SUBMISSION FROM EAST STIRLINGSHIRE SUPPORTERS CLUB

Season 03/04 P. W. D. L. F. A. Pts East Stirlingshire 36 2 2 32 30 118 8

We are the Official East Stirlingshire Supporters Club and we want to use this opportunity to have our say about the way our football club is run, because we think it shows how Scottish football ought not to be.

Even MSP’s discussing all sorts of important issues in Holyrood, if they are remotely interested in football, can’t have escaped the set of results we have reproduced above. We have set them out in black and white for you to refresh your memories, and to explain to you that there is more to them than meets the eye. We may be “famous for being bad”, but we certainly aren’t bad for the sake of it.

Timeline of events at the `Shire

1989/90 – Supporters hear for the first time that `Shire chairman John Turnbull has transferred all his shares to Paisley businessman Alan J. Mackin making him the majority shareholder and giving a great deal of influence at a stroke to an unknown person from outside the area. At this time very few supporters had shares in the club and there does not appear to have been any outcry Most supporters lacked information or knowledge about board or shareholder activities and assumed that the `Shire board were `doing the right thing` - in hindsight both the supporters and the other directors at the time seem guilty of naiveté. Mr. Mackin is appointed manager and is given approximately £60,000 to spend on assembling a team for that season – a large amount by `Shire standards - despite this the team finish bottom of the league for the 1st time since the 1950`s.

1990/91 – Mr. Mackin resigns as manager and joins the board as a director. During this time he pushes for change to the share voting system (which gives greater weight to smaller shareholders at the expense of larger ones). An adoption of his one share, one vote proposal would put him in a position of complete control of the club.

1992/93 – Mr. Mackin has been unsuccessful in changing the share voting system at AGM`s and at this time leaves the board frustrated, claiming that eventually the club would need his help to survive.

1993-97 – Mr. Mackin is still the majority shareholder but stays away from the club during this time. The `Shire team improves and in the 94/95 season are unfortunate not to be promoted. Towards the end of this period the is replaced by an under 18`s squad, many of these players are from the surrounding area. Local young talent is actively being sought out and encouraged to come to the club, an affiliated under 14/15`s squad is formed and free tickets are being distributed around the schools in the area to encourage children with adults to come and watch the team play.

1998-99 – The club’s board begin to investigate the possibility of selling the ground and moving to ground share with either Falkirk F.C. or Stenhousemuir F.C. Alan Mackin now chooses to reappear on the scene and says he wants to come back on the `Shire board as chairman. At an invitation only meeting of shareholders he announces his plan if he becomes chairman to sell the ground and from the proceeds pay a 70-80% dividend to the shareholders while relocating the club to another unspecified ground. Many supporters are becoming suspicious of his motives and to try and clarify things. A supporters group arranges a public meeting with him in Falkirk. At this meeting he tells the supporters of the plan to pay a dividend to shareholders, to create a youth system similar to Livingston F.C., pay for a youth coach from his own money and to grow the club over a five year period with the aim of being promoted to the first division; the supporters are openly sceptical and Mr. Mackin says that he is disappointed by negative attitudes. The shareholders polarise into two groups, those supporting Mr. Mackin`s plan and those opposed among whom are the board at the time and most of the supporters. Using his large shareholding Alan starts to call regular EGM`s to change the voting system and to discuss possible moves away from the clubs present location – most supporters believe these reasons are spurious and the EGM`s were called simply to put pressure on the board at the time. Both groups try to influence shareholders and gather shares for voting at AGM`s and EGM`s. Before the clubs AGM in late 1999 Mr. Mackin`s lawyers served an interim interdict on allegedly illegal share transfers by the board which prevented many of the other groups votes being counted in an election of directors – this resulted in the board being ousted and Alan Mackin becoming a director again with his associate, ex-lawyer Alex McCabe.

2000-02 – At the AGM in 2000 amid chaotic scenes director and local businessman Lex Miller publicly announced that he had been told minutes before the meeting that he was being voted off the board of directors by Mr Mackin and his associates because he refused to `toe the party line`. Mr. Miller did indeed lose his place on the board at the meeting and subsequently transferred his football interest to Sauchie Juniors near Alloa, where he invested around £70k in a new stand for the club. Many supporters were dismayed that a local man with money to invest in football had been driven away by Mr Mackin and his associates, which contrasted sharply with their lack of investment in the club. Despite bad feeling from the previous year’s power struggles the team continues to run on similar lines as before and in fact do well in season 2000/01, getting to the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup and winning the Stirlingshire Cup (the local county cup) for the first time in 16 years. In early 2002 Alan announces that the board want to sell the ground, relocate to Grangemouth and change the name of the club – the latter comment stunned the fans, many expressed serious doubts that those in charge had the best interest of the `Shire at heart. The supporters club discussed the issue and wrote to the local paper coming out firmly against the plan for the reason that a name change would rob the club of its identity, history and tradition and that no `Shire supporter would follow a team of any other name taking the place of their team.

2002-03 – In April 2002 it was announced that player wages would be cut to a flat rate of £10 per week (a 2/3 reduction in basic pay), with a bonus conditional on being among the top 5 teams at the end of the season. Understandably, this was very unpopular with the players and in May 2002 the entire senior squad left the club. New manager Danny Diver gathered together a team for the new season made up from the remnants of the under 18 squad, free transfers and amateur players who would play for what was now the lowest wage in the division. The under 18 team was scrapped and replaced by irregular `bounce games` held during the season to evaluate new players. The season itself was one of the worst anyone could remember - in season 02/03 `Shire won 2 games and drew 7 but won no games at home (including all 3 national cup competitions) and finished the season bottom of the league (for the 1st time since the 89/90 season) with 13 points, 15 points adrift of the 2nd bottom team. Towards the end of the season the under 14/15 team coaches resigned, citing a lack of funding and communication from the club as the reason. In a newspaper article manager Danny Diver made the highly controversial statement that he `didn’t see the point in a club like the `Shire existing`. This provoked fury among the fans and the supporters club voted to stage demonstrations against the manager and the chairman for their attitude to the club – these were the 1st protests against the club by `Shire supporters since the E.S. fiasco in the 1960`s. After a month it was announced that manager Danny Diver had left the club, as he was `unable to give sufficient time to the post because of his other job`. The protests against A. Mackin and his friends on the board continued until the end of the season.

