100% mutual ownership – must be balanced against the real world pressures. I’m hopeful that something can come together which will both lessen the need for the club to be so rapacious in its treatment of its supporters, and means that the club has a very strong, inalienable voice for the supporters’ trust.

“Ideally, I’d like to see the a situation where there is a year-on-year increase in the proportion of the club under the trust’s control through a levy on season tickets and merchandise, so the supporters whose revenue drives the club are given increasing ownership of it. That would seem to be both a narrative that fits the rhetoric and would be the only way to ensure that out of this sorry mess, something truly wonderful could emerge.”

But United will be one of the lucky clubs who can call upon a vast global fanbase, should they go down the supporter-owned route. Like Barcelona, the modern-day incarnation of Newton Heath FC will be unlikely to want for cash. Many other clubs are Premier League level may not be able to do the same.

It’s also worth pointing out that if United were to succeed as a fan-owned club in the cash-rich Premier League, they would first need to establish a Trust with a membership of millions rather than hundreds of thousands. Unlike lower league clubs with more modest ambitions, United fans will be unlikely to want to balance a commitment to fan ownership with a modest level of success on the pitch.

The Greatest League in the World

At the other end of the table, Portsmouth’s Trust are engaged in a battle for the very survival of their club. Soundings have already been made to the Conference about re-starting Pompey down the football pyramid, should the worst happen at the end of this season. They could also be joined by their opponents from the 2008 FA Cup Final – Cardiff City have been handed yet another postponement at the High Court as they look to pay huge unpaid tax bills.

Elsewhere, other Premier League chairmen look nervously at their finances. Bill Kenwright has already said Everton need a billionaire if they are to compete, while Eddie Davies at Bolton has just become the club’s main banker. Relegation would hit the Trotters hard.

For Vic Crescit from Arsenal’s Supporters’ Trust, in the context of all this, it’s ever more evident that having an active Trust is vital for any Premier League club.

“The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust has played an indispensable role along with the Independent Manchester United Supporters’ Association in holding the Glazers to account,” says Crescit. “The current campaign simply wouldn’t be happening without them.

“Fulham very probably would have lost their historic Craven Cottage ground if it hadn’t been for the Fulham Supporters’ Trust. Pompey would probably be out of business today if it weren’t for the work of the recently-established Pompey Supporters’ Trust. Arsenal would probably be in sole ownership of either Stan Kroenke or Alisher Usmanov if it weren’t for the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust.”

Crescit points to Spain where, in 1994, the law was changed to require all clubs to convert themselves into Sports Limited Companies. Only four clubs – Barcelona, Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna – were financially stable enough to avoid this and remain owned by the fans. The rest of La Liga have seen their debts increase tenfold.

“The commercialisation of professional Spanish football is a failed experiment,” says Crescit. “Valencia currently has debts of nearly €600 million (US$810 million). That’s simply unsustainable and living proof that private ownership isn’t the panecea it was made out to be.”

As a concept, then, the Trust movement is currently riding a wave of momentum. But in the final piece of our series on fan ownership tomorrow, we will look at the practicalities of this from the perspective of the bottom line.

Slowly, a behind-the-scenes footballing revolution is growing. Whether it’s Portsmouth’s ongoing demise, the Glazers burdening Manchester United with hundreds of millions of pounds with of debt, Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool, Ashley at Newcastle or, lower down, the Vaughan family taking Chester City to the wall, the spotlight has well and truly turned on the owners. And with fans becoming more alarmed at the mismanagement of their clubs at boardroom level, supporters are asking whether it’s time that the fans took control of their clubs.

Fan ownership, on the surface, seems sensible and logical. These are people who, unlike, say, the Glazers, have the best interest of their club at heart and care passionately about keeping their team alive and successful. Barcelona are often cited as the ideal for any fan-owned club to aim for, while other Europhiles will point to the Bundesliga’s ownership model, where 51% of the club is owned by supporters.

If only it were that simple. Barcelona’s ownership is a unique mix of football, politics and cultural identity, while the Bundesliga has regulation in place securing the fans’ shareholding, and even then this isn’t as clear cut as it sounds. English football operates on very different lines, where the free market reigns. The conditions are quite distinct.

Then there are the clubs who’ve already been owned by their supporters. Exeter City, the leading light in the Trust movement, is adjusting to a higher level, Brentford have moved towards a hybrid model, while AFC Wimbledon face serious choices should they get promotion to the league. Then there’s Notts County and Stockport County, two teams where Trusts have tried and failed.

