TIED UP IN NOTTS
THOMAS HEWITT gets the views of Notts County FC Official Supporters’ Association’s Dougie Pullen on an ownership debacle that has left the famous old club in a state of uncertainty...
When Trew love ended at County
IT’S easy to forget just what a parlous state Notts County were in when Ray and Aileen Trew first appeared on our radar – says Dougie Pullen.
It is no exaggeration to say that the club was on the verge of going into liquidation, let alone administration. If for no other reason that this, the fans of Notts County will forever have a huge debt of gratitude to pay to the Trew family.
There can be no doubt that Ray is an astute and successful businessman – just as there should be no doubt his business instinct must have told him it would be unwise to plough money into our football club.
But his wife Aileen persuaded him otherwise and, throwing common sense out of the window, for just £1 the Trews ’bought’ a debt of several million pounds (and more than their due diligence exercise had anticipated) and ownership of an old lady of a football club which lived in the shadow of not just past glories but also her noisy, bigger, and more successful neighbours.
It was ultimately to prove an unrelenting headache which just grew worse and worse.
Despite the Trews’ best efforts, the fortunes of Notts County entered a nose-dive with only brief glimpses of fleeting respite.
Outside of his family and closest business associates, no-one can claim to know Ray Trew well - he is far too modest, shy and introverted for that - but he seems someone whose patience is elastic …. to a point. And then it snaps without warning. And so it was with the succession of managers who found it impossible to defy the footballing odds and were shown the door marked ‘exit’, be it as a result of a lack of resources, poor transfer decisions, hapless loan players or, quite simply, an inability to do the job.
Much has been made of Ray’s habit of selecting untried, untested coaches to guide his club upwardly and onwards.
I, for one, understood his rationale. As sacked manager after sacked manager knocked hopefully on the revolving door, Ray just couldn’t see the point of appointing someone else whose CV shouted “failure” loud and clear for an encore at Notts County’s expense.
Instead Ray, who is something of an impetuous gambler, looked for the next Sam Allardyce or Steve Cotterill to raise the phoenix out of the fire.
Someone who wasn’t a ‘name’ but who just might prove that sliced bread could be bettered. But it turned out he was searching for the Holy Grail. A saviour to work the miracle of successive promotions onwards and upwards into the Championship did not materialise.
The less understanding and more unrealistic Notts fans began to get more and more disgruntled as the fortunes of the club spiralled, with increasing haste, downwards into its present home – the lowest tier of the Football League.
They took to abusing the Trew family on air, in print, via social media (surely a misnomer if ever there was one – anti-social media would be a more appropriate description) and finally face-to-face in and around Meadow Lane, with the then boss, Jamie Fullarton, being unfortunate enough to find himself standing in the way of the undeserving flak which was being aimed at Ray Trew.
One so-called fan even vented his spleen on one of the Trew’s children at a motorway service station after a disappointing performance by the team on the road. Enough had become enough. Ray has an obstinate streak in him. He would have wanted to face down the baying mob and see things through but for one little known, but heart-rending, fact.
His wife Aileen is seriously ill and it is to their credit that the family has never made this publically known.
Probably wisely; so disgustingly abhorrent has a hard-core cohort of misanthropic ‘fans’ become that, sensing blood, they would have only wanted to make matters worse.
Ray was left with little choice – watch his wife’s health deteriorate as these so-called fans continued to make life very unpleasant for the family, or do the honourable thing: stand by his wife and protect her by walking away from the nightmare that owning Notts County had become.
As a relative newcomer to Nottingham, I chose to support County over Forest when I first took residence here 20 years ago because I felt comfortable in, and enjoyed, the friendly family atmosphere that permeated the club.
Now, as the Trews have been hounded out of Notts County, I find the pleasure which I derived from being part of this club has been replaced by a bilious and nauseous taste.
Recent events have ripped out the soul of a once-proud establishment and I really don’t know if I still want to be part of it.
It is a sad, sad time for Notts County, but also for every right-minded person associated not just with the club but football in general.
The lunatics seem hell-bent on destroying the asylum that our beautiful game should be.”