Pure DFC Archive

dartLion wrote: ↑Thu Oct 22, 2020 12:32 pm or put another way, those three missed penalty kicks in the play off final, cost the club £54K in handouts alone, and Dulwich get an extra £6k to boost their drinking club! Don't get me wrong, we should be grateful for anything HM government agrees to grant us, just saying.

Please don't put it that way, that's a very real and painful reminder!!

Petition to be debated in parliament on November 9th. You can even watch it online via the UK Parliament YouTube Channel!

By then we'll probably be in Tier 3, or another lockdown, and unable to go out anyway.

dartLion wrote: ↑Thu Oct 22, 2020 12:32 pm or put another way, those three missed penalty kicks in the play off final, cost the club £54K in handouts alone, and Dulwich get an extra £6k to boost their drinking club! Don't get me wrong, we should be grateful for anything HM government agrees to grant us, just saying.

I don't think that clubs are ungrateful for the grant that the government has made available, however, are lot are unhappy at the way the money has been allocated between the clubs by the National League board. The following statement from Maidstone Utd co-owner Terry Casey is an interesting read......


The distribution of the £10million grant from the National Lottery to the Vanarama National League has left me utterly confused and bitterly disappointed.

Maidstone United Football Club have many things to be proud of: one being the way that we run the business in a sustainable way, reinvesting the profits from our activities back into the club, and two the sheer volume of deeply committed supporters who come and support the Stones and pay their entrance fees.

The Government was specific in that the money they brokered for our football clubs, via the National Lottery, was designed to ’replace lost gate revenue.’ Clubs agreed to start the season, taking on trust the promise to cover these lost revenues. This has not happened.

Our average gate over the last two seasons has been 2,000 per match and our club will receive 36k per month from the National League. This is some 50% below our estimated monthly shortfall! It is also nearly £50k per month less than Dover who attract just over 1,000 per match.

On the face of this it looks stupid but when it becomes clear that those sitting on the Board making the decisions are heavily biased towards their own financial wellbeing, then it’s not just a stupid decision but possibly corrupt.

For the Board of the National League to arbitrarily decide the first thing that they will do is take 60% for their own clubs and give the South and North just 20% each looks stupid, especially as they have no mandate to keep the money for themselves as they should be representing the interests of all of their member clubs.

We are sure that the league sponsors such as Vanarama, BT Sport and the National Lottery will be carefully reconsidering their sponsorships on the back of this scandalous decision!

This is a clear case of the Board not serving the membership and a clear misuse of the way that the money was supposed to be spent.

For Tonbridge Angels to get 30k per month on their crowds of 600 must have felt like Christmas to them but for Hungerford Town to get 30k per month on their crowds of just over 300 it must feel like Christmas, New Year and Easter all at once.

This is utterly crass, short-sighted and stupid, with the Government’s words ringing in our ears that the money is: ‘to be spent on lost gate revenue.’

Hungerford and Tonbridge never ever had this amount of gate revenue so they are now in a massively better position as they will have spare money to sign players that they would never have been able to afford to attract.

This can also be seen with Oxford City and their 350 supporters getting the same 30k as Havant and Waterlooville with their 1,400 supporters.

The corruption and conspiracy theories abound when Boreham Wood, who have already made public their association with Sports Minister Oliver Dowden, and who have 730 supporters get just 10k per month less than Notts County with their 5,000 supporters.

Dagenham and Barnet, with their crowds of 1,200, also do well from the distribution – again just 10k per month less than Wrexham with their crowds of 4,000.

Please bear in mind that both these two clubs have members on the Board before you decide whether this constitutes abuse of power, conflict of interest or stupidity.

This is one of the most extraordinary cases of the misuse of grant funding that I have ever witnessed.

The FA and National League had a clear mandate to spend the money on lost gate revenue. What they have done is ignore this and instead allowed National League Board Members to favour some clubs with outrageous amounts of money that far exceed their gate receipts.

Wow - strong stuff and quite right too

What I don’t get is why the money has come from the lottery that makes no sense at all to me?

Better than coming from the taxpayer (ie being borrowed).

Well, it did come from some taxpayers at least -indirectly - those who buy the lottery tickets!

It's frustrating enough now knowing how very little sporting bodies within government know about non- league football.
But there should be no excuses for the people that should know, which is those responsible for running the National Leagues.
Receive something relatively straight forward to implement and they cock it up everytime.
Personally, I wouldn't send them out for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. They would come back with a bottle of water and 4 crusty rolls instead.
The distribution of the government bail-out is a farce.
For example, our attendances have been higher than Dover's for a long time now. We are a far more stable and better run club too. They almost went out of business during the summer and their opening day victory over Notts. County was a bloody fluke.
They will be getting £84,000 per month to our £30,000.
Perversely, in their situation, pandemic or no pandemic, this must go down as the reprieve of the decade for them.
I can't say I'm too surprised though.
After all, we do live in a country that's obsessed with rewarding failure over success.

I presume it's simpy because the NL (top division) clubs have the vast majority of the voting rights in the league as a whole, so they clearly looked out for themselves at the expense of the NLS and NLN clubs; many of whom clearly had justification for a much larger slice of the cake. I understand the ex-football league clubs all got a much greater share too! Why?!!!

Surely this government grant was made to compensate for lost revenue caused by the absence of paying fans, in which case the allocation ought to have been solely based on average attendances, irrespective of which division the club is currently playing in.

It's a real shame that the NL management committee has let itself down so badly by displaying the same sort self-centred greed that is rife in the "elite" level of football in England.

Is it possible that the decision was made at the time when the North and South looked as though they would be allowed a restricted attendance whilst the national league were not due to benefit from such a relaxation? If that is the case, the decision should have been caveated to allow for the mess that has now been created whereby the North and South are allowed no spectators either (except for their youth and ladies fixtures).

This could prove to be a bumper year for some clubs whilst other, better attended clubs may face financial ruin. Madness.