Sunday, November 07, 2010

Fans should own football

Prior to the Rovers match against Wigan I had a quick catch up with Proper Journalist David Conn. The Guardian journalist and sometime Insider contributor was at Ewood Park to ask around about the imminent takeover. There'll be more to come on this in the next day or so, but it was good to hear his tales from the night before in Rochdale. David had been at Spotland to see FC United of Manchester win a dramatic FA Cup tie.

There can't be many football fans who don't have admiration for what the Rebels have done. Fed up with corporate football, fed up with being ripped off to service the debt of the American owners, they started their own club. I like the integrity of non-league football and the raw ambition to build a new club here. I know a couple of the lads involved and it's a great coalition of interests and characters. Communists and rapacious capitalists, joined by a passion to make it all work.

As Rovers stand on the brink of a new era of ownership, we reflected on what a missed opportunity it appears to be.

2 comments:

Vinjay said...

I don't have admiration for them at all. A lot of them still remain Man United fans. I notice they didn't mind taking the tv money for that game one of the things they are supposedly against.

If you're suggesting Rovers fans owning the club would be a good thing I couldn't think of anything worse. Its far too big a club for such a model to work. It may work at small clubs lower down the leagues and in exceptional cases like Barcelona but not here.

Jack Walker obviously was different but I would not financially support any fans takeover which would probably have happened in the 80's if it was ever going to happen. It would be a slow, painful death the mentality of most Rovers fans would not allow any chance of forward thinking or success.

Venky's have done nothing to upset me so far. They would have to be astoundingly bad and purposely sabotaging the club to be worse than the walkers. Its about time this club explored new horizons not sticking to the same regional mentality that has held this club back for so long. There is a massive opportunity in India and the best thing is the potential fans over there won't see the club dragged down by the locals mentality.

Michael Taylor said...

"Venky's have done nothing to upset me so far..."

Oh, I'm sure they will, Vinjay. It's only a matter of time.