But with Manchester United and Liverpool fans, and others, pushing for more fan involvement at boardroom level, it’s time to ask if supporter ownership really is the way forward, or whether English football doomed to stick with the sugar daddy model. Over the course of the week, we’ll be examining the concept of Trusts, fan ownership and looking where the ownership model should go next.

The birth of a movement

Each Trust is different, and each was born in a different way. In Exeter City’s case, it was a group of fans who wanted to club together to raise enough money to buy the striker Gary Alexander. For Brentford, it was due to concern over the possibility of losing their ground, Griffin Park, to developers. Newcastle United’s Trust came from their Supporters Club as they looked to find an organised body to represent the interests of the fans. In AFC Wimbledon’s case, their club had been moved to Milton Keynes and, in many suppporters’ eyes, simply ceased to exist, and so on.

But there’s a fundamental thought behind the Trust movement: that supporter ownership is a good thing, whether this is representation at boardroom level or outright ownership. For Brian Burgess, ex-vice-chairman of Brentford and recent electee to the board of Supporters’ Direct, this is a principle that was picked up at an early age.

His involvement was triggered by an incident back in 1967, when Jack Dunnet, the then Brentford owner, attempted to sell the club to QPR and put the Bees out of business. “There was uproar among supporters and public meetings. I was too young to go to these but there was always talk in the newspapers that this was wrong – an individual selling the club – it’s our club and the supporters should own it.

“The club was sold to a consortium of businessmen, who saved it, but I remembered that idea – the idea that supporters should own the club and it shouldn’t be up for sale.”

Nearly 35 years later Burgess joined the newly-formed Brentford Supporters Trust, Bees United, seeing it as an opportunity to realise that dream and in 2006 Bees United took control of Brentford. They are still the majority shareholder, although have entered into a hybrid model with a wealthy supporter as they look to build a new stadium.

Brentford are still a rarity, though, and currently sit in League One, along with Exeter City, a completely Trust run club. After that, you have to look to non-league to find other supporter-owned clubs, such as AFC Wimbledon, Telford United and FC United or Manchester.

Going to the top

But this doesn’t mean that Trusts can’t play a huge part at a higher level. Since the media started turning their attentions to the Glazer buy out of Manchester United and the £716m debt they’ve saddled the club with, the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) have emerged as key players in both the spread of the Green and Gold campaign and the movement for fan ownership.

If this seems like a pipe dream, last week the Red Knights, a group of wealthy Manchester United fans, met to discuss a possible takeover of the club from the Glazers. It was no coincidence that a key part of this statement was a call to United supporters worldwide to support them. And this involved working closely with MUST.

Duncan Drasdo, the Chief Executive of MUST, called the Red Knights launch “hugely welcome” and in a joint statement said: “Initially the Red Knight Group has effectively set a challenge to Manchester United supporters to demonstrate they wish to see an alternative ownership proposal developed. In the first instance supporters are being asked to do this simply by joining the free online membership of the Supporters Trust (MUST) and swelling its ranks to an initial target of at least 100,000.” To put this into perspective, Exeter City, currently the most successful Trust-run club, has just over 3,000 members.

Even when there is no apparent urgency for fans to band together for their club, the Trust movement is often working behind the scenes both with the club and as a watchdog on the boardroom. Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur may be bitter rivals on the pitch, yet off it the aims of their Trusts are remarkably similar.

For Arsenal, this can be summed up in three words: Ownership, representation and influence. The mission statement may be wordier at Spurs but the ideals are the same – an ongoing positive dialogue between fans and the board, supporter representation at board level, and contributing to the future success of Tottenham.

The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust formed in 2003 and Vic Crescit, a long-time member, thinks recent events at Ashburton Grove have vindicated the decision to form a Trust. “The Trust was proved absolutely right in setting up when it did. In recent years we’ve seen the ownership of the club transformed. Stan Kroenke, the owner of the MLS’s Colorado Rapids,  is now the single biggest shareholder, behind him is the Russian/Uzbek Alisher Usmanov on just over 26%.

“Then comes Danny Fiszman on 16% and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith on 15.9%. They account for around 88% of the shares between them. Around 11% is in the hands of small shareholders like me. Around 1% of the shares are “orphan” shares where the owners have died before selling them or passing them on or can’t be traced.

