A recent meeting, held at Pride Park, and the publication earlier this year of the pamphlet Back Home - Returning football clubs to their communities have inspired plenty of discussion about the future development of football clubs
and their relationship with their supporters and local communities.

On Wednesday 30 July, an important gathering took place at Pride Park Stadium. In a second-floor suite, around fifty delegates from the nine supporters' trusts in the East Midlands, augmented by Derby County's Head of Media, Jim
Fearn listened to a number of inspirational speakers. The issue in question was: how can football return to its roots, by building greater links between clubs and their local communities?

Football clubs such as Derby County and the others represented had begun life as integral parts of their communities - in the Rams' case, as an offshoot of Derbyshire County Cricket Club. In the early days, both fans and players were drawn from the streets and factories around the ground. The clubs in a real sense 'belonged' to the community.

Over time though, this relationship changed and eventually broke down. Football moved away from its roots, as the clubs grew bigger and more remote from the communities that had given birth to them - they: "...developed from their early mutual beginnings into the unrecognisable organisations they are today. In many ways that is progress indeed, but along the way the connection with the community has frequently got lost..." [Peter Hunt, Back Home, p11].

Today, most football clubs are a far cry from what they were even a few decades ago. they are all limited companies [FA rules currently make that compulsory], run as standard businesses, tending to think in terms of attracting 'customers' rather than supporters.

The relationship between the clubs and the people who live around the grounds has also changed; often for the worse, sometimes to the point of outright mutual hostility. Clubs, with their big business sponsorship, overpriced merchandise and 'star' players earning more in a week than their fans do in a year, can seem like typical representatives of a soulless corporate culture - totally
remote from the people who live around the ground and support the team year in year out. This applies in varying degrees to clubs throughout the league, not just to the 'fat cats' in the Premier League.

However, all is not lost. Some clubs, and Derby County seem to be among them, have recognised that building bridges with the local populace and returning the club to a more community-oriented ethos is a crucial requirement if they are to survive what are for most clubs, chastened times in the post-football boom climate. DCFC have already indicated that they would consider using the
south-west corner of Pride Park for some kind of community project. Working with communities is a way of cementing the symbiotic relationship between people and club. In some cases of course, this has extended to the point of the people actually owning the clubs, as is the case at the Rams' near neighbours
Chesterfield FC, where the supporters' trust stepped in to rescue the club after the
disastrous tenure of ex-chairman Darren Brown; Lincoln City's trust have also successfully taken over the running of their club.

Derby County are not in that kind of position, but opportunities for closer links between club and community do exist - with RamsTrust hoping to be a vital conduit between the two.

All the speakers at our meeting had something to say that can help us to make the most of these opportunities. They represented some of the many campaigning groups that have sprung up in recent years, all grass-roots bodies with genuine independence and full of positive ideas.

To kick things off, Elaine Dean, Chair of RamsTrust, opened proceedings by thanking Jim Fearn and Derby County for hosting this forum. The first speaker then took the floor: Brian Burgess from the Community Action Network, and a dedicated follower of Brentford FC. Brian explained how Brentford had survived
numerous trials and tribulations over the years, including a chairman who defected to Notts County and tried to sell the club to Queen's Park Rangers. More recently, the club had, under Ron Noades been close to administration with mounting debts.

Brentford - "extending the community ideal"

Two years ago, the fans formed their trust, Bees United. The first AGM was attended by about 35 members. Now there are 1,400 members, four of whom sit on the football club board. The debts remain, but the club is now budgeting to break even in its trading. This is due in no small part to Bees United's
sterling efforts in fund-raising. Current initiatives include turning a bar into an
'after school classroom' for local youngsters, with an adult education facility planned to follow. Another bar now hosts gigs by local bands.

Bees United's best-known exploit, which brought them lots of headlines not long ago was their decision to set up a political party! With Griffin Park hemmed in by housing, there is little scope for improving or extending the ground, so a new stadium is regarded as a must. Unfortunately, the local council did not seem too keen to help, so the ABC (A Future for Brentford FC in your
Community) party stood fourteen candidates at the next local election, won thousands
of votes and even got a councillor elected - Luke Kirton.

The council are now co-operating very closely, with a feasibility study for a new site. The new stadium will not just be used once a fortnight for matches, but will incorporate a number of community-related projects. As well as those already described, there is a planned health centre, helping to meet demand in an area with plenty of new housing and a shortage of GPs. As well as bringing the club into the community, these projects also raise much-needed cash - a case of, as Brian put it: "Brentford heart, business head and community spirit".

Macclesfield - "Make people believe and connect them together."

Malcolm McClean, follower of 'England's smallest club', Macclesfield Town,
'strategic adviser' to Town's board and a contributor to the football in the community manifesto Back Home was next to his feet. Although Macclesfield is generally a wealthy borough - part of Manchester's commuter belt - Malcolm described Town's ground as existing in a 'pocket of deprivation'.

Macclesfield's supporters' trust soon found a way for the club to help this community through education. The Silkmen ICT Centre - backed by the local further education college -is the result. The centre offers local people an opportunity to get themselves familiar with IT, either in the form of vocational
courses or just for fun. Like Brentford, there is an orientation towards health, in the form of a partnership with the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation which is supporting an £80,000 scheme aimed at treating depression.

