In the 80s I didn’t have to worry about property developers uprooting the ground from the town centre and moving it to an empty patch of nothing by a motorway. Or worse, 20 miles up it to Milton Keynes.
As far as I was concerned, in the 80s, no one was into asset stripping or appointing a manager by rigged phone vote. There were no hidden bank accounts or farcical ‘fit and proper’ tests. No points-deductions or ‘irregular’ payments to agents.
The 80s were about Wembley, brilliant perms, Wembley, potty training, Wembley and my first day at school. The ignorance of childhood was on my side, you see. When Millwall took home the seats from our Bobbers Stand in ‘85 I was 2. When we took home the Littlewoods Cup, just 5. Boardroom spivs with “champagne ideas and Coca Cola pockets” (Joe Kinnear) were the least of my worries.
But since I’ve been old enough to rip up my own ticket and throw it into the director’s box, all of the above have happened to Luton Town. Some more than once.
Getting relegated from the old 1st Division in ’92 on the eve of the Premier League, we stand with the many supporters claiming to exist, at times, outside of the gentrified terraces of Modern Football.
The truth is far from it. We are caged just inside Modern Football’s cold periphery. The authorities tried and failed to “Chester City” us off for an early expunge bath more than once, with separate points deductions from the FA and the Football League totalling 40 points over two seasons.
We know we are lucky to still have a club.
Over the years we’ve learned the hard way that if you want your kids to be able to belt out the songs you once sung in the same town 20 years from now, you need to know who is running your club and why.
I first became aware of Luton actually having a Chairman in the immediate aftermath of relegation in 92. David Kohler was the former property developer who brought away fans back to Kenilworth Road and got rid of the plastic pitch. But presiding over relegation is never popular and rebranding himself Chief Exec and starting to take a salary didn’t endear. When I started going I thought we must have had a shit hot striker called “KohlerOut”, such was the frequency with which the song rang out.
Shortly after planning permission for his Bond villain style ‘Kohlerdome’ stadium was refused in ’99 and following years of stagnation or decline on the pitch, a petrol bomb and a box of matches were posted to his family home with a warning note. Football not actually being more important than life or death (sorry Bill), Mr Kohler was off. Understandably so.
Our relationship with owners of the club has rarely been easy. Stumbling punch-drunk from the 1st Division chairmanship of a Tory MP who sold the ground in the 80s, through a surreal pantomime of boardroom spivs in the 00s the club have landed battle-scarred and increasingly sober in the Blue Square Bet ‘Premier’ League – a division so recently rebranded that it uses the Lenny Henry definition of the word.
The details are better told elsewhere, most notably in Rob Hadgcraft’s book “Staring into the abyss”, but the boardroom abuse was sustained and never sufficiently lubricated. Fans endured failed property deals, disappearing transfer millions and a fixed managerial phone vote that would make Simon Cowell's ever descending nipples point skywards once more.
Into the current millennium, our approach to ousting the owners became a bit less IRA, a bit more HMRC. Supporter action had twice removed rogue Chairman and Directors by the end of the decade, each time through organised groups withholding season ticket money before the start of a season, latterly pledging it to a fund; a move which demonstrated to prospective buyers that the fans’ financial support was still there for the right group. (Saying that, I think a couple of people still kicked John Gurney’s car on his way to a press conference once.)
Though not supporter-owned, it is the current Luton 2020 consortium with our very own A list celebrity fan Nick Owen in the Chair that eventually saved the club, with backing from supporters groups. The club is run by Managing Director Gary Sweet; supporter, a fan activist himself and successful business man. On paper the kind of bloke you dream of running your club. One of us.
But while off the pitch The Town creep towards financial stability, and supporters group Trust in Luton hold shares in the club, on the pitch many still yearn for the over-spending days of The Championship; an unsustainable era that saw us finish in the top 10 as recently as 2006, the saccharine stench of the Premier League all too close. After 4 years in the Conference who can blame them.
Like the children of abusive foster parents, some supporters remain hesitant to trust another lot, convinced that any owners will eventually be corrupted by power, ‘one of us’ or not. Especially as property deals raise their divisive head. And so our supporters groups must remain as inquisitive and aggressively independent as they have been. But when a clearly doddery David Pleat spoke in the Daily Mail ahead of our recent FA Cup win at Carrow Road, stating that Luton should have “grasped the nettle” 15 years ago and moved to Milton Keynes, we all - owners and fans alike - smiled a collective knowing smile.
Because we could have so easily been Wimbledon. And that AFC lark looked like fucking hard work.
Fancy putting a bit of pressure on your MP about the state of the FA and Modern Football? Take 2 mins to do this.
Nice artical
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