2003-04 – Former assistant Steve Morrison was now manager and was careful not to repeat his predecessor’s habit of making abrasive comments. Although he only added a few players to the squad, manager and supporters thought it would be difficult to have a worse season than the previous one – incredibly, both were wrong. In season 03/04 `Shire won 2 games and drew 2 but failed to get a single point away from home (including all 3 cup competitions) and finished the season bottom of the league (again) with a miserable 8 points, 17 points adrift of the next to bottom team, were beaten 7-1 away to Stranraer and 1-8 at home to Albion Rovers (who were third bottom at the time), established a new British record for the most defeats in a row (25) and were one result away from having the worst season EVER in Scottish league football. It is fair to say that this season was so beyond being `bad` that few fans of Scottish league teams will have experienced anything like it. Inevitably, the manager left, unable to influence the disastrous turn of events on the field. As the defeats mounted up, the media attention grew and it began to seem that everyone was frustrated and embarrassed except, apparently, A. Mackin and his allies on the board - the supporters club staged a one off protest in May against the way they were running the club.

After the end of the season at the `Shire Supporters Club AGM, it was agreed to send a letter to the Scottish Football League asking for an enquiry into our own club, questioning the way the club was being run and speculating that the club was being deliberately uncompetitive. Mr Peter Donald replied that no rules had been broken but that the league was looking at ways to keep football in the SFL competitive. Indeed, there has been some press stories that speculate the SFL was looking at making a club that finishes bottom of the league twice in succession subject to `re-election` by their peers – we believe this was being mooted because of the recent lack of competitiveness by the `Shire. In the most recent development, at an open meeting in June 2004 supporters and other interested parties voted unanimously to create a Supporters Trust for the `Shire to try and gain a positive influence on events relating to the club and the local community.

The Club as part of the community

We believe a local football team is a community asset to an area, the potential benefits it brings are: -

1) The identification and bonding with the local area supporters and casual fans of the team will feel through their connection with the club 2) The promotion of healthy sporting activity, especially by young players, is a good example to set in the current climate of obesity worries 3) Increased revenue for local shops, transport services and pubs that visiting supporters bring 4) An increased chance that a local player with talent will be found and given a chance to play football to `show what he can do`. 5) The opportunity for any player with talent to grow, develop and move to a higher level through the club 6) The promotion of the town or area by mention of the club in results and associated sports news stories 7) The opportunity for local people to enjoy the recreational value of a spectator sport

We think the value offered by a football club to its local area far outweighs any drawbacks. We also believe that, properly managed, they are valuable community assets that should be protected and regulated to prevent abuse or asset stripping that could threaten the benefits that they bring to an area, or even, their very existence.

The Official East Stirlingshire F.C. Supporters Club put it to the committee that our club was a growing asset to the community in the 1990`s but the recent actions of those in charge has threatens to minimise any benefit to the local area. Indeed, we believe the way Alan Mackin and his allies on the `Shire board (Alex McCabe & Douglas Morrison) have run the club in the last two years is totally against the spirit of competitive sport – they are deliberately running the club down to save money in the short term while looking to sell the ground and the club itself to the highest bidder without regard to the consequences to the local area, the supporters, the players and the sport of football. We at the supporters’ club think that what is happening at our club is both morally wrong and damaging to the idea of competitive sport.

We also believe Scottish football needs radical surgery to stop abuses of the greatest of all sports. • Only one body should be in control of all football in . • Clubs who wished to employ professional players would have to gain a licence to do so. The licensing authority would be charged with making sure the club was fit to compete at the standard it wished to. • There would have to be financial guarantees and proper business plans to make sure the cash was being spent in the way the club promised. • All club directors would have to understand and agree to a set of regulations governing their behaviour and stewardship of the club. Anyone found flouting these rules would be de-barred from holding a position within the club. • The governing body should have the power to investigate failing clubs, or clubs where mismanagement was suspected, and take whatever corrective action is deemed necessary. • Above all, there must be a proper pyramid system in operation so that all clubs in membership of the governing body can progress according to ambition. It would allow the most humble public park side to reach the pinnacle of Scottish League football if they had the means to do so. Automatic promotion must be a sacrosanct concept, just as relegation should be an option for those unable to live up to expectations. • There is even a case for saying that football clubs should stop trying to run as a normal business. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to establish private members clubs, where people with a genuine interest in each individual club would come together as a single, democratic body to make decisions based on the good of the club itself. This would allow greater community representation and grassroots involvement and temper the autocratic misrule of some current football clubs by those who have bought power without any thought or heed to those who really care about them.

Unfortunately for us, there would appear to be no short-term panacea for our ills. Supporters fear the asset strippers will win one way or another, leaving one of the world’s hundred oldest surviving football clubs either on the scrapheap or franchised off to some other part of the country.

It is a situation which could happen to any Scottish football club and is indicative of the direction the game has been driven into by people keen to latch onto its popular appeal in the hope of making a fast buck.

Perhaps it’s why Scottish football is in this perceived crisis. We hope our story illustrates not just a sorry individual case but justifies the need for investigations like yours.