The 2008 SD Conference took place at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in Westminster on 16th October. There were over 170 delegates representing more than 100 clubs, from all levels of the English football league pyramid, and from trusts in both Northern and Southern Ireland and Scotland too. There was a European dimension to the conference with representatives from trusts in Spain (Athletico Madrid, Real Zaragoza & Sporting Club of Portugal), and from Germany too. In fact, the conference was addressed by a director of Hamburger SV. He reminded us that all clubs in Germany, by law, have to be 51% owned by supporters, a situation that many of the top clubs are seeking to change.
We were represented by David Merritt, Brian Burgess and myself, and Jon Gosling came to the afternoon session too. The AGM was held immediately prior to the conference and there was no exceptional business, beyond approving last year’s minutes, ratifying the financial accounts and announcing the candidates for election to the board.
The conference itself started with an introduction by Dave Boyle, the new CEO, followed by an address by Hugh Robertson MP, the shadow minister for sport. We then broke into workshops for the rest of the morning, gathering at lunchtime to hear Andy Burnham MP, the Secretary for State for Arts, Culture & Sport. There were more workshops in the afternoon and then the conference concluded with speeches from Oliver Scheel from Hamburger SV, David Goldblatt, the author of “The Ball is Round” and Lord Triesman, the Chairman of the FA.
The significance of the speeches was not so much the content, as they were all supportive of SD and there was nothing particularly contentious from any of the speakers, but rather the fact that two MP’s took time out to join us on the day of the “march of the Olympians” in London, and that this was the first time the Chairman of the FA had deigned to grace us with his presence. We may often feel that the legislators at both national and upper football levels are ignoring the plight of the clubs outside the Premiership and oblivious to the SD movement which is helping sustain many of those clubs. This is clearly not so, and both MP’s and Lord Triesman were at pains to assure us of the attention they were giving to the efforts of Trusts up and down the country. Andy Burnham was, of course, a previous CEO of SD and so we have a friend on the gov’t benches but Hugh Robertson was also very supportive.
The workshops were of varying degrees of relevance to BU, as we are in a small group of Supporters’ Trusts who are both well established and majority shareholders in our club. Our importance within the Association is often as flagships for those much less advanced than ourselves, although there were still lessons to be learned from others. I attended the session in the morning which was aimed at trusts like ourselves and which considered how we could keep the momentum going. Those in attendance that took leading parts in the debate included AFC Wimbledon, Stockport County FC, Exeter City, Scarborough, FC United of Manchester, Enfield Town, Hendon and Cambridge United, and it was clear that while we all share the same aims, we have approached the management of our Trusts in different ways.
At a time when we are debating how we select BU members for the board of BFC, it was interesting to see the varying degrees of “democracy” exercised by some of the Trusts in forming their own boards. One board member of another trust said at one stage that “too much democracy can be a bad thing” and that “ running a club was too important to be left to the fans” which rather stunned the room into silence, given that we had assumed that was the very purpose of our own organisations. It would be fair to say that we all see the merit in co-opting expertise on to the trust boards if it does not emerge from the election process, and BU’s spread of elected members and co-opted members is broadly representative of the majority of trusts who attended this session.
If anything, we appear to have fewer experts co-opted than others. We felt that SD could add more co-ordination to the efforts of individual trusts and, while the conference is a really valuable networking opportunity, we all believe that we could learn more from each other than we currently manage, given the pressure on everyone’s time. I was very impressed by Exeter City, who appear to have emerged from terrible financial mismanagement by the previous owners with one of the strongest trust in terms of numbers and, if would seem, huge general support among their supporters.
David attended the session which dealt with the management of the relationship between Trusts and the football club/football club boards which is more of an issue for those trusts who do not have a majority shareholding. However, there were still issues raised which were similar to those we all face, particularly in regard to the role that any trust plays in the management of their club, whether in control or not.
Overall, it was a very valuable day, and one which certainly reaffirmed the strength of the national and international supporters trust “movement”. It highlighted the common issues we face and the huge spread of type and maturity of trusts across the country. In our position, it is hardly surprising that we were questioned more than others and asked for help, but we also made contacts which can give us support too. It reminded me that BU is a very important Trust in the context of SD, and, that while we must focus on what we need to do to grow and to fulfil our ambitions as a Trust for BFC, we also have some responsibility to others to help them where we can too.
Donald Kerr.