The football club whose fan ownership dream turned into a nightmare (2024)

On the corner of Spotland Road, the Ratcliffe function rooms have toasted joy and sorrow in almost equal measure. On 7 March it will host an extraordinary general meeting that is likely to decide whether Rochdale AFC can be saved.

This is a club used to hammer blows – Covid, a hostile takeover attempt, and two relegations in three seasons, culminating in Rochdale dropping out of the Football League altogether in 2023 for the first time in 102 years.

The very real fear is that by the end of March, it will be worse than that: liquidation beckons, and 117 years of history risks being wiped out.

To appreciate the real spirit of the town, you have to go back further. In 1844, 28 cotton mill workers established the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society as the first modern co-operative business owned by its members.

In that light, it is understandable why the Lancashire town’s football club has been determined to remain fan-owned – quite the utopia on paper, but one which has left the board desperate for a cash injection. The clock is ticking and money is running out fast.

“It’s really big the danger,” chairman Simon Gauge tells i. “It isn’t a basket case of a club, it hasn’t got massive debts. It just doesn’t have the cash to continue operating. We know this day has been coming.

“The difficulty we have is our shareholder base. It’s a fan-owned club, which in fantasy land should be the ideal structure for a football club, but the fans just don’t put any money in.

“The end of March, that will be the date of the next payroll requirement – at that point we won’t be able to pay payroll which will then trigger a whole load of events that will ultimately end up with us going under.”

To outsiders, Rochdale might appear to be just another cash-strapped crisis club – a Bury, Macclesfield, or Bolton. For each the pain is unique and the camaraderie is little comfort. In any case, Rochdale are a little different, with a peculiar set of circ*mstances conspiring against them.

The hope is that by asking fans to vote for a restructure to create millions of new shares, a new buyer will come in to acquire 90 per cent of the club for £2m. It is understood a number of potential investors have now made contact, including a party from the US.

Gauge accepts that the proposals will water down existing shares, but hopes shareholders will see the bigger picture. “If that doesn’t happen,” Gauge says, “and if shareholders vote against that, the club won’t continue.”

The Dale Trust is the biggest supporters’ group who currently own a 13.5 per cent stake.

“Fans obviously can’t fund the club to the level they require so people are being pragmatic about it, that what the directors are saying is we’re going to run out of cash,” George Brigham, the Trust’s chair, tells i.

“The downside is when you sell it to somebody unknown or remote, what are their motives, what are their intentions, how are they going to sustain the club for the same number of years they’ve already been in existence?”

Rochdale have been trying desperately to balance the books since Covid hit gate receipts and the club began to build up debt. Jake Beesley’s move to Blackpool raised £400,000. The following year Luke Sharman joined Fylde for £45,000.

It is unpalatable, though hardly unfamiliar, that as they floundered, they would be devastated further by a small clique of investors hell-bent on acquiring the club.

Along came businessman Andrew Curran and Darrell Rose, fronting company Morton House and plotting to seize control by convincing existing shareholders to sell up. They agreed to buy a stake owned by directors Graham Rawlinson and David Bottomley, who had wanted to create around 700,000 new shares to facilitate the takeover.

It was deemed a hostile takeover – and it did untold damage. Fans feared an outside influence who were not perceived to have the best interests of the club at heart.

“What Morton House tried to do was forget about any of the owners and directors’ tests, or even going to the club,” Gauge explains. “They went to shareholders directly and said ‘we’ll pay over the odds’. They tried to do it in secret. It was a totally flawed strategy because they’d never have got authorisation to be able to run a football club.

“Bottomley got removed as director at a meeting in June 2021. It was just a total mess and an impossible situation everyone could have done without.”

As Bottomley, Rochdale’s former CEO, was still technically employed while on gardening leave, the club faced sanctions for their “part” in the takeover, which did not abide by EFL rules – despite insisting they had been kept in the dark about his actions and complaining to the FA. At the time of writing, Bottomley had not responded to i‘s request for comment.

They were handed a suspended six-point deduction while Bottomley, Curran and Rose were subsequently banned from operating as a relevant person at a football club for two years.

Gauge estimates the saga “cost the directors half a million quid that could have gone into the club and cost us probably another half a million in legal fees”.

Ultimately, Morton House picked the wrong fight and the wrong town. Though the takeover was rebuffed thanks to the supporters fighting back, the effects have been scarring. Fans have been desperately trying to raise funds, launching an online “squad builder fund” and rattling tins in the concourses.

That is “really a drop in the ocean,” concedes Brigham.

Since relegation from League Two, the club has received a parachute payment that will be cut by half next year and then stop completely. EFL clubs receive approximately £500,000 a year in “Premier League solidarity” payments, which has also evaporated upon entry to non-league.

It is strange to think now that before promotion to the third tier in 2010, Rochdale’s biggest frustration was their inability to escape League Two. Once, cup runs helped. In the last six years, they have forced FA Cup replays against both Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle and have taken Manchester United to penalties at Old Trafford.

Yet having to rely on their fans’ pockets is nothing new. Gauge and his family have loaned the club more than £500,000. In 2020, lifelong supporter David Clough died, leaving his entire estate to the club – throughout his life, he had raised more than £400,000, selling scratch cards in the bakery where he worked. A bronze statue of “Cloughie” in his flat cap keeps a seat inside the Crown Oil Arena.

It’s estimated around 27 per cent of revenue is coming from fans – that still leaves a huge gap to be bridged. Matchgoers were invited to bring a friend for £5 for Tuesday night’s 3-0 victory over Wealdstone. Rival fans have been ordering pins from the club shop and telling them not to send them, but to keep the money as a donation.

“It saddens me,” adds Brigham, “because the first time we got to Wembley was 2010 and we had 16,000 fans. We typically have 2-2,500 home fans at every game for the past few seasons. There’s been more interest from politicians who are looking to win the by-election than the general townsfolk.

“We could have perhaps done a better job of selling the club but again the directors have been distracted by Morton House. There are pubs in the town centre that have been allowing collections – people in pubs who don’t go to games are chucking money into buckets but getting them through the gates would be better.”

There are no guarantees that those efforts will save the team.

Should the worst happen and the club is forced to disband, a source close to a number of players told i that several of them have been seeking help to discuss options for their playing careers.

However, it is more complex now that Rochdale are in the National League so there is less professional support – both financial and in terms of wellbeing – available.

If the club is wound up and re-established, the “new club” would have to make an application to rejoin the league system at a lower level, according to National League guidelines. That would only be agreed at the league’s discretion.

Then there is the question of the stadium, shared by rugby league club Rochdale Hornets, and estimated to be worth in the region of £4-5m.

This is all “nightmare scenario”, though there are just weeks to prevent it unfolding. For many clubs like Rochdale, the imminent introduction of a football regulator has simply come too late.

“We just fell victim to it earlier than others, although Torquay went into administration on Friday,” adds Brigham.

There is just not enough money trickling down from the upper echelons of English football to the rest of the pyramid. In the absence of legislation, the Premier League, National League and EFL have effectively had to work out the distribution of wealth themselves.

“If the regulator had been brought in in a timely manner, this wouldn’t have happened,” Gauge says.

Administrators are not optimistic, not least because so much low-hanging fruit has already been cut, leaving next week’s vote as the final hope as Rochdale fights for its life.

When the club launched its appeal for funding last week, Gauge admits “we had to be quite brutal to bring the reality of it home to fans.

“Supporters just want to turn up and watch the match and keep plugging along and thinking everything’s alright, but it isn’t. We’re not without hope, there is hope of investment but these things need to happen – if they don’t happen, the stark reality is we won’t survive.”