To publicise their initiatives and to raise funds, Macclesfield sought the services of various local 'celebrities' including a children's author, musician, performance poet [the legendary Attila the Stockbroker] and a lifestyle coach. Malcolm himself took a lead role in this and used his extensive powers of
persuasion to bring everyone on board.

All this activity helped the Town supporters to acquire the 'self-belief' needed to take the club forward, and in particular raise the funding to build the new McAlpine Stand at the Moss Road Stadium. The next step is the 'Cheshire Mezzanine', an ambitious project which will include:

a community cultural, sport and leisure complex
a business centre
childcare and health facilities
'flexible spaces' for the use of the whole community. Supporters Direct - "A
chance we've not had in years."

Simon Binns, of the supporters' trust umbrella group Supporters Direct [SD] then gave us an overview of what was happening and how trusts were playing a role. Simon sketched out the changes in football over the last few years.
Football had 'gone global', and become 'awash with money'. However, for most clubs there had been more going out than coming in. Now for the vast majority the 'boom' was over, there had to be a 'sea change in attitudes' and football had to return to its roots and become a 'community glue'.

Pointing to the work done at York City, where the supporters now run the club, Simon explained how the football club could become a 'hub of the community', with the stadium used all year round, rather than every other weekend.

Back Home advocates a mutual structure for football clubs, which under current FA rules is impossible. However, mutual organisations such as Supporters' Trusts, should be encouraged to take ownership of their football clubs or become majority stakeholders, ensuring a tangible community bond. Trusts and other fan organisations that want to lobby the FA and the Government to change the rules could team up with the Football Supporters' Federation, which deals with policy issues and would be supported by SD.

A Football Community Mutual, although still a business needing to be profitable, is a way of enabling the supporters and local community to have direct control of their club, as opposed to the current 'paternalistic' type of business structure. How this kind of model could fit in with the circumstances of
individual clubs, including Derby County is of course debatable, and will differ widely from club to club, but as the basis for a change in direction for football clubs, it is well worth discussing.

Sheffield - "It's not enough if the club runs it; it really has to be a genuine partnership".

A fine example of how a supporters' group can help to build bridges between a football club and an initially sceptical local community is the Sharrow Partnership, in the area around Bramall Lane, Sheffield. Here, the issue of parking around the ground [a familiar cause of antagonism across the nation] had soured relations between local people and Sheffield United FC.

The partnership, aided by the Federation of Stadium Communities [FSC] and led by Blades' fan Ann Wilson has managed to smooth out this source of conflict by the simple but effective method of getting all the interested parties to talk to each other and thrash out solutions that everyone can agree to. The Sharrow Partnership has also been instrumental in setting another community project: the Blades Enterprise Centre - for which they successfully applied for EU funding.

Owing to illness, Ann Wilson could not be present at Pride Park, but the FSC's Chris Lawley made an effective sub, presenting a video which looked at the Sheffield project and similar efforts at Blackburn, Charlton and Leyton Orient.

Football in the Community - "Dynamic Synergy."

Our final speaker, Roger Reade of Football in the Community had the task of summing everything up and sending us all off full of enthusiasm about how we can help shape our clubs' future. An old hand at this kind of thing, Roger gave us a run down of how his group's work had changed over the years. Fifteen years ago, Roger recalled, most of his work revolved around coaching schoolkids;
now it had broadened out in many new directions.

Roger made another point about how clubs and communities could work together with the NHS. He cited the example of Burnley FC, where initiatives around fitness facilities, health, diet and nutrition advice helped an area that had one of the worst records of heart problems in the country, and a distinct lack
of leisure facilities.

Football in the Community, with capital and revenue funding from the Football Foundation will continue to help clubs and supporters find useful ways of meeting these kind of needs. It has also lent its fundraising expertise to many projects, finding the National Lottery a good source of income, despite the reservations of some campaigners.

Golden Opportunities, not Golden Arches

A number of adjectives spring to mind that define enterprises of the kind described above:

genuine
inclusive
ongoing
long-term
democratic
grassroots.

They can also be a useful way of raising funds for the club, but the important point is that they serve the needs of the community. Those merely concerned with seeing their corporate logo get more exposure, or whose interest in the community begins and ends with how much extra cash they can make from it will
not find much of interest in them.

Back Home uses the term: The Multi-use Stadium to describe the sort of ideas we have been looking at here. The unifying factor in all of them is the meeting the community's needs: social, sporting, cultural, educational. What we have to do now, is to embark on a wide-ranging discussion between Notts County FC,
its supporters and as many people from within Nottingham's local communities as possible, as to how we can work effectively together to adapt some of these ideas to our own needs.

For a more in-depth analysis of these issues, read: Back Home - Returning football clubs to their communities; edited by Stephen Hogan, published March 2003 by Mutuo 77 Weston Street, London SE1 3SD.

This report is reproduced with kind permission of RamsTrust and the report's author Duncan Harris.