“The Trust owns a small number of shares held mutually in trust for its members, plus it groups together all the shares owned personally by members. By combining in this way AST has a far bigger influence in the club than the small shareholders would operating on their own in isolation.”

Although the formation of the Trust was initially viewed with suspicion at Arsenal, after the board came in for criticism over the financing of the Emirates, they opened a dialogue with the Trust and the relationship has been good since, although the Trust continues to keep a close eye on boardroom developments.

The challenges of answering to the fans

Although each Trust has different aims – ranging from outright ownership to simply fostering better links between fans and the club – all have a commitment to an open and democratic relationship with the supporters. There are regular elections for members to hold the Trust board to account. It is, in essence, how any democracy should work.

Offering help and guidance is Supporters Direct, an organisation that came out of the government’s football taskforce report in 1999. They may be just over ten years old, but SD have done as much to instigate fan ownership as anybody. Committed to a greater level of fan ownership, democracy and general accountability in football, and other sports, they have steadily grown in influence offering advice on everything from governance and ownership to finances. Accreditation from Supporters Direct is a sign a Trust is to be taken seriously.

But more than this, the organisation is putting serious pressure on the authorities for a more sustainable model. As their CEO Dave Boyle says: “In football’s version of the tortoise and the hare, the hare wins the race and its only two years’ later that the hare’s house is repossessed by the bank for the loans taken out to get bionic implants, which is scant consolation for the tortoise who was sacked halfway through the race. Or, as an economist might put it, all the incentives are in the wrong place.”

But while there is still a serious imbalance in football, Boyle sees plenty of progress over the past decade. “Thanks to the work of AFC Wimbledon, AFC Telford, FC United and Scarborough Athletic, the idea that the worse thing that can happen to a club is that it be liquidated isn’t as strong as it was. Fans would be told of this horrible prospect of the club disappearing and then accept whatever sharp practice, ground sale, asset strip was put forward as the least worst option. Even if that didn’t happen, they’d fundraise like crazy trying to keep the club afloat when their money and energy were never going to d the job.

“But thanks to those trusts and those clubs, we know in fact what people always knew in their heart of hearts – that football in a given community isn’t about the limited company formed to play it in an organised football league. If that company were to be liquidated, football would survive in the community.

“And, thanks to the success enjoyed by those clubs and the enjoyment their fans have in owning their own team, we see a lot of people being very sanguine indeed about keeping a busted flush of a small town team alive. In a nutshell, the worst that could happen used to be liquidation; now people understand that liquidation can be a cause for rebirth as a new, better type of club.”

There is no better place to illustrate this than the recent goings on at Chester City, but many other clubs have seen that rebirth can be a positive thing, to say nothing of those fans who’ve taken the initiative and have not only saved their club but made a better fist of it than previous owners. As Boyle says: “There were people who aren’t in favour of this approach to the game, who said at the start that it shouldn’t happen, and couldn’t happen.

“But that notion – that fans are too stupid / ignorant / passionate to be involved is a hard one to make in public, so they’d said instead that it was a lovely idea, but ultimately unworkable. Thanks to the work of the trust up and down the country, that’s not an argument borne out by the evidence.”

Owning a club, though, comes with its own issues, not least managing fan expectations. Exeter City are a prime example of this – the club was taken over by the Trust in 2003 after their relegation from the football league following the disastrous reign of convicted fraudster John Russell. Since then they’ve stabilised and have won two promotions over the last two seasons.

The club may now be struggling down the wrong end of League One, but for vice-chairman Julian Tagg, a long-time Trust member who has served on the board since the takeover, the pressure on the board is nothing new.

“There’s always been a pressure,” he says, “and that hasn’t changed. The pressure comes from the Trust ethos of running the club and the demands of our membership, as well as the situation of the club. We’ve got to be creative in our approach – we can’t just employ extra people.

“There’s also the question of can we find a way to become competitive. We’re at a level now where there really is no blueprint for how we do things.”

But it’s not just the challenge of League One that Tagg and the Exeter City board have to deal with – it’s also having over 3,000 members, all of whom have an opinion on how the club should be run.

“The club and Trust rolls into one,” says Tagg. “The Trust directors own the club and they, in turn, are bound to the membership, so we’re always going to be dynamic in how we approach the club and how we want to protect the club.

