COVID TAKES ITS TOLL AS FIRST THREE CLUBS FALL
THE COVID outbreak has already begun to take its toll on cash-strapped football clubs with the first three casualties revealed this week.
Midland League outfit NKF Burbage were the first club to fall victim to the crisis on Tuesday, and they were closely followed by Step 5 Brackley Town Saints and Marlow United, both from the Hellenic League.
Announcing NKF Burbage’s demise after 11 years, chairman Dave Radburn said the Division One outfit could no longer carry on because of a shortage of manpower.
“Committee members decided to resign throughout the season and left us with just a skeleton staff to run the club,” he said.
“Our manager David cook did a fantastic job, but we were pushed to make a decision by March 31 as to whether we could continue and so we pulled out of the league.”
The club was formed as NKF United in 2009 to raise awareness of the National Kidney Federation charity and worked their way up from Leicestershire Sunday football to Step 6.
At the same time, Brackley Town Saints announced their decision to pull out of the Hellenic League Premier Division for financial reasons.
The side was formed to give young players at National League North Brackley the chance to make the transition to open-age football at a competitive level.
They joined Division One East of the league in 2014 under the banner of Brackley Town Development. After finishing as runners-up in their first season, they were promoted to the Step 5 and adopted the name Saints.
In recent seasons they have been challenging for the championship and were fifth before this campaign was cancelled.
The club want to use the money saved from running the Saints to help pay for a new clubhouse at St James’ Park to replace the one destroyed by fire last June.
A club statement said: “With the recent difficult circumstances surrounding the clubhouse and associated finances we feel that this is a cost we can no longer sustain moving forward. This has not been an easy decision to make. But we feel it is the correct decision at this time.”
Fellow Hellenic Leaguers Marlow United then followed suit by relinquishing their Division One East spot to drop back down to Step 7 next season, and possibly to the Thames Valley Premier League where they competed successfully for many years.
Chairman Alan Turner confirmed: “The current national crisis will impact, on this and many other clubs, greatly, going forward. However, prior to this, the club has struggled largely due to the extremely inclement conditions endured this season meaning many Saturday fixtures were necessarily cancelled and rescheduled for midweek which has impacted severely on the club’s financial position.
“An average 100-130 Saturday attendance is much reduced on a Tuesday evening to around 40-70 resulting in costs exceeding income and while this could have been overcome the way is no longer clear going forward.
“As the economy begins its recovery, there is no realistic chance of any substantial sponsorship and it may be many months before fundraising events can be held. With this in mind there is simply no way forward for the football club at Step 6 level.”