Mossley - On The Brink. Of Something
Posted by Nik Myles on Thursday, June 11, 2009
Under: News From Other Places
I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting to post much during the close season, and I think we can all agree I've been fairly true to my word on that. However, just cos there's no football for me to watch, that does not mean there are no football clubs for me to watch.
This off-season appears to have seen more uncertainty about where clubs will be playing, who they'll be playing, and indeed whether they'll be playing at all, than any other I can remember. Maybe it's just that I am more clued up, I don't know. But whether it's Worksop's on-going ground issues, Lairds' demotion, Kings Lynns' expulsion, Gresley's rebirth, Willenhall's fingertip escape, Blue Star's complete combustion or all manner of other dramas, it seems more and more apparent that football at our level is less and less about who your striker is, and more about whether your terracing is big enough, whether your Hospitality Suite does the right sandwiches, and whether you can make good the ills of previous chairmen.
Witness goings on at Mossley...
An unassuming and oft overlooked (by me anyway) corner of Manchester, Mossley are one of an improbable number of teams playing a decent level of football out of an area that most people know solely as a traffic blackspot as one comes off the Snake Pass from Sheffield to Manchester. Retford visited last season in one of the 47 Tin Pot cups, and despite treating whatever competition it was with all the gravitas it deserved, ultimately ended up on the losing side in a game memorable only for the appearance of Assistant Manager John Knapper in central defence, alongside Golden Boot Mick Godber. To all intents and purposes it is a typical non-league club. Kept afloat by well-meaning benefactors, staffed by volunteers, ignored by the wider populace within it's catchment area, and central to life for a group of grown ups who otherwise would probably not stand shoulder to shoulder.
They finished mid table, and all gathered were happy enough with that. Close season promised little, other than idle gossip about players leaving for, and being poached from, local rivals. Then there was a whisper that the Player Of The Season do had been cancelled. That they were charging fans £25 for tickets should have set alarm bells ringing you'd have thought. Then other worrying stories started coming out of the club, and people started to put two and two together to get five.But without word from the Club, what else could they do? (does any of this sound familiar to Retford fans?) And so it was that a hastily convened meeting was called for Wednesday night. The more lucid of you may recognise this as being the same day as the England game against Andorra. Not great planning, but then I guess needs must. Others can tell you better what went off in the Social Club (although his tweets from that night say otherwise, if I'm honest) But that anything went off at all is both saddening and heartening.
Too many clubs at our level appear to be learning from the Big Boys, and treating their fans with ever decreasing amounts of respect. There aren't enough of us that we can afford to be disparate. Our voices are barely heard as it is. Individually we count for nothing. The clubs we follow have history that is usually greater than our own. They are institutions within our communities, and whilst the communities may not always treat them with the respect we would wish, we have it within our power to arrest that trend. But it is a two way street. The clubs need to understand that we are non-league for a reason, and, in the main, we support them precisely because of this. If we wanted the glamour and expense of "proper" football, we could follow Halifax. We don't want people to throw money at them in pursuit of some ill-conceived dream. We want stability. We want a club to support next season, never mind this. And above all we want to feel included. Most of us want to help if we can. But to ignore us, to treat us as customers rather than stakeholders, alienates us, and here, more than anywhere you may aspire to take our club, is where you need us most.
This off-season appears to have seen more uncertainty about where clubs will be playing, who they'll be playing, and indeed whether they'll be playing at all, than any other I can remember. Maybe it's just that I am more clued up, I don't know. But whether it's Worksop's on-going ground issues, Lairds' demotion, Kings Lynns' expulsion, Gresley's rebirth, Willenhall's fingertip escape, Blue Star's complete combustion or all manner of other dramas, it seems more and more apparent that football at our level is less and less about who your striker is, and more about whether your terracing is big enough, whether your Hospitality Suite does the right sandwiches, and whether you can make good the ills of previous chairmen.
Witness goings on at Mossley...
An unassuming and oft overlooked (by me anyway) corner of Manchester, Mossley are one of an improbable number of teams playing a decent level of football out of an area that most people know solely as a traffic blackspot as one comes off the Snake Pass from Sheffield to Manchester. Retford visited last season in one of the 47 Tin Pot cups, and despite treating whatever competition it was with all the gravitas it deserved, ultimately ended up on the losing side in a game memorable only for the appearance of Assistant Manager John Knapper in central defence, alongside Golden Boot Mick Godber. To all intents and purposes it is a typical non-league club. Kept afloat by well-meaning benefactors, staffed by volunteers, ignored by the wider populace within it's catchment area, and central to life for a group of grown ups who otherwise would probably not stand shoulder to shoulder.
They finished mid table, and all gathered were happy enough with that. Close season promised little, other than idle gossip about players leaving for, and being poached from, local rivals. Then there was a whisper that the Player Of The Season do had been cancelled. That they were charging fans £25 for tickets should have set alarm bells ringing you'd have thought. Then other worrying stories started coming out of the club, and people started to put two and two together to get five.But without word from the Club, what else could they do? (does any of this sound familiar to Retford fans?) And so it was that a hastily convened meeting was called for Wednesday night. The more lucid of you may recognise this as being the same day as the England game against Andorra. Not great planning, but then I guess needs must. Others can tell you better what went off in the Social Club (although his tweets from that night say otherwise, if I'm honest) But that anything went off at all is both saddening and heartening.
Too many clubs at our level appear to be learning from the Big Boys, and treating their fans with ever decreasing amounts of respect. There aren't enough of us that we can afford to be disparate. Our voices are barely heard as it is. Individually we count for nothing. The clubs we follow have history that is usually greater than our own. They are institutions within our communities, and whilst the communities may not always treat them with the respect we would wish, we have it within our power to arrest that trend. But it is a two way street. The clubs need to understand that we are non-league for a reason, and, in the main, we support them precisely because of this. If we wanted the glamour and expense of "proper" football, we could follow Halifax. We don't want people to throw money at them in pursuit of some ill-conceived dream. We want stability. We want a club to support next season, never mind this. And above all we want to feel included. Most of us want to help if we can. But to ignore us, to treat us as customers rather than stakeholders, alienates us, and here, more than anywhere you may aspire to take our club, is where you need us most.
Tags: "mossley"