“What we’re really trying to do is to find a balance between an being an operator and a professional club. How we look after these people [the Trust membership] is so precious. That’s why we started in the first place and now the club isn’t in trouble, we have to make sure of its future.”

Brian Burgess has experienced similar issues with Brentford and says much of it is down to making clear the different responsibilities of the Trust and the club board. Even then, there is still the question of where does the line between the Trust and club come in.

Burgess says: “We had to say: ‘Look, if the performances on the pitch are bad, if the manager needs to be changed, that’s the job of the football club not the Bees United board.’ But, of course, as the majority shareholder, you’re interested in the company being run properly, so you’re going to try and want to influence the football club board to do the right thing. And there’s always been a tension in there and a learning curve about how you manage that relationship. To what extent is it arm’s length, to what extent is it right to exert influence, what’s the best way to assert your influence?

“I think it comes down to individuals. If you’re got good individuals that people trust and they’re open, as far as they can be in terms of confidentiality, then it’s a lot easier. When things are going well, it’s a lot easier. When things go badly then there’s criticism and that’s when it’s really difficult.

“We appoint people and let them get on with the job. If they do a good job, that’s great, if they don’t, ultimately, we sack them. That’s how it is – in any business, although it’s more short term than any other, I guess.”

Where do we go from here?

The whole idea of Trusts and fan ownership is hugely complex. As Tagg says, there is currently no blueprint for a fan run club in League One, let alone the Premier League. And while eyes are cast at Barcelona and the Bundesliga, English football comes with its own unique set of challenges for supporters who want to run their club.

Over the rest of this week, we’ll be looking at the successes and failures of the Trust movement, as well as the challenges that lie ahead, the foreign models and in-depth interviews with some of those closely involved with the movement.

But one thing, above all, that is striking about the Trust movement is the ability of fans to put aside their differences and work together for the good of the club; the idea that clubs should belong in the hands of supporters not money men. It’s an idea that would have been laughed out of town ten, perhaps even five, years ago.

As Andy Walsh from FC United of Manchester said at a recent Beyond The Debt rally, rivalries between supporters of football clubs are an artificial construct which masks. the true enemies of football supporters – the people that run the game itself.

Or, as Crescit puts it somewhat more succinctly: “I don’t ever want my football club to become a rich man’s train set nor get rich quick scam. We’ve all seen what happens when we allow the financial tail to wag the productive dog in the world economy.”

Trigger

Sometimes you wonder why you’ve been wasting all your bloody time every day for the past three years writing and linking to pieces about issues of club ownership, club identity (versus club brand) and the difference between being a supporter and being a fan. As we’ve haphazardly been doing here since 2007.

Because today, I read a piece that delves into and reveals the truth of all this in one simple essay; a piece of writing that is at once learned, literary and yet unafraid to cite Trigger from Only Fools & Horses as a savant on the question of why fans resist the uprooting of tradition at their football club, be it at Manchester United, Liverpool or Chester City.

I give you Fredorrarci, of the estimable Sport is a TV Show, writing in the latest Norman Einstein’s magazine, on how a club establish the tradition it then trades off:

Tradition remains important because it is kept alive through the generations by the supporters. The word “supporter” may be largely synonymous with “fan,” but it is more evocative of the dynamic that raises a football club above being a mere business. Because a club is more than just a business. Actually, no. A club can be more than just a business; it becomes so through years of active engagement by the supporters, who will tolerate a certain level of commodification of the club’s traditions, as long as their importance is acknowledged. Football clubs are relatively young institutions, and like young nations, the maintenance of a sense of identity is paramount. It cannot be taken for granted.

This essay began with a quote from a sitcom. Here’s another, from Only Fools and Horses, spoken by Trigger:

“We have an old saying that’s been handed down by generations of roadsweepers: “Look after your broom” … And that’s what I done … I’ve maintained it for twenty years. This old broom has had seventeen new heads and fourteen new handles in its time.”

Trigger is the resident idiot in Only Fools and Horses, but this is a savant moment. As with brooms, so with football clubs: players are bought and sold; managers are hired and fired; ownership changes hands; stadiums are built, renovated, vacated for new digs. But constant throughout are the supporters. Sure, they die out like everyone else, but it is in them that the club’s spirit is in chief residence, from them that it is passed on to the next generation. Fans need not be required to trace their support back through their family tree to the days when their great-great-great-grandfather stood on a wet terrace built up out of rubbish and slag, of course. But it is notable how often a love for a particular team is inherited.

And for all the jibes about how Manchester United fans come from anywhere but Manchester, local support for the club is immense and has been for years. Fans may be in many ways at the bottom of sport’s food chain, but when the supposed custodians of a club see that club simply as a mint and ignore their greater responsibility, they betray an ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the peculiar gravity that holds this thing together; they shouldn’t expect it to pass without remark. It is the fans who ensure that a club is the same club it was at its foundation.

Read the rest. Now.

In some respects, Aaron Ramsey, Stoke City and Arsenal should all consider themselves lucky, unlikely as that seems right now. Ramsey, for all the horror of his horrible injury, is a young player who may recover and go onto have a successful career. Stoke and Arsenal both have insurance to cover serious, career-threatening injuries to players. Marcus Hallows and Ashton United are not so lucky.

Back in March 2005, Hallows was plying his trade for Altrincham, then of the Blue Square North, when his career was ended in a horrific fashion. Shortly after coming on as a sub against Ashton United in a regular league match, an Ashton United player by the name of Danny White made a late block tackle on Hallows, breaking his right leg.

The injury was so severe that it took half an hour for an ambulance to attend and treat Hallows. His heart stopped on the way to the hospital and, although he was revived, his footballing career was over.

Hallows, now 35 and working in sales and as an Elvis impersonator, sued both Ashton United and Danny White. Two weeks ago, five years after the tackle, Judge Armitage found in favour of Hallows and deemed the challenge to be reckless, ordering Ashton to pay £32,000. With legal fees, the club face a bill for £130,000 – money they simply don’t have.

But this goes further than a non-league team potentially going to the wall, or discussion around yet another bad tackle. It is no exaggeration that the Hallows ruling could have a huge effect on non-league football and potentially radically alter or even kill some areas of the game.

This ruling now sets a precedent for non-league where any player who has suffered a serious injury could potentially claim retrospective damages against the player and club, if that player was under contract. And in many cases, insurance for this simply doesn’t exist.

At non-league level the insurance cover for a club is beyond what many of them can afford. The Unibond League, where Ashton currently play, have tried to organise quotes for group insurance cover but the costs are so high that many teams don’t have the reserves of cash to pay this.

This is not the Premier League, where insurance is mandatory. This is non-league where a few thousand or even hundred pounds can be the difference between success and extinction.

Very few clubs at non-league level have public liability policies and even fewer have a policy that covers player-to-player liability. Even then, there is no guarantee they will be able to claim for injuries caused by dangerous or deliberate tackles. And very few clubs will be able to afford this.

Unlike in Norway or Germany, where insurance and policy schemes are part of the administration of the game, there is no scheme in place at non-league level in Britain, despite warnings for many years that insurance, or lack of it, was a ticking time-bomb.

The future could see clubs, or players, refusing to play due to lack of insurance. Some players may decide the cost of having to arrange their own policies against injuries to both themselves and opponents is not worth the hassle or simply too expensive, while smaller clubs may refuse to take on players without adequate insurance. Meanwhile, there’s ever chance of further litigation from low-earning players whose careers have been curtailed by injury.

Several solicitors have called for the FA to roll out a national scheme for levels of football to help clubs insure against potential litigation, but that won’t come in time to save Ashton United.

Ashton chairman Dave Aspinall believes the club can appeal on points of law, but will need £9,000 to do so; money, again, that the club doesn’t have. But they may have a case for appeal.

At the time of the incident the referee was five yards from the ball and did not give a free kick. Altrincham did not support Hallows in his lawsuit and their manager, Graham Heathcote, has described it as “one of hundreds” seen across the country over the course of the weekend. There is still hope for Ashton if they can raise money for an appeal.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to blame Hallows in all of this. Here is a man who has nearly died, suffered a serious injury and saw his career finished. After all he’s been through, you can understand why he is putting his needs above football. Many of us would do the same.

Aaron Ramsey will probably play again and, in the meantime, expect plenty of hand-wringing and discussion about whether or not to clamp down on tackles. If Ashton United are unsuccessful in their appeal, non-league may not need their own clamp down – any kind of full-blooded tackle could long become a thing of the past.

Courtesy of jlmurtaugh on Flickr.

How Arsenal players used to keep themselves clean.

Photo credit: steve260589